Search Results for “kurds”

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  • CYRTIANS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    a tribe dwell­ing mainly in the mountains of Atropatenian Media together with the Cadusii, Amardi (or “Mardi”), Tapyri, and others.

  • KÖROĞLU

    Multiple Authors

    also Göroḡly, name of an early-17th-century folk hero and poet, whose stories are mainly known among the Turkic peoples; passed into the folk literature of the Armenians, Georgians, Kurds and Bulghars, and the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Khorasan.

  • BEDLĪSĪ, ŠARAF-AL-DĪN KHAN

    Erika Glassen

    (b. 1543, d. 1603-04?), chief of the Rūzagī tribe of Kurds, whose traditional center was the town of Bedlīs; author of the Šaraf-nāma, a history of the Kurds in Persian.

  • AḤMAD-E ḴĀNI

    F. Shakely

    (1061-1119/1650-1707), a distinguished Kurdish poet, mystic, scholar, and intellectual who is regarded by some as the founder of Kurdish nationalism.

  • ʿAMMĀRLŪ

    P. Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of Gīlān and Khorasan. 

  • AVROMAN

    D. N. MacKenzie

    a mountainous region on the western frontier of Persian Kurdistan.

  • BAHDĪNĀN

    A. Hassanpour

    (Kurdish Bādīnān), name of a Kurdish region, river, dialect group, and amirate.  

  • IRAN-E KABIR

    Nassereddin Parvin

    periodical published in the city of Rašt by the political activist Grigor Yaqikiān, 1929-30.

  • FAŻLŪYA, Amir ABU’L-ʿABBĀS FAŻL

    ʿAbd-Allāh Mardūḵ

    known also as Neẓām-al-Dīn Fażl-Allāh, chief of the Šabānkāra Kurds in Fārs during the 11th century.

  • AUTIYĀRA

    R. Schmitt

    name of a district of the satrapy Armina of the Achaemenid empire.

  • GURĀN

    Pierre Oberling

    a tribe dwelling in the dehestān of Gurān, between Qaṣr-e Širin and Kermānšāh (Bāḵtarān), in Kurdistan.

  • HAŽĀR

    Keith Hitchins

    pen name of ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Šarafkandi (b. Mahābād, 1921; d. Tehran, 1991), Kurdish poet, philologist, and translator. A master of traditional Kurdish poetry, he infused the content of his poems with a new, uncompromising militancy. His language is simple and direct, close to the spoken form.

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  • KURDOEV, QENĀTĒ

    Joyce Blau

    (1909-1985), Kurdish philologist and university professor.

  • OŠNUYA

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    (now OŠNAVIYA), a small town of southwestern Azerbaijan, on the historic route from the Urmia basin toward the plains of northern Iraq.

  • BASSĀM-E KORD

    Z. Safa

    the Kharijite (fl. mid-9th century), one of the first poets in the New Persian language, active at the court of the Saffarids.

  • BESṬĀM (1)

    Wilhelm Eilers

    (or Bestām), an Iranian man’s name; as a result of its past popularity, it is a fairly common component of place names.

  • DELDĀR,YŪNES MELA RAʾŪF

    Joyce Blau

    (b. in the sanjaq of Ḵoy in the Ottoman empire, 20 February 1918; d. Erbīl, Iraq, 12 October 1948), Kurdish poet and humanist.

  • DIMDIM

    Amir Hassanpour

    name of a mountain and a fortress where an important battle between the Kurds and the Safavid army took place in the early 17th century.

  • DEH-BOKRĪ

    Pierre Oberling

    Kurdish tribe of Kurdistan.

  • JOMUR

    P. Oberling

    (also angl. Jumur), a small Sunnite Kurdish tribe of northern Lorestān.

  • ḤAMĀVAND

    Pierre Oberling

    (from MOḤAMMADVAND), a Kurdish tribe of northeastern Iraq which has been described as “the most celebrated fighting tribe of southern Kurdistan.”

  • CARDUCHI

    Muhammad Dandamayev

    warlike tribes that in antiquity occupied the hilly country along the upper Tigris near the Assyrian and Median borders, in present-day western Kurdistan.

  • ʿĀDEL SHAH AFŠĀR

    J. R. Perry

    the royal title of ʿAlī-qolī Khan, r. 1160-61/1747-48, nephew and successor of Nāder Shah.

