Baluch

The Baluch call themselves Baloch. Their homeland, Balochistan, stretches across the borders of three states: the province of Sistan and Baluchestan in south-eastern Iran, the province of Balochistan in Pakistan, and the deserts of southern Afghanistan around Nimruz and Helmand. For centuries Baluch sailors and soldiers have also lived around the Gulf and in Oman, where Balochi is still heard in Muscat. Each part has its own history, and Pakistani and Afghan Baloch define themselves in their own terms.

Language and faith

Balochi belongs to the north-western branch of the Iranian languages, a relative of Kurdish rather than of Persian, which suggests that the Baluch reached their present lands from the north-west in the early Middle Ages. It has several dialects, and many Baluch also speak Persian, Urdu or Brahui. Most Baluch are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, and religious scholarship in Zahedan and the coastal towns is a living tradition, which the Faiths section describes.

What is kept

Baluch literature lived for centuries in song. The heroic ballads of Mir Chakar Rind and the wars of the Rind and Lashari tribes, and the love story of Hani and Sheh Mureed, are still sung by minstrels to the suroz, a bowed fiddle with a deep, rasping voice, and the dambura. Music also heals: in the guati-damal ceremonies of the coast, musicians play through the night for those believed to be troubled by spirits.

Baluch embroidery, suchen-dozi, is among the finest needlework in Iran: dense geometric panels, tiny mirrors and silk thread on the chest, cuffs and long pocket of a woman’s dress, each piece taking months. Men wear long shirts and loose trousers with a turban. Hospitality has its own code, and the diwan, the evening gathering of men, is where news, poetry and disputes are heard. The coast, from Chabahar to Gwadar, has its own fishing life and a long connection with the Indian Ocean.

Hardship, documented

Sistan and Baluchestan is among the poorest provinces of Iran, with drought and the drying of the Hamun wetlands weighing on the north. Amnesty International, Iran Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteurs have reported that Baluch people are disproportionately represented among those executed in Iran, many for drug offences, and rights groups have documented the shooting of fuel porters (sukhtbar) near the Pakistani border. On 30 September 2022, in what residents call Bloody Friday, security forces opened fire on protesters and worshippers in Zahedan; Amnesty International documented the killing of dozens of people, including children. None of this is the whole of Baluch life. Weddings in Saravan, music on the Makran shore, embroidery passed from mother to daughter and the long stories of the diwan go on, on both sides of every border.