Bahdinan was a Kurdish emirate centred on Amêdî. Its history connects hereditary government, religious communities, manuscript learning and nineteenth-century Ottoman centralisation.
A capital above the valley
Bahdinan was a Kurdish principality centred on Amêdî, or Amadiya, above the Subna valley. Muslim Kurds, Jews and Christians of several denominations lived in the town and surrounding countryside. Coexistence involved local arrangements, unequal rights and periods of conflict. [1]
Origins and the ruling family
The dynasty’s early chronology is uncertain. Birgit Ammann identifies firmer documentation from the early fifteenth century in the Sharafnama. The family’s claimed Abbasid descent belongs to its genealogical traditions and remains unproven in her survey. [1]
How government worked
Ammann’s discussion of Evliya Çelebi describes seventeenth-century district rulers recognised by the emir, local appointments and a standing force alongside wartime tribal levies. Succession could involve competing relatives and tribal coalitions. Such arrangements illuminate substantial autonomy in a particular Ottoman setting. [1]
Qubahan: schools, books and endowments
Qubahan’s history gives a closer view of princely patronage. Hersh Kemal Rekanî and Farhad Mohemmed Ahmad examine manuscripts and documents associated with Sultan Hussein Wali’s sixteenth-century reign. Their study discusses books dedicated as religious endowments, the ruler’s seals, and the names al-Sultaniyya and al-Husayniyya. A manuscript completed in 1542 names the Sultaniyya school at Qubhan. These traces connect learning to particular donors, places and texts. [3] The authors question an asserted foundation in 1334 because decisive evidence is lacking. They distinguish earlier manuscripts from nearby Rubari from evidence naming the school itself. Their examples also follow later scholars, copying and translation, including an eighteenth-century astronomical text and multilingual vocabulary. Qubahan was part of a wider network of teachers and students, with Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish appearing in its manuscript culture. [3]
Soran’s invasion and Ottoman centralisation
In the early 1830s, Soran’s ruler Muhammad Pasha expanded into Bahdinan. Amir Hassanpour dates the capture of Aqra and Amadiya and the displacement of Ismail Pasha and Muhammad Said Pasha to 1832. His account describes Ismail’s restoration after Ottoman intervention against Soran, followed by the overthrow of Bahdinan in 1842 as the empire extended direct administration. The end of hereditary government thus involved invasion, restoration and renewed intervention. [2]
Bahdinan and Badini today
The name also survives in language and regional identity. Geoffrey Haig and Ergin Öpengin describe Badini or Behdini as southeastern Kurmanji, including varieties in Duhok, Hakkari, southern Van and parts of the Urmiya region. Their analysis emphasises internal variation and uses Şemzînan as one representative variety. This linguistic geography is broader than the capital or a fixed outline of the former emirate. Shared names should therefore be read with their historical, regional or linguistic context. [4]
Sources and further reading
- Birgit Ammann, “The town of Amadiya in the light of European Sources,” Erbil conference paper, 2006.
- Amir Hassanpour, “Bahdīnān,” Encyclopaedia Iranica; concluding section, PDF p. 2, on Soran’s conquest and Ottoman centralisation.
- Hersh Kemal Rekanî and Farhad Mohemmed Ahmad, Qubahan under Sultan Hussein Wali, Journal of Mesopotamian Studies 7/2 (2022), pp. 284–313, especially 289–292; DOI 10.35859/jms.2022.1148853.
- Geoffrey Haig and Ergin Öpengin, “Kurmanji Kurdish in Turkey: Structure, varieties and status” (2018), pp. 192–193, sections 4 and 4.1.