  • ČAHĀR DOWLĪ

    Pierre Oberling

    (Davālī), or ČĀR DOWLĪ, a tribe of western Iran.

  • MOKRI TRIBE

    Pierre Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of western Iranian Azerbaijan.

  • BĀRZĀNĪ

    W. Behn

    a Kurdish tribe from Bārzān, a town of northeastern Iraq. The shaikhs of Bārzān came to prominence in the disorder following sup­pression of the semi-independent Kurdish principalities in the mid-19th century.

  • LANGARUD

    Marcel Bazin and Christian Bromberger

    a city and sub-provincial district (šahrestān) in Gilān located at lat 37°11′ N, long 50°09′ E on the Langarud River, which cuts through the city, dividing it into two parts.

  • ČAHRĪQ

    Amir Hassanpour, Juan R. I. Cole

    a dehestān, village, and fortress in Salmās (Šāhpūr in the Pahlavi period) šahrestān in Azerbaijan between Ḵᵛoy and Urmia.

  • JALĀLI

    Pierre Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of eastern Anatolia and northwestern Persia.

  • ʿALAM KHAN

    J. R. Perry

    viceroy of the Afsharid state of Khorasan, 1161-68/1748-54.  

  • ḤASAN BEG RUMLU

    Sh. Quinn

    (b. 1530-31), author of Aḥsan al-tawāriḵ and a cavalryman (qurči) of the Rumlu Turkman tribe of qezelbāš during the reign of Shah Ṭahmāsb Ṣafawi.

  • BĪJĀR

    Eckart Ehlers

    a town and a šahrestān (county) in the Kurdistan province of Iran. The town, which has the highest elevation in Iran (1,920 m), lies ca. 120 miles north-northwest of Hamadān.

  • BOJNŪRD

    Eckart Ehlers, C. Edmund Bosworth

    a town and district in Khorasan. i. The town and district. ii. History. The town (1976: 47,719 inhabitants; lat  37°29’ N, long 57°17’ E)  is situated at the foot of the Ālādāḡ.

  • HEMIN MOKRIĀNI

    Joyce Blau

    the pen name of Sayyed Moḥammad Amini Šayḵ-al-Eslām Mokri, Kurdish poet and journalist (1921-1986).

  • EDMONDS, C. J

    Yann RICHARD

    The son of a British missionary, Edmonds was born in Japan, where he stayed up to the age of eight. He was educated in England at Bedford and Christ’s Hospital public schools and finally studied oriental languages at Cambridge under the supervision of E. G. Browne for two years.

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  • KORA-SONNI

    Pierre Oberling

    a tribe in western Persian Azerbaijan.

  • HARKI

    Pierre Oberling

    (Herki), a Kurdish tribe of western Azerbaijan, eastern Anatolia, and northeastern Iraq.

  • BELBĀS

    Pierre Oberling

    a former Kurdish tribal confederacy of northwestern Iran and northeastern Iraq.

  • BAGAWAN (2)

    R. H. Hewsen

    an ancient locality in central Armenia situated at the foot of Mount Npat (Gk. Niphates, Turk. Tapa-seyd) in the principality of Bagrewand west of modern Diyadin.

  • CLOTHING xvi. Kurdish clothing in Persia

    Shirin Mohseni and Peter Andrews

    In western Azerbaijan Mahābād is the main urban center for the Kurds. Women there wear balloon-shaped trousers (darpe), 4-6 m wide, fitted at the ankles, and a long pleated dress (kerās), 4-5 m wide, with a round neck­line and long sleeves.

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  • KURDISH TRIBES

    Pierre Oberling

    Kurdish tribes are found throughout Persia, eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq, but very few comprehensive lists of them have been published.

  • ĀL-E HĀŠEM

    C. Cahen

    3rd-5th/9th-11th century local dynasty of the region of Darband.

  • IRAN-NAMEH

    Vahe Boyajian

    journal of Oriental studies, founded in Yerevan, Armenia, in May 1993 as a scholarly monthly publication in the Armenian language.

  • BĀJALĀN

    P. Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe in the dehestāns of Qūratū, Ḏohāb and Jagarlū in the šahrestān of Qaṣr-e Šīrīn, on the Iraqi border.

