Lur

The Lurs are the Iranian tribal people of the Zagros, spread from Lorestan into Khuzestan and the Bakhtiari mountains, and speak Luri, a Western Iranian language lying between Persian and Kurdish. They formed from Iranian newcomers blending with older inhabitants of the region, and some scholars argue the ancient Elamites were their proto-Lur forebears.

The name Lur began as a geographical term for the land between Khuzestan and Isfahan and only became an ethnic label in the tenth and eleventh centuries. From 1115 the Hazaraspid atabegs ruled Greater Lorestan, holding the Zagros roads through the Saljuq and Ilkhanid eras until Timur's son Shahrukh overthrew the last of them in 1424.

The tribes kept their semi-nomadic ways and adopted Shia Islam under the Safavids; around 1800 a mojtahed had to be brought from Karbala to teach the highland tribes orthodox practice.