# Sistan va Baluchistan  
Sistan va Baluchistan is located in the south-eastern corner of Iran, bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf of Oman. There are two distinct ethnoreligious groups: the majority Shi'a Sistanis of Sistan in the north and the majority Sunni Baluchis of Baluchistan in the south. The dress, language, food and customs of this province bear a stronger affinity with the neighbouring country of Pakistan than with other Iranian provinces. Moreover, a harsh climate along with a long history of high taxation, foreign control and emigration has meant that this region is one of the least populated, most desolate and underdeveloped provinces in Iran. Enslaved Africans were therefore brought to the region to meet labour shortages faced by affluent kbans (local rulers) and they worked here, often alongside commoners and peasants in many different industries, as they had done for centuries (Vaziri 1386 SH, pp. 16, 26; Sykes, 1902, p. 106). From the early eighteenth century until the last decades of the nineteenth century, they came via a slave trade network dominated by the Sultanate of Oman, which extended from eastern Africa throughout the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions (Landen, 1967, p. 63).  
Groups with deeply embedded cultural mores and kinship networks (further bound by a common descent) tend to reinforce shared economic, cultural, historical and genealogical connections through marriage and other mechanisms of social mobility. Thus, it may be seen that social stratification strengthened principles based on kinship and descent. The ultimate result of such social arrangements was the political elevation of certain influential local groups, which consequently reinforced a sense of second-class citizenship among other groups. Importantly, such patterns were the result of specifically local social processes and were not mirrored elsewhere in society.  
In general, the choice of a spouse was governed by centuries-old norms that prescribed consanguinity and endogamy and the eligibility of an individual member