  • ʿANNAZIDS

    K. M. Aḥmad

    (BANŪ ʿANNĀZ), a Kurdish dynasty (r. ca. 380-510/990-1117).

  • GILĀN xiv. Ethnic Groups

    Christian Bromberger

    Each group living in the province is characterized by one or several specific production activities, so that an ethnonym refers as much to territorial, linguistic, and cultural roots as to any dominant professional specialization.

  • CLOTHING xx. Clothing of Khorasan

    Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Beyhaqī

    The male costume includes either a tasseled black cap, around which a shawl is wrapped; a hood woven of black lamb’s wool, which covers the head from above the eyebrows to the neck; a traveling hood, which covers the face, with an opening for the eyes; or a hat made of lambskin.

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  • KALHOR

    Pierre Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe in the southernmost part of Persian Kurdistan. The last of the great Kalhor chiefs was Dāwud Khan, who ruled the tribe in the early 1900s.

  • QĀSEMLU, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN

    Carol Prunhuber

    Qāsemlu became interested in politics in the early 1940s, when the Allied forces invaded Iran and the nascent Kurdish nationalist movement was revived during the occupation of the two Azerbaijan provinces by the Soviet forces.

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  • ʿABD-AL-RAZZĀQ BEG

    J. R. Perry

    (1176-1243/1762-63 to 1827-28), literary biographer, poet, and historian of the early Qajar period.

  • BAYĀT-E TORK

    M. Caton

    a musical system (āvāz, naḡma) and one of the branches of the modal system (dastgāh) of Šūr in traditional classical music.

  • Křikavová, Adéla

    Jiri Bečka

    (1938-2002), Czech scholar of Iranian and particularly Kurdish studies.

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  • AYYUBIDS

    R. S. Humphreys

    (Ar. Banū Ayyūb), a Kurdish family who first became prominent as members of the Zangid military establishment in Syria in the mid-sixth/twelfth century.

  • GABR

    Mansour Shaki

    a New Persian term used from the earliest period as a technical term synonymous with mōḡ (magus). With the dwindling of the Zoroastrian community,  the term came to have a pejorative implication.

  • JAGARḴWIN

    Keith Hitchins

    (or Cegerxwin), pseudonym of Şêxmûs Hesen (1903-1984), considered by many the leading Kurdish poet of the 20th century writing in Kurmanji.

  • ALESSANDRI

    A. M. Piemontese

    (d. after 1595), Venetian secretary and diplomat, author of an important report on Safavid Persia.

  • KHORASAN i. ETHNIC GROUPS

    Pierre Oberling

    The population of Khorasan is extremely varied, consisting principally of Persians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Mongols, Baluch, and smaller groups of Jews, Gypsies, and Lors.

  • TENTS ii. Variety, Construction, and Use

    Peter Alford Andrews

    Both of the basic tent types used by nomads elsewhere in the Middle East are present in Iran and Afghanistan: the black, goat-hair tent and the felt tent.

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  • KURDISH LANGUAGE ii. HISTORY OF KURDISH STUDIES

    Joyce Blau

    The article provides a brief account of Kurdish studies, which is a relatively recent academic field. The earliest studies of the Kurdish language and civilization were carried out by missionaries.

  • ATĀBAKĀN-E LORESTĀN

    B. Spuler

    rulers of Lorestān, part of the Zagros highlands of southwestern Iran in the later middle ages. Lorestān had a mixed population of Lors, Kurds, and others.

  • CENTRAL ASIA ii. Demography

    Richard H. Rowland

    The combined population of the Uzbek, Kirgiz, Tajik, and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics totals more than 30 million people, one tenth of the population of the Soviet Union.

  • BĀBĀN

    W. Behn

    (or Baban), Kurdish princely family in Solaymānīya, ruling an area in Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran (17th—19th centuries) and actively involved in the Perso-Ottoman struggles.

  • ARZENJĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    or ERZENJĀN, a town of northeastern Anatolia.

  • BALĀSAGĀN

    M. L. Chaumont, C. E. Bosworth

     “country of the Balās,” designating a region located for the most part south of the lower course of the rivers Kor (Kura) and the Aras (Araxes), bordered on the south by Atropatene and on the east by the Caspian Sea.  i. In pre-Islamic times.  ii. In Islamic times.

