Kurdistan Mid-decade history

About three-fifths of the Kurds, nearly all of them Kurmânji speakers, are today at least nominally Sunni Muslims of the Shafi’ite rite. There are also followers of mainstream lmâmi (Twelver) Shi’ite Islam among the Kurds, particularly in and around the cities of Kirmânshâh, Kangawar, Hamadân, Qurva, and Bijâr in southern …

Karim Khan Citadel, also known as Arg-e Karim Khan,  was built in 1697 following the order and under command of Karim Khan Zand, the famous ruler of the Zand Dynasty. The citadel is a prominent legacy of the Zand Dynasty in Shiraz, especially from the architectural point of view. It …

  9 Women every Kurd needs to know 1. Leila Bederkhan, the Princess of Kurdistan The daughter of the Kurdish Ottoman General Abdürrezzak Bedirxan and Austrian Henriette Hornik, it was Leila’s dream to become a dancer in a time where such an idea was taboo for a woman of her …

Stone Hotel: Former Iraqi King’s Favorite Resort in Kurdistan Renovated ERBIL — A historical hotel in Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province, where once was the favorite resort for a former Iraqi King, has been renovated to boost tourism in the area. The Stone Hotel of Sarsang was built in 1951 and, …

Kurd, member of an ethnic and linguistic group living in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountainsof western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and western Armenia, and other adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey—a somewhat loosely defined …

The Kurdish Village that Rose from the Dead In the 1980s Kulajo gave unstinting support to the Kurdish resistance and for this its people were punished by Saddam Hussein. Villagers were transported to prison camps and many were later executed. Yet some lived to tell extraordinary stories of survival. By …

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Erbil, also called Hawler (Kurdish: ھەولێر ,Hewlêr[3] Arabic: أربيل, romanized: Arbīl,[4] Syriac: ܐܲܪܒܹܝܠ,[5] or Arbel)[6] and known in ancient history as Arbela, is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.[7] There is no current census of the city and official population statistics are not available, its population is estimated to be around 1,200,000.[2] Erbil ھەولێر         Clockwise, from top: Downtown, Mudhafaria …

Abdullah Beg Benari was a Kurdish tribal leader, who lived from 1880 to 1939. He was the son of Sheikh Jahangir, who was the son of Sultan Beg, and a descendant of Bradostian Kurdish princes who fought in the battle of Dimdim Castle against the Iranian invasion by the Shah Abbas in 1609. Abdullah lived in the …

The Sharafnama (Kurdish: شەرەفنامە Şerefname, “The Book of Honor”, Persian: Sharafname, شرفنامه) is the famous book of Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi(a medieval Kurdish historian and poet) (1543–1599), which he wrote in 1597, in Persian. Sharafnama is regarded as an important and oldest source on Kurdish history. It deals with the different Kurdish dynasties …