History of the Lurs

The first sighting of the word Lur is in the writings of some historians and geographers of the 10th century and later in the form of اللور, اللر and لور (Lur). Hamdallah Mustawfi in Tarikh-e gozida (1330 AD) referred to the settlement of Luri tribes in Levant and then their mass migration towards the current Luri-inhabited areas. There are several hypotheses that discuss the origin of the name Lur or Lor, prominent amongst them is its attribution to a person called Lur or Lohraseb and some believe that the name refers to the area of first settlement of this ethnic group. The word Ler or Lir (literally forest or forest mountain) is a probable source for this word.[9]

The first people who ruled areas of Lorestan were Elamites. The extent of the influence of the Elamites has been to the present Mamassani area. They were indigenous peoples of Iran, but there is no proper knowledge of how communities are formed and the beginning of their history. They were able to establish a state before the arrival of Aryan ethnic groups in parts of western Iran.[11] The Elam government included Khuzestan, modern Lorestan, Poshtkuh (Ilam province and some western Iraqi areas), Bakhtiari mountains and Southern Luri settlement. Babylonians called the land of Elamites Elam or Elamto, meaning "the mountain" and perhaps "the land of sunrise". Elamite is generally accepted to be a language isolate and thus unrelated to the much later-arriving Persian and Iranic languages. In relation to geographical and archaeological matching, historians argue that the Elamites to be the Proto-Lurs, whose language became Iranian only in the Middle Ages.[12][13][14]

The major cities of the Elamites were Shush, Ahvaz, Madakto and Kheidalou. Walther Hinz believes that the current KhorramAbad in the era of the Elamites was the capital of a dynasty called Simashki. In the course of several thousand years, the Elamites maintained their identity against strong tribes such as Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Eventually, they were defeated by their enemy of Assyria in 654 BC because of internal disputes and wars. The rise of the Elamites and the formation of the Elamite government in the north of Khuzestan plain is the most important political event of Iran in the third millennium BC. Since then, before the arrival of the Medes and Persians, what we know from the history of the land of Iran is only the political history of Elamite.

Kassites entered to the Iranian plateau from the highlands of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan before the Aryan migration and then settled the southwest of Iran. Kassites along with Elam, dominated parts of Lorestan and had an extraordinary skill in making bronze artifacts. They were considered as the most important Zagros mountain tribes and were engaged to livestock breeding. They spoke in a language that was affiliated with Elamite. They were warrior riders who repeatedly entered into battle with their neighbors, including Elamites and Babylonians. They overthrew the government of Babylon and ruled the Babylon for six centuries. The rule of the Kassites in Babylonia ended as a result of their defeat from the Elamites. After the defeat from the Elamites, they returned to their mountainous land of Lorestan.[15][16][17]

During the rule of Achaemenid, Lorestan was part of the rule of the Kassites and when the Achaemenids moved from Babylon to Hamadan, they had to cross the Lorestan area and pay ransom to the Kassites.[18] Pahle was the name of a vast land in west of Iran which was included many cities and areas in the current Zagros. The province of Pahla was named after the Sasanian times and the word Pahlavi refers to the people, the language, and the alphabet related to this region. At the time of the Achaemenids, the current Lorestan, along with Ilam and Khuzestan, were the third state of this great empire. During the Parthian period, this land was one of the Satraps (states) of this dynasty and finally, during the Sassanid period, the area was named "Pahla".[19]