Update on Luri: How many languages? ERIK JOHN ANONBY Introduction 1 Luri is an Indo-Iranian language cluster with over four million speakers. 2 The Luri ethnic area is found in southwestern Iran and southeastern Iraq, although smaller numbers of speakers have emigrated to elsewhere in Asia and a number of cities in the West. 3 I have set the linguistic scene with a brief pr´ ecis of the historical origins of the Lurs. It will become clear that this section is of key importance in an understanding of language boundaries, especially on the ends of the continuum that shoulder varieties of Kurdish and Farsi. After providing this historical sketch, I present a long-overdue update of the ensemble of comparative research that has been done on Luri, especially as pertains to work from the 1 The author wishes to acknowledge the input and assistance of the following individuals and to express ardent thanks to: Christina Anonby, Sekandar Amanollahi, Farid Armanieh, Joyce Blau, Barrie Evans, Jeff Green, Zahed Haftlang, Parisa Nur, Rick Rahim and Bruce Wiebe. Within the ‘language area’, the assistance of many speakers was invaluable: 2 This population figure is further discussed below. See especially footnote 7. 3 The author of this article has established the existence of small communities of Lurs in Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Norway, the UK, Canada and the United States. Amanollahi also mentions that there are groups of Lurs living in Afghanistan, but does not specify details of location, population or ethnic affiliation with other Luri groups. See S. Amanollahi, Qom-e Lor [The Lur Family] (Tehran, 1991), pp. 48 ff. JRAS, Series 3, 13, 2 (2003), pp. 171–197 C  The Royal Asiatic Society 2003 DOI: 10.1017/S1356186303003067 Printed in the United Kingdom