9 Origins and History the Ottomans maintained control of the majority of Kurdish-inhabited lands, Kurd- istan’s more easterly extremities remained under Safavid rule. While some Kurdish populated districts, such as Kermanshah, were or ga nized into imperial provinces, important Kurdish clans, such as the Ardalans of Sanandej and the Mukriyani tribal confederation in western Azerbaijan, were recognized as hereditary gover- nors. Indeed, the Kurds’ reputation as frontier warriors prompted several Safavid monarchs to transplant Kurdish-speaking tribesmen to Khorasan, establishing a network of Kurdish emirates aimed at defending Iran’s northeast from Uzbek and Turkmen raids. The Safavids also attempted to win Kurdish support within the Ottoman dominated portion of Kurdistan. When the emir of Bitlis was removed from office by Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), he and his clans- men fled to Safavid Iran, where they were granted sanctuary and imperial favor. The emir’s grandson, Sharaf Khan (1543–1603), was educated in the Safavid royal household and, later in life, was granted the title of “the high emir of the Kurds” (amir al-omara al-akrad) with the responsibility for representing the interests of the Kurds at the Safavid court (Sharaf Khan, 1860: 427–428). Although Sharaf Khan eventually defected to the Ottomans in return for his restoration to his ancestral seat, Iranian subversion continue to be a perennial threat to Istanbul’s primary in Kurdistan. Indeed, in 1821 when the ruler of the Baban emirate, a Kurdish principality that had risen to prominence in Shahrazur district during the 18th century, defected to the side of the Iranian governor of Azerbaijan, Crown Prince Mirza Abbas (1789–1833), it sparked general war between Iran and the Otto- man Empire. The relatively indirect forms of administration adopted by the Ottomans and Iranians in Kurdistan between the early 16th and early 19th centuries provide important context for the visible material prosperity for some important centers in the region. For example, when Evliya Çelebi visited Bitlis in the mid-16th century, he encountered a thriving town, home to numerous shops and an extensive tan- ning and leatherworking industry. The British traveler Claudius Rich, who visited the Baban emirate in early 19th century observed a similarly prosperous society, noting that the Baban’s capital of Sulaimani was home to five covered markets, two good mosques, and “a very fine bath” (Rich 1836, 85). Kurdistan’s material pros- perity was mirrored by developments in the cultural sphere. Kurdish fiefs served as important centers of cultural production. Evliya Çelebi observed that the emir- ate of İmadiye was home to a lively literary sense, which was producing poetry in the Kirmancî dialect of Kurdish. The Ardalan emirate patronized works in the Guranî dialect, while the rise of the Soranî dialect was intimately linked with the rising fortunes of the Baban emirate in the late 18th century (Blau, 2012: 13–15). In addition to the courts of the emirs, Kurdistan’s institutions of religious learning served as important centers of cultural and intellectual activity. Throughout the early modern period, Kurdistan remained a center of Shafi’i religious learning and a region in which the teaching of rational sciences, which declined in other parts of the Middle East, continued to constitute an important part of religious educa- tion (el-Rouayheb, 2008: 196–221). While much religious education was conducted
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