Overview“Kurdish women” are members of a non-state
nation, the Kurds, who have lived since ancient
times in their homeland, Kurdistan, a contiguous
territory divided, since 1918, among the neighbor-
ing countries of Turkey (southeast), Iran (north-
west), Iraq (north), and Syria (northeast). They also
live in small and large communities scattered out-
side Kurdistan in each of the four countries, in
Caucasus and Central Asia, and as refugee and
immigrant communities in Lebanon, Europe, North
America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and
other countries.
In the absence of census figures, estimates of the
size of the Kurdish population vary between 25 and
35 million, making them the fourth largest ethnic
people of the Middle East, outnumbered by Arabs,
Turks, and Persians. While the population is densely
Kurdish, other peoples such as Armenians, Assy-
rians, and Jews have lived in Kurdistan.
The Kurds are often depicted in both the Middle
East and the West as a “nomadic and tribal Muslim
people.” However, Kurdish society, throughout its
recorded history, has been complex, including
tribal-nomadic, rural-feudal, and urban non-agrar-
ian social and economic formations. It is now
highly differentiated in terms of social class, pro-
fession, religion, politics, and culture. The majority
religion is SunnìIslam, with minorities such as
Shì≠ìs, ≠Alawìs, Yazìdìs, and Ahl-e Haqq.
The two powerful empires of the region, Otto-
man Turkey and Iran, engaged in unceasing wars
for the control of Kurdistan, and divided it into two
parts in 1639, but failed, until the mid-1850s, to
overthrow Kurdish mini-states and semi-independ-
ent principalities. Kurdish political life has so far
been characterized by, often concurrently, state-
hood and statelessness (for a general history, see
McDowall 2000; for a pictorial history, see
Meiselas 1997).
Kurdish women: a historical
sketch
Our knowledge about the early history of
Kurdish women is limited by both the dearth of
records and the near absence of research. Sharaf-
Nàmi, the first history of the Kurds, written in
1597 by the Kurdish prince Sharaf al-Dìn Bidlìsì, is
Kurdish Women
a chronicle of Kurdish dynasties, mini-states, and
principalities. More or less silent on women and
non-princely classes, it makes references to the
women of the ruling landowning class, and their
exclusion from public life and the exercise of state
power. According to this source, the Kurds, follow-
ing the Islamic tradition, took four wives and, if
they could afford it, four maids or slave girls
(jàriyya). This regime of polygyny was, however,
practiced by a minority, which included primarily
the members of the ruling landowning class, the
nobility, and the religious establishment. Daughters
and sisters were given or exchanged in marriage as
a means of settling wars and blood feuds. When one
side was defeated, the victor took over the women
of the enemy as booty and as proof of the humiliat-
ing defeat of the adversary. Although state power
was exercised only by males, Bidlìsìmentions three
women who, after losing their husbands, assumed
the reins of power in order to transfer it to their
sons upon their adulthood. While generally refer-
ring to women using degrading words such as
“weakling,” Bidlìsìextols the ability of the three
women to rule in the manner of males, and calls one
of them a “lioness” (Bidlìsì1964, 33, 176, 184,
226, 228, 497, 508).
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Turkish tra-
veler Evliya Çelebi confirmed the picture depicted
by Sharaf-Nàmi. He was associated with the
Ottoman court, and stayed in a number of Kurdish
cities as the guest of Kurdish rulers. In the court of
the powerful Bidlis principality, he found the female
members of the prince’s family, together with maids
or slave girls, confined to the harem. Apparently
exaggerating, he noted that women were not
allowed into the marketplace, and would be killed
if they went there. At the same time, Çelebi noted
that in Kurdish principalities where rule was hered-
itary, women did occasionally assume power, to the
extent that the Ottoman state accepted the succes-
sion of a male ruler by a female in Kurdistan (Çelebi
1990, Bruinessen 1991).
By the mid-nineteenth century, Mela Ma™mùd
Bayazìdì, a learned mullah, provided the first Kurd-
ish account of the life of women in tribal, nomadic,
and rural communities. In his Customs and Man-
ners of the Kurds(1858–9), he noted that the
majority of marriages were monogamous. Women
did not veil, and together with men participated in