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I. Pastoral nomads of Arabian blood, speech, and culture are found in the Arabian Peninsula proper and in parts of Iran, Soviet Turkestan, North Africa, and the Sudan. This article is limited to their way of life in their home territory. Unlike primitive hunting and gathering, pastoral nomadism is a sophisticated System of exploiting land incapable of cultivation. Later to arise than agriculture, pastoralism utilises seven species of domestic animals: the sheep, goat, and ox, domesticated in Neolithic times as part of the ¶ herding and sowing complex of Western Asia; the ass, …

i.—Geography The geological background: The alignments of Iran’s principal topographie features, represented by the Kūhhā-yi Alburz and the Zagros Chain, are west to east and north-west to south-east, respectively. In broad context, the Alburz is a continuation of the European Alpine structures, while the Zagros chain has been linked through Cyprus with the Dinaric Alps (Fisher, 1956). The structure of the mountain rim of the country has been influenced strongly by tectonic movements which have n…