  • HAFT SIN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    “seven items beginning with the letter sin (S),”  a component of the rituals of the New Year’s Day festival (see NOWRUZ) observed by most Iranians. The items are traditionally displayed on the dining cloth (sofra) that every household spreads out on the floor (or on a table) in a room normally reserved for entertaining guests.

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  • AŠRAF ḠILZAY

    D. Balland

    the Afghan chief who ruled as Shah over part of Iran from 1137/1725 to 1142/1729.

  • JAŽN-Ā JAMĀʿIYA

    Khalil Jindy Rashow

    (Feast of the Assembly), the great communal festival of the Yazidis.

  • DEZFŪL i. Geography

    Massoud Kheirabadi

    or Dez-pol, lit. "fortress bridge"; šahrestān (subprovincial administrative unit) and city in northern Ḵūzestān province.

  • ILBĀRS KHAN

    Yuri Bregel

    name of two rulers of Ḵᵛārazm in the 16th and 18th centuries: (1) Ilbārs Khan b. Buräkä (or Bürgä), from the ʿArab-šāhi (q.v.) branch of the Jochids, was the founder of the dynasty which ruled Ḵᵛārazm from 1511 to the end of the 17th century.

  • BAYAZIT

    R. W. Edwards

    (Bāyazīd; Osm. Bayezid), a stronghold located three kilometers southeast of the modern village of Doğubayazit, Turkey, and approximately twenty-five kilometers southwest of Mt. Ararat, important in the defense of Anatolia against invasion from Iran.

  • ARMY iii. Safavid Period

    M. Haneda

    Shah Esmaʿil's army was comprised of tribal units, the majority of which were Turkmen, the remainder Kurds and Čaḡatāy.

  • BŪKĀN

    Amir Hassanpour

    (Kurd. Bōkān), name of a town, a baḵš (district), and a river in the šahrestān (county) of Mahābād, West Azerbaijan.

  • URSHAN, ANDREŌS BAR DĀWĪD

    Stephen A. Schmidt

    (1884-1967), known as the “Persian Evangelist,” Assyrian evangelist and author, born in the village of Ābājālui, Azerbaijan; he attended the American Presbyterian College of Urmia, where he had a ‘born again’ experience in 1900.

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  • FĀRS vii. Ethnography

    Pierre Oberling

    The largest part of the population of Fārs is of Iranian stock, but since the rise of Islam in the 7th century there has been substantial immigration of peoples of other ethnic origins into the province.

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  • CONFEDERATIONS, TRIBAL

    Richard Tapper

    tribal groups commonly comprise several levels of organization, from a nomad camp to (sometimes) a nation-state, with different criteria defining membership of groups at each level.

  • JEVDET, ʿABD-ALLĀH

    Osman G. Özgüdenli

    (1869-1932), Ottoman poet, writer, translator, and thinker.

  • ORBELI, IOSEF ABGAROVICH

    Karen Yuzbashian

    (1887-1961), orientalist and academician who specialized in Iranian studies, Armenian and Kurdish philology, and archeology.

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  • INDIGO

    Carol Bier

    (Pers. nil), the common name of a broad genus, Indigofera, with numerous species. Many tribal groups in Persia have relied on the use of indigo to achieve a stable blue color for the wool of carpets and kilims.

  • ESMĀʿĪL, b. Aḥmad b. Asad SĀMĀNĪ, ABŪ EBRĀHĪM

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    (849-907), the first member of the Samanid dynasty to rule over all Transoxania and Farḡāna.

  • AZERBAIJAN v. History from 1941 to 1947

    B. Kuniholm

    Upon entering Iran, the Soviets dismantled frontier and customs posts between Iran and the USSR, and set up military posts on the southern border of the Soviet occupied zone. The de facto result was extension of the Soviet frontier into Iran.

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  • KURDISH WRITTEN LITERATURE

    Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    Written, “elevated” poetry traditionally played a less prominent role in Kurdish society than folk poetry (q.v.) did. The number of written literary works in Kurdish is far smaller than in the surrounding cultures.

