For centuries semi-independent Kurdish emirates governed much of the region. Mîrgehên Kurdan revisits their castles, courts and legacy.
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries much of Kurdistan was ruled by hereditary princes — the mîrs — whose emirates enjoyed wide autonomy between the Ottoman and Persian empires.
Amêdî and Behdînan
The emirate of Behdînan had its seat in Amêdî, the town built on a flat-topped rock above the valley. Its rulers supported scholars and poets, and the town’s gates and minaret still stand.
Other emirates — Bohtan around Cizîr, Soran around Rewandiz, Baban in Silêmanî — left castles, mosques and chronicles that tell us how Kurdish society was organised before the modern state.
“The emirates were not only military powers. They were centres of learning, poetry and trade.”
The series Mîrgehên Kurdan visits these sites with historians and uses archival maps to reconstruct the world of the mîrs.
