However it is mostly claimed that the designation “Bakhtiari” came largely into use some time in antiquity.In The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski states that “The Bakhtiari take their name from a legendary herdsman of Mongol times, Bakhtyar,” who according to a Bakhtiari origin myth is “the father of [their] people”. Bronowski points out similarities between Bakhtyar and the Israelite Jacob, who was also the ancestral patriarch of his nomadic people and a herdsman who had two wives.