  • SOPURḠĀN

    David G. Malick

    Neo-Aramaic Sipūrḡān, Assyrian village in the Urmia plain, situated on the Nazlu river, 26 km northeast of the city of Urmia.

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  • MAWLAWI, ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Maʿdumi

    Keith Hitchins

    (1806-1882/83), a leading Kurdish poet of the 19th century who wrote in the Gurāni dialect of southeastern Kurdistan. He benefited from the support of Sufi shaikhs, who were generous patrons of writers and scholars. 

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  • MEM-Ê ALAN

    Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    (Kurdish romance), probably the best-known Kurdish tale, and the one most often regarded as representative of Kurdish verbal art generally. 

  • DOTĀR

    Jean During

    long-necked lute of the tanbūr family, usually with two strings (do tār). The principal feature is the pear-shaped sound box attached to a neck that is longer than the box and faced with a wooden soundboard. Dotārs can be classified in several different types.

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  • BANŪ SĀSĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    a name frequently applied in medieval Islam to beggars, rogues, charlatans, and tricksters of all kinds, allegedly so called because they stemmed from a legendary Shaikh Sāsān.

  • ʿAMĀMA

    H. Algar

    (or ʿAMMĀMA, Arabic ʿEMĀMA), the turban. Imbued with symbolic significance, the turban was once the almost universal headgear of adult male Muslims. 

  • IRAN v. PEOPLES OF IRAN (1) A General Survey

    R. N. Frye

    The term “Iranian” may be understood in two ways. It is, first of all, a linguistic classification, intended to designate any society which inherited or adopted, and transmitted, an Iranian language.

  • JELWA, KETĀB AL-

    Philip Kreyenbroek

    (Kurd. Kitēba jilwe “the Book of splendor”), title of a notional sacred text in Yazidism.

  • ČŪB BĀZĪ

    Robyn C. Friend

    a category of folk dance found all over Persia (Hamada) and distinguished from other types of folk dance by the fact that the dancers carry sticks, which they strike together.

  • FOLK POETRY

    Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    in Iranian languages. The term ‘folk poetry’ can be properly used for texts which have some characteristics marking them as poetry and belong to the tradition of the common people, as against the dominant ‘polite’ literary cult

  • CARPETS xv. Caucasian Carpets

    Richard E. Wright

    The oldest surviving rugs produced in the Caucasus may be a group with representations of dragons and phoenixes in combat. There is, however, no evidence to permit attribution to the Caucasus. 

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  • ARMY iv. Afšar and Zand Periods

    J. R. Perry

    Nāder Shah grew up a raider, made his early reputation as a mercenary, and came to power as commander-in-chief of a fugitive Safavid claimant in Afghan-occupied Iran; by force of arms he drove out the Afghans and intimidated the Ottoman Turks and Russians who had sought to partition Iran.

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  • JAZIRI

    Joyce Blau

    SHAIKH AḤMAD, or Malâ-ye Jizrî, early Kurdish poet.

  • RAWWADIDS

    Andrew Peacock

    a family of Arab descent that controlled parts of Azerbaijan and Armenia from the late 8th through the 11th centuries.

  • CLOTHING xxi. Turkic and Kurdish clothing of Azerbaijan

    P. A. Andrews And M. Andrews

    Traditional costume, now worn largely in a tribal context, retains the form of garments as they were at the end of the 19th century; it is only among Kurdish, rather than Turkic, men that elements have survived the reforms of Reżā Shah in everyday wear.

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  • ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA MOḤAMMAD

    C. E. Bosworth

    (d. 433/1041), Daylamī military leader and founder of the shortlived but significant Kakuyid dynasty.

  • BOUNDARIES i. With the Ottoman Empire

    Keith McLachlan

    shaped by conflict over an ill-defined strip of territory with constantly shifting outlines extending from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf.

  • BANĪ ARDALĀN

    P. Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of northwestern Iran, now dispersed in Sanandaj (Senna) and surrounding villages.

  • DANCE

    A. Shapur Shahbazi, Robyn C. Friend

    (raqṣ). Single dancers or groups of dancers represented on pottery from prehistoric Iranian sites (e.g., Tepe Siyalk, Tepe Mūsīān) attest the antiquity of this art in Iran. According to Duris of Samos (apud Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae), the Achaemenid Persians learned to dance, just as they learned to ride horseback.

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