Kurdish History Journal
Articles filed under Kurdish Icons.
Taufiq Wahby combined public service with Kurdish language scholarship. His grammar and the 1966 Kurdish-English dictionary, co-authored with C. J. Edmonds, document his work on spelling and vocabulary.
Read article →Ekrem Cemilpaşa, born in Diyarbakır in 1891, helped organize Kurdish student cultural activity and later worked for Kurdish independence. His education, exile and memoir illuminate how an Ottoman notable’s grandson became a nationalist activist.
Read article →Bakr Sidqi (1890-1937), Kurdish general in the Iraqi army, staged the first military coup in the Arab world in 1936, becoming briefly the most powerful man in Iraq before his assassination in 1937.
Read article →Ismail Agha Shikak, known as Simko, pursued regional power in northwestern Iran amid war and state collapse. His Kurdish political ambitions, changing alliances and responsibility for the killing of Mar Shimun belong in the same historical account.
Read article →Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri used a transborder religious network to lead a major Kurdish movement in 1880. His letters, the invasion of Qajar Iran, its violence and the diplomatic aftermath make the revolt a pivotal and debated episode in Kurdish political history.
Read article →Süreyya Bedir Khan was a Kurdish writer and political organizer active in Cairo and the Xoybûn movement. His later Kurdistan newspapers followed the pioneering publication founded by his uncle in 1898.
Read article →The physician and organizer behind an early constitutionalist network: medical school, Rhodes exile, Geneva journalism, compromise and death in Sanremo.
Read article →Şerif Pasha (1865-1951) was a Kurdish Ottoman diplomat who represented Kurdish national aspirations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, negotiating for Kurdish self-determination after World War I.
Read article →Mevlanzade Rifat Bey (1869-1930) was a Kurdish journalist and Ottoman intellectual who published newspapers and memoirs documenting the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the Young Turk era.
Read article →Abdulhakim Arvasi (1865-1943) was a Kurdish Naqshbandi Sufi scholar whose traditional Islamic teachings made him one of the most prominent religious opponents of Kemalist secularisation in Turkey.
Read article →Ibrahim Pasha al-Dalati was an 18th-century Kurdish Ottoman governor, part of the tradition of Kurdish Pashas who served in the Ottoman administrative system in the early modern period.
Read article →The documented diplomatic role of Haydar Khan Zanganeh, with the Zangana and Zagros setting of his service to Karim Khan.
Read article →Mawlana Khalid, also known as Khalid al-Baghdadi, was a Kurdish scholar and Sufi teacher from Qaradagh in Shahrazur. His journey to Delhi, network of deputies and multilingual poetry explain the movement that bears his name more clearly than a story of unbroken political unity.
Read article →Suleiman al-Halabi killed the French commander Jean-Baptiste Kléber in Cairo on 14 June 1800. Contemporary accounts, the military trial and later literature offer different evidence about the student from Aleppo and the meanings attached to his act.
Read article →Allahqoli Khan Zanganeh was a Zand-era governor of Kermanshah who died in conflict with Khosrow Khan of Ardalan in 1785. A regional chronicle preserves a detailed, partisan account of his final campaign.
Read article →Arkawazi’s southern Kurdish poetry brings together devotion, imprisonment, exile and grief for his son, with life dates that remain uncertain.
Read article →Jaʿfar ibn Hasan al-Barzanji’s Arabic devotional writing travelled through recitation, manuscripts, commentaries and print. Surviving copies reveal a more precise history than a general family biography.
Read article →Xelîlê Sêrtî was a scholar and poet associated with Hizan and Siirt. Research identifies named Kurdish verse works, a substantial Arabic scholarly corpus and poems preserved in manuscript collections.
Read article →Shaykh Marif Nodeyi combined poetry, language teaching and Islamic scholarship. His Ahmadi offers direct evidence of Arabic–Kurdish vocabulary teaching, while modern research examines his legal commentary and educational work around Sulaymaniyah.
Read article →Mohammed ben Osman rose through the government of western Algeria. His career connects Mascara’s public works and learned culture with the fighting and negotiations that returned Oran in 1792.
Read article →Shahqoli Khan Zanganeh was a provincial governor, commander of the royal guards and grand vizier. His career connects a Kurdish family’s place in Safavid government with struggles over access, office and the supply of food to Isfahan.
Read article →Mohamed Pasha Jaff, also known as Hama Pasha, led the Jaf in the nineteenth century. His career joined seasonal migration, imperial appointments and conflicts within the confederation.
Read article →Karim Khan founded the Zand dynasty and ruled much of Iran while using the title Vakil. His rise through war, government at Shiraz, public works and reputation for fairness form distinct parts of his legacy.
Read article →Khana Qubadi’s eighteenth-century poetry joins the Shirin–Khosrow romance, devotional writing and an explicit defence of composing in Kurdish.
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