Qajar (tribe)

This article is about the Kajar people. For the village in the Fizuli Rayon of Azerbaijan, see Qacar. For the dynasty, see Qajar dynasty

The Kajars are a Turkic people of the Oghuz Turks who lived variously, with other tribes, in the area that is now northeastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. They are often considered a branch of the Azeri. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Kajars resisted the Safavids and settled the Karabakh Khanate. In 1794, a Kajar chieftain, Agha Mohammed, founded the Qajar dynasty which replaced the Zand dynasty in Iran. In the 1980s the Kajar population exceeded 15,000 people, most of whom lived in Iran.

References

• Akiner, Shiran (1983) Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union Kegan Paul International, London, ISBN 0-7103-0025-5
• Wixman, Ronald (1984) The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook