At the beginning of this conference the president of the University of Kurdistan said his welcome to all the guests and furthermore thanked and appreciated all the efforts of the Kurdistan’s governor and the Supreme Leader Representative in Kurdistan and all those who had worked up to the conference.
Dr. Jahanshir Amini declared: more than 100 articles were sent to this conference among which more than 70 were accepted by the referees committee and more than 24 of them will be presented and put into discussion in these two days.
He continued: the aim of holding this conference is to investigate the influence of Ardalan dynasty on culture, literature, economics, agriculture, architecture and all other social and cultural aspects of Sanandaj, and evidently they have played a major role and this will be discussed and analyzed during these two days by experts and researchers of this area.
Dr. Amini concluded that: I hope great achievements for this conference, further cultural development in Kurdistan and also I hope this conference opens the way for more of the same kind in the future.
Then afterwards Dr. Najmadin Jabari, the head of the Kurdish Studies Research Institute of University of Kurdistan welcomed the guests and furthermore said: Ardalan is a high and glorious word since it covers a vast and ancient history and it entails all that in which a nation could take pride.
He mentioned that the Ardalans were a dynasty that at least for seven centuries were at work and in action, he said: if we were to mention any such discipline as science, politics, literature, historiography, military, architecture and art we will but observe the traces of Ardalans in Iran.
Dr. Jabari continued thus: in their own times the grandeur of princes such as Halo Khan, Amanullah Khan and … has trembled occupiers such as Sultan Salim of Ottomans so that the tale of patriotism keeps circulating in this family from one generation to the others.
He also believes that the sharp mind of Ardalans brings about the situation in which Sanandaj rises to be the scientific center of Islamic countries that attracts friends and foes alike.
The head of the Kurdish Studies Research Institute of University of Kurdistan continues: the opening during the ruling of Amanullah Khan provides Sanandaj with the opportunity to sit side by side with cities such as Shiraz and Cairo and Baghdad and Bukhara and Samarqand and it was under the influence of this dynasty that Sanandaj came to be the first city ever built by the hands of Kurds themselves so that it could be not only the political capital to Kurds but also the intellectual, cultural and literary center to them and demonstrate the level of its cultivation.
He also asserted that: considering the condition of Ardalans at the time one realizes how great a work they have done yet one could only weep blood after witnessing the end of this great dynasty.
Najmadin Jabari continued: discussing and assessing the Ardaln princes’ history and achievements and their end and demise in the political geography of the time lighted a love so strong in our hearts that this scientific conference came out of it so that through efforts and trouble of cultural activists a scientific and scholarly reading of these achievements come to the light.
He deemed this scholarly conference as a step that the Kurdish Studies Research Institute of University of Kurdistan has taken by a one year work and effort to render the Kurdish Studies Research scholarly and scientific in the hopes of placing this step in the way for further scholarly researches.
The head of the Kurdish Studies Research Institute of University of Kurdistan mentioned that the original idea for holding this conference came from Jamal Ahmadi Ayin, continuing: the attempts for holding this conference started at the end of spring and as a result we received 106 papers, 70 of which were accepted after review in a scholarly way and 24 of them were selected to be presented by their authors I these two days.
He mentioned that assessing and reviewing these papers has been conducted by a team of experts including Jamal Ahmadi Ayin, Dr. Asaad Ardalan, Dr. Ebrahim Badakhshan, Mansour Rahmani, Abdolla Rasoulnejad, Hadi Rezwan, Dr. Bakhtiyar Sadjadi, Asaad Sheikh Ahmadi, Houshmand Alizadeh, Dr. Yadegar Karimi, Majed Mardokh Rohani, Navid Naghshbandi and Omid Naichi and to which I give my sincere thanks and bow to him in respect and hope to have more of the likes of them.
After the speech made by Dr. Jabari, the first paper was thus presented by Mohammad Ali Soltani on the history of Ardalan dynasty: Mir (prince) in Kurdish has no association with Amir in Arabic but is synonymous with the word Mehr. Mehr is the intermediary between god and the society. As a historical dialect (expression) we come to call some of the rulers and kings as dynasty and the others not, for instance we don’t call Qajar and Afshar and Zand as dynasty but we do that for Safavid and since Ardalans like the Safavids share the same holy circle and origin, we call them the Ardalan dynasty as well.
The Ardalans possessed cultivation from the very beginning and had come from a holy lineage and the Kurdish tribes had encircled them so that they can protect their own realm that is why the Ardalans Mirs should be considered as the Safavids were.
From a historical point of view, there are four historical periods in Iran. The first pre-Islamic period, the second from Islam up to the beginning of seventh century. Third from seventh century to the 10th century and then from 10th century till now.
If we look at the pre-Islamic period we see that each and every city goes back to a king. The rules and regulations of those cities were also made by the kings.
In the Islamic times those who have inscribed history either have described the process of Islamization of the cities or explained how a Muslim has built a city and introduced most of the major figures of that city.
From the beginnings of the seventh century when the Moguls and Turks came and occupied the region, all those histories and annals are cut off and historiography goes back to writing solely about the history of tribes and families, however with the rise of Safavids and sine they tried to attach civilization and tribalism together histories parted in two. A group of them still continued to be about the history of tribes and clans like Sharafnama by Sharafkhan Bidlisi, the only Mirs that managed to have their achievements and history recorded in an orderly way were the Ardalan Mirs.
Of all those tribes and clans which were mentioned in Sharafnama, no exact history is available and we know nothing of their destiny whatsoever.
Of the four states that existed at the age of Safavids meaning Kurdistan, Georgia, Lorestan, and Arabia only the Ardalan Mirs managed to have a written history of their own and also coinciding with the French Revolution in 1789 Amanullah Khan of Ardalan ordered a history (Zubdat-al-Tawarikh-e Sanandaji) to be written and we are indebted to Mamosta Heirat Sadjadi fir making this history available to us in Kurdistan.
One of the major characteristics of this history is that it puts the local history of the Ardalan-ruled region beside the overall history of the world, so to say it has connected a river to an on ocean. This history is the only one at its times that in which it is not tribalism that triumphs over civilization but the vice versa and we have no histories alike it neither in Fars and Shiraz nor in Isfahan. Although only the Kurdish part of the Zubdat-al-Tawarikh has been published and the rest is not available to us.
Also the Ardalan historians of that age have taken it upon themselves to write for the people of their own age. And this they did not out of show off and drawing attention to the Mirs but to record history and to inform people of the political and economic affairs and matters of the region.
The composition of this organized history is duly indebted to Amanullah Khan of Ardalan which he instigated at the beginning of his ruling in 1214.
If we were to return to the roots of civilization in Sanandaj, we can see that none of the neighboring cities shared the likeness of Ardalan Sanandaj since Sanandaj were built on the pattern of Isfahan which were then exemplary in all the middle east, but Kermanshah and Ilam and Lorestan which have a more recent history as cities were built after Tehran. Even the calligraphers of Sanandaj practice an Isfahanian style of calligraphy. Also since of the political and economic relations of Istanbul and Sanandaj even Thuluth calligraphy which was a rarity in the rest of Iran to be practiced in Sanandaj.
These all were at the time of Ghulamshakhan, a modern intellectual genius who sadly has been undeservedly under-researched. Ghulamshakhan was a lover of literature and the first Kurdish poet to compose poetry in Sanadaji language and the first Ardalan Mir to compose poetry in Hewrami. At his age poets are free to express their emotions.
The role Dar-ul-Ehsan played in the prosper of culture and literature at the time is manifest but sadly no critic has picked up his pen to write about Dar-ul-ehsan, a center which it was for religious dialogues between religions and thus promoting dialogue in the society.
Afterwards the message of Felekedin Kakeyi, the former Culture and Youth Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government was read by Hawraman Bahrami.
Then the first panel on the etymology of the word Ardalan started with Mamosta Osman Dashti as the head of the panel and Yadollah Roshan Ardalan, Celal Sidiq Tewfiq and Keywan Azad as participants.
Yadollah Roshan Ardalan the secretary to the Ardalan family also presented a speech on the significance of history which covered what follows:
The history of any such tribe and clan and nation, written by whomever, is the history of all the individuals within those nation and its protection should be considered as a priority for all. Therefore the history of Ardalans is not only the history of a family called Ardalan but also the history of Kurds and Iranians.
The architect of this history is Baba Ardalan and since then, for all this long time, the history of our Kurdish ancestors has hardly remained amidst the ashes of history and this here is the first time that is directly and extensively addressed and so it calls for my thanks and sincere appreciation as the secretary to Ardalan family to all those who have gone to trouble to help hold this conference.
The origin of Ardalans goes back to an age that from India and Sistan and Baluchestan and Iraq and all the north and south had fallen under the reign of Seljuks. Since then up to 478 AH the independent reigns of Shaddadids, Marwanids, Hasanwayhids, Buyids and … all fall under the reign of Seljuks. Kurds, Arabs, and Persians as well as other tribes and races but for Turkmens were forced to pay tributes or to to follow Seljuks or as a last resort to give up and run.
King Mansour the last Marwanid king were kiiled by Seljuks in the battle and the Marwanid princes were made to live in secret among the Kurds. Seljuks imposed the first Crusade (from 491 to 689) on the whole Middle East by conquering the cities and ports of Byzantine Empire and as a result of which Byzantine fell.
It was in such an age and conditions and with the events all pointing to the end of Kurdish reigns and rulings and beginning of the Turkmen era, that within a short period after the fall of Marwanids and killing of King Mansour, one of his descendants named Khosrow migrated from Diyarbakir into Goran tribe and in the year 564 AH started his own reign with the assistance of the Gorans in Palangan.
First they conquered Palangan then Heramans mountains. And his successors continued with Marican and Hasan Abad castles and building Sanandaj.
Baba Ardalan is a major figure in the history of Ardalan, not only was he a spiritual leader but also a political one guiding people and Mir Sharafkhan Bidlisi has concluded in his book and also Hejar in his translation of Sharafnama that Baba Ardalan’s ancestry through the last Marwanid king, King Mansour, and Ahmad the son of Marwan and … goes back to Qubad, the Sassanid king.
Despite all their rising and fallings, the Ardalans managed to defend their borders up to 1284 and in the end they delivered their territories to our ancestors.
The separatist and nationalist movements started in the 19th century in all Middle East and the Ottoman Empire lost all its power in Egypt and North Africa. The British forces were fighting Ottomans through Egypt and India and all these were reshaping the face of Middle East. It was in such a time and condition that the Qajar dynasty ended the Ardalan reign in order to extend its own life.
The word Ardalan is consisted of two parts of Ard and Alan, Ard stands for soil and homeland and Alan was a large Aryan tribe that got their name in the first century AD.
The second presentation of this panel was conducted by Zerar Sidiq Tewfiq under the title of A New Reading to the Rise of Ardalan Dynasty, which in short entailed the followings:
Researching the history of Kurds is a difficult task since we as Kurds had even till very recently lacked the historical consciousness and consequently we lack great, detailed, old enough historical works and this in turn leads again to the fact that we have no history.
We have had dozens Kurdish Emirates but none of them thought up of inscribing their own history. But for Ardalan Emirate there were many other Kurdish Emirates in the 19th century which spent hundreds and thousands of Dinars on other stuff but no attention did they pay to writing he history of their own lineage and dynasty.
A historian writes: the Ardalans believe that the historiography movements starts with them. This is a good thing but since the biography of Baba Ardalan contains many untrue information, it casts a shadow of doubt over the whole work and the reader could verily doubt in the true given data too.
There are some detailed information found in Ardalan historians that matches those of Baba Ardalan’s times. Sharafkhan assumes Baba Ardalan to be Xosrow, a contemporary of Genghis Khan but I believe that the Ardalan Emirate was founded in 564 and not contemporary to Genghis Khan since Genghis Khan founded his Mogul Empire in the sixth century AH after the end of Seljuks.
Baba or Bebe belongs with Goran tribe and Baba Ardalan himself if he was not Goran, he must have mixed with them. Ardalan is known as Ardalan among Kurds though in Persian and Arabic resources comes as Kurdistan.
Dr. Azad Anwar was the other member of this panel to present his paper which was on the rise of Ardalans and their relations with Moguls, on which he declared:
Ardalans are of the most significant families of the Kurdish history that unfortunately no one has yet managed to research deep into their dialect and history.
Some Arab historians, trace the origin of Ardalans back to Sassanid family but I deem this untrue and I will try to prove my point with evidence. Sassanids play a significant role in the history of Iran but Ardalans do not go back to them and there is no source to confirm that. Even Mastoureh and Mir Sharafkhan do not mention the origin of Baba Ardalan.
Some believe the word Baba to be an ancient Yarsan word and I do agree with this. Baba Ardalan is historical personality in the Shahrizor region and he reigns over it. Saladin supports the reign of Baba Ardalan in Sharizor. He then becomes the Mir of Ardalan Emirate in 564, from Baba Ardalan to Amanullah Khan who is the last Mir of Ardalan in the year 1162, Ardalan gets to be the first Emirate in the Kurdish history to reign for 7 centuries. No Emirate has reigned this long nor in ancient neither in recent history.
After the last presentation, the panel ended with questions and answers.
The second panel was held with Dr. Ahmad Parsa as the head of the panel and Mousa Parnian, Mohammad Ahmad Saeid, and Dr. Bakhtiyar Sadjadi as participants.
First Mousa Parnian presented his paper on the theme of lamenting and mourning in the poetry of Mastoureh Ardalan that in short spoke of the following:
The first compositions of Kurdish literature which are in Gorani, have a religious and mystical theme and are full of mysteries. Most of the texts from the third century up to the middle of the eights century AH had the same characteristics and we can mention here the poems of Mala Pareshan the 9th century poet who composed elegies for Imam Hussein.
Since mysticism believes death not to be the end of life but only a bridge if you may to pass to another one so lamenting the deceased, elegies does not join together with mysticism, elegies were in service of mysticism in Kurdish literature and were only later that emerged independently.
Lamenting is divided into some subgroups in Kurdish literature one is lamenting relatives and friends that most of the poems in this era were written in Gorani, Feyli and Kalhori dialects. One of them is lamenting one’s children and progeny like the works of GholamrezaKhan Arkawazi, he is one of the elegists whose works remain today and his Diwan of poems has been collected by efforts of Zahir Sarayi. Mirza Shafi’, Almas Khan-e Kanoule'ei, Mirza Safarudin and … are among the other elegists.
We have also philosophical elegies in Kurdish literature that lament and mourn the dead in a philosophical way in particular concerning the issue of death.
Mah Sharaf Khanom known as Mastoureh was born in 1220 AH and died in 1264 AH. She has written several elegies. They describe among other things the beauties of nature and springtime in a way that differs greatly from the Persian elegies. She puts a lot of strong emotions in her voice and side by side with the voice of nature it renders her poems highly effective on the reader.
One could argue that the lack of any such elegists in the third to ninth centuries is due to the mystical content of the poems since as we said, death is not deemed as the end of life in mysticism.
There is no elegy for kings and rulers among Kurds and they have been mostly written for family, relatives, one’s children and friends and they have thus imbued with such intense emotions that they could stand out among elegies from other languages too.
Then Mohammad Ahmad Saeid started his speech on the Kurdish culture and literature in the Ardalan Emirate a summary of which follows:
Though during the reign of Ardalan Mirs in the capital of Ardalan dynasty, the Mirs were often struggling together, some of them had Kurdish culture and literature in their consideration and managed to advance the capital and the neighboring regions.
Some of those Mirs have managed to advance the different aspects of civilization whether religious and culture or other aspects.
In this paper two manuscripts by Abdollah Rawnaq and Mohammad Amin Kardokhi is compared.
Mirza Abdollah’s manuscript is consisted of 5 orderly divided and detailed parts: first it describes Sanandaj and its suburb and neighboring region. Second it talks about Khosrow Khan Wali and his views and attitudes. Third it retells the lives of poets of Sanandaj and around. And fourth it recounts the life of the famous poetess Mastoureh and the fifth part is about the life of the author of the manuscript Mirza Abdollah Rawnaq.
It is evident that this work is authored on the behest of Khosrow Khan and is therefore called Hadiqeh Khosrawi and then after the migration of Khosrow Khan Rawnaq let go of the book but after they came back, Amanullah Khan sat upon the throne and became Wali of Sanandaj he started writing again another book he named Hadiqeh Amanullahi. So this manuscript has another similar manuscript called Hadiqeh Amanullahi that is a bit different and has some additional content.
Hadiqeh Amanullahi was written 11 years after Hadiqeh Khosrawi which is now in the library of Baghdad museum and Hadiqeh Amanullahi is in the library of British museum.
19th century was the age of renewal and development of scientific and literary matters and refreshing literature was in the air and Rawnaq too could not sit idle and attempted at gathering his works. These two works i.e. Hadiqeh Khosrawi and Amanullahi and the translation of Kardokhi demonstrates that Ardalan territory was the centure of intellectuality and literature in the 19th century that someone named Rawnaq had been able to collect the works of several poets and review them scholarly. We could say that a historical work of that age which reflected on the literary, intellectual, cultural and historical conditions of the time is that which Rawnaq has authored it.
Bakhtiyar Sadjadi was the last one to talk in this panel and he started his speech on the stylistics of the literary works of Ardalan period:
Ardalans as a many branched family were constantly for five centuries from 7 to 12th century, in struggle with the central power in Iran. Sometimes they were completely under the rule of central government and sometimes they have ruled independently.
In the last two centuries of their reign that is from the mid-11th century to mid-13th century that their center of power was focused in particular in Sanandaj region, a firm and established literary tradition rose and then began developing very quickly.
Although it is true that we have some outstanding literary works before 11th century that were produced in the regions under the reign of Ardalans but in fact it is from mid-11th century onward that on one hand an established literary tradition was founded and on the other hand the Hawrami or Gorani dialect was chosen as the literary language of those regions in a way that not only literary works were written in this dialect but also the letters and official businesses were conducted in Gorani for a short while.
Style in its particular sense describes those literary categories that since the rise of Persian literature up to 13th century have been put into writing by the greatest poets of Persian Literature.
Style in its general sense in Persian literature could be used to criticize poets, writers and even directors and actors. What we mean here by style is the different characteristics of the texts such as form and structure and choice of words.
In Kurdish literature style is the formal and structural characteristics of a literary and art work therefore style in Kurdish literature represents the characteristics or stylistics is that which demonstrates the formal and structural traits of a literary work whether in its choice of words or its subject matter or the form of sentence making and their arrangements. Stylistics also is reading into the structure and basis of the sentences and even the poetic styles and meters and all those who differentiate a work.
The expression Rebaz (Order, school of thought) mostly carries two different signification. On one hand it deals with the topics that are related to Sufism and tariqa. The expression Rebaz is widely used in this sense as we do say Rebaz-i-Qaderi (The Qadiriyya order) and Rebaz-i-Naqshbandi (Naqshbandi order). It has a second definition also that covers all those different methods that are used in different works therefore it is used to refer to all the literary works of Ardalan period.
It is true that we have literary Rebaz in Kurdish literature but we should point out that literary Rebaz and literary school are two different things each one possessing distinctive traits of their own.
Using the term literary school for a literary or artistic work in a modern phenomenon in itself that is to say even in reading and criticism of Western literature we don’t observe any religious or literary school prior to 17th century. Nonetheless the literary schools are tied to philosophy and different social and political movements in west. Therefore this expression couldn’t be used to describe those works which were produced in the Ardalan period.
Here we have chosen the expression literary tradition to refer to the stylistic similarity and equality of those literary works which were written at the time of Ardalans. And this tradition refers to a tradition followed by most of the poets of that age. This literary tradition finds extensive echoes in 11th century and in the works of Besarani and then Khana Qubadi propagates it in 12th century and it reaches its apex in 13th century at the hands of Mawlawi and Mastoureh.
Applying the term Ardalanian style as to refer to the works of the Ardalan period is evidently wrong since those works do not follow one same style. So we could say that in assessing the Kurdish literature prior to the present century we face several literary traditions such as the Baban literary tradition, Khalidi literary tradition and so forth. There is a great difference between Ardalan literary tradition and that of Baban in case of choice of words in that while Ardalan literary tradition uses many Persian words that of Baban brings Arabic words to its service.
The predominant poetic form among the Ardalans was rhyming couplets but as for Babans it was sonnets. We could enumerate several differences between these two literary traditions that each has its own distinctive style like rhyme and meter, most common words, poetic forms, couplets and …
After Dr. Sadjadi’s speech, the audience asked their questions and the panel participants answered them accordingly.
The third panel started with Jamal Mohammadi Ayin as the head, and Rizgar Maflouk, Ruhollah Marami, Parastou Mozafari, and Nasrollah Pourmohammadi as participants.
First Nasrollah Pourmohammadi presented his paper on the relations of Ardalans and Safavids which in short entailed what follows:
In the times of Kings Tahmasb and Abbas, mutiny and crisis had abounded in Iran so there couldn’t be seen much of a relation between Ardalans and Safavids but when Taymour Khan becomes Wali of Kurdistan, some relations starts between them and with the coming of Halo Khan Ardalans approach closer to Safavids. Shah Abbas was in favor of strong relations with Ardalans since the lack of it meant much trouble. Kurdistan held these relations with Safavid dynasty but after the relocation of power in the Ardalan dynasty cause the geographical relocation and the rule relocated from Asadabad to Sanandaj.
Todays in weighing the political and economic matters of Safavid era, scholars consider Shah Abas as the symbol of Safavids. History shows us that Ardalans had a significant role in advancing Safavid dynasty. Dispersion of Kurds in Iran from Kurdistan to Alborz is of great significance in proving the cooperation of Kurds with the Safavid dynasty.
Then Ruhollah Marami and Parastou Mozafari presented together a speech about the relations between Ardalans and Ottoman Empire that covered the following matters:
Kurdistan is historically one of the most ancient centers of life and civilization in Iran that has had as one of the key states of Iran political, social and economic ties with central government from the very beginning up to Qajar period and has always played a significant role in preserving the Iranian identity.
The Ardalan rulers managed to advance their territories from the begging till the rise of Safavids in a way that in addition to Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, they got their hands on parts of Kermanshah and Hamadan too but at the beginning of 10th century AH and after lengthy struggles between Iranian and Ottoman empires, the ruling territory of Ardalans started to get smaller and smaller, however at Safavid era they had three ruling areas and great political power.
Ardalan rulers as the highest political and official statesmen that had great power in their hands, played a particular role in relation to the central government of Iran. Protecting and keeping watch over the region and providing political and military service for the central government and preserving the frontiers, continued up to the rise of Qajars.
The extension of Iran and Ottoman wars during Qajar period and manifestation of the significance of Kurdistan and the role of Ardalan rulers in keeping the frontiers of west of Iran from Ottomans’ attacks started a new season on relations of Ardalans with the central government.
Qajar period is one the most important periods of the history of Iran since struggles of power were manifold in the age. They reduced the power of all local rulings in following their centralist policies and this included Ardalans as well since Ardalans were in charge of interior and exterior affairs of central government in the west of country.
Then afterwards Rizgar Maflouk presented his own paper on the role of Ardalan dynasty in change of power from Zand to Qajar which was as follows:
While the political power was being transferred from Zand to Qajar, Ardalans had reached the apex of their power.
Zand dynasty had faced Ardalans with a somewhat difficult situation. Karim Khan as the first act against Ardalans had set fire to Sanandaj and thus Ardalans had turned their back to him and had gone to Qajars.
After Karim Khan’s death, the west of country went into turmoil. The local governments started expanding their territories. The first step was taken by Allah Qoli Khan Zanganeh who started trying to expand his own realm and had gathered a 20 thousands soldier army and attacked Kurdistan but Khosrow Khan of Ardalan stood against him and managed to defeat him and thwart his plans.
This victory helped Khosrow Khan to bring Kermanshah, Tuyserkan, Asadabad, Sonqor, and Dinawar back under Ardalan’s reign and this was the beginning of Khosrow Khan’s conquers. It was in these times that Khosrow Khan turned into one of the most powerful rulers of the west.
Two powerful figures are fighting over power at the time. Mohamad Khan of Qajar and Jaafar Khan of Zand. They both seek consultation with Khosrow Khan. He accepts the request of Mohammad Khan of Qajar and declares war against Jaafar Khan of Zand.
Khosrow Khan defeats Jaafar Khan’s army and takes him as prisoner and takes regions as Tuyserkan, Golpayegan, and … under his reign.
The pre-modern Kurdish society at the time was a tribal one. At Qajar period we have 60 Kurdish tribes. It is a traditional society, leading a rural life, with no big cities and no wide spread roads and communication lines.
The abundance of Kurdish tribes had brought about a sort of regional social unity. And due to mutiny and disparity, the Kurdish society falls under the reign of a local ruler. The multitude of Kurdish clans and tribes was a historical necessity since it’d prevented Khosrow Khan to enter the political arena.
This panel ended with the question asked by audience and answers from the panel members.
The fourth panel started with Mansour Rahmani as the head of the panel and Ebrahim Ahmad Shwani, Fereidoon Nouri, and Adnan Barzanji as participants.
First Ebrahim Ahmad Shwani presented his speech on religious beliefs and Sufi poetry in the Ardalan era with a focus on the Diwan of Mala Pareshan of Dinawar the summary of which follows:
Mala Pareshan was the Sufi of Hurufism doctrine, which a Shiite creed founded by Fazlulah Astarabadi inconcluding years of eighth century and he believed that the universe in eternally moving and rotating.
God has created man in his own image but there is a hadith that denies this. Hurufism has some secret teachings. Fazlulah received the secret meaning of the letters and secret association of prophets when he was forty and he then wrote the Great Eternal Book. In the same year that he wrote the book, he claimed to be God and consequently was killed by Miranshah for it.
The central doctrine of the secrets of this movement is that God himself cannot be seen, that’s why he appears in words and any such word is consisted of some sounds and they too are in the letters. The whole of letters then contain the potential of God.
If we read into the diwan of Mala Pareshan we will see several lines of poetry following Hurufism which seek to transfer meaning through secret words. Mala Pareshan demonstrates those three things in which Fazlulah believed through four lines of poetry. Therefore we could claim thatMala Pareshan followed Hurufism.
The second argument we could make to prove Mala Pareshan was indeed a Sufi, is the words and expressions he has used in his poetry, which all do not go in the same place, that is to say in some places we see the poem is religious but we have Sufi words and expressions, and yet in other places we have Sufi expressions as well which only refer back to the fact that the poet himself was a Sufi.
Mala used close to 200 Sufi terms, words like Tariqa (Order), Haqiqa (truth), Saqi (Wine-server), Sana (praise), tawhid (onness of God), Touba (a tree in heaven), Jalal (glory and majesty), Zahir (appearance), Baten (inward and hidden) and …
Sufis tend to part in to ways in their Sufism. First group are those Sufis that adhere to Sharia (Islamic law) and the second those who transgress it and move toward incarnation and oneness of being. Mala Pareshan as a poet moves between the two, that is to say sometimes he adheres to Sharia and sometimes he goes beyond it.
Then Fereidoon Nouri continued with a speech on analyzing the historiography in Ardalan dynasty:
Kurds were facing several issues in historiography. The biggest problem was Kurds’ reluctance to create big events in their history.
Khan Ahmad Khan of Ardalan that seized Baghdad in 1026 was skilled in command but not very much in ruling and management and this shows the lack thereof of ruling mentality.
A nation that doesn’t jot down its own history, has to witness others writing it for them and as a result they end up with a history that does not reflect their sufferings since everyone writes history according to their own wishes.
Thought and intellectuality grows up in cities and we have only two cities built upon thought and willpower of Kurds, and they are Sanandaj the center of Ardalans and Sulaymaniyah the center for Babans. The cultural movement of Kurds moved from Turkey Kurdistan toward Sulaymaniyah and Sanandaj in 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1005 the first historical work as the cultural identity of Kurds is born through penmanship of Sharafkhan Bidlisi and one could call him as Herodotus of Kurdistan.
Then Adnan Barzanji presented his speech on the geographical spectrum of Ardalan dialect and its links and differences with the standard language:
Language is our cultural identity. Kurdish language is one of the spoken languages of the world that belongs with Iranian languages which it is in itself in the Indo-Iranian languages, and to classify the dialects of Ardalan language different views have been adopted. Nowadays though Kurdish language is divided into three subdivisions of Northern Kurmanji, central Kurmanji and Southern Kurmanji together with Goran and Zaza are put in one subdivision.
The Ardalanian dialect divides into 6 subdivisions of its own. One of which is central Ardalanian or Sananadaji.
The central Ardalanian or Sanandaji covers the city of Sanandaj and as the statistics of 2007 show includes 99 thousands and 694 families and a population of 386738 people.
Second subdivision is Leilakhi Ardalnian that covers two regions of Dehgolan and Leilakh region and 83 villages.
Mariwani Ardalnian covering Sershiw with 27 villages and Komasi with 19 villages. Diwandareh Ardalanian containing Diwandareh, Chehel Cheshmeh region, Hawatoo and Saral, Kamyaran Ardalanian consisting of Kamyaran, Belawar, Northern Jawaroud and Shaho, Qorveh Ardalanian covering Yaluzaghaj and 15 villages and 1032 families, Bijar Ardalanian which covers the two regions of Khosowabad and Najafabad.
According to 2007 statistics the whole population of Ardalan dialect speakers is 971 477 people. The number of villages 730. 6 cities and 230 048 families.
No theoretical and scholarly work whether formally or informally has yet been done on Ardalanian dialect.
In the case of speaking we could divide Ardalanian dialect into two subgroups of Sananadaji and that of the other regions and we could differentiate them by usage of past and present tenses and definite and indefinite.
Then afterwards the audience asked their questions and the panel members answered them accordingly.
The second day of the conference started with a panel headed by Yahya Ardalan and participated by Dr. Azad Ahmad, Dr. Amir Abdollahi and Soheila Mohammadi.
Dr. Azad Ahmad started this panel by talking about the Kurdish academy: the Kurdish academy is extended and the continuance of the Kori Zanyari Kurd that was founded in 70s in Baghdad.
The Kurdish academy is a scientific, scholarly independent institution founded to preserve Kurdish language. It works toward uniting the different dialects of Kurdish language. The Kurdish academy takes it upon itself to write scientific and linguistic dictionaries.
The first round of the Kurdish academy ended on September 13th of 2011, that is to say four years has passed since it’s been founded and we are at the beginning of its second phase.
The Kurdish academy was born on a vast, dried up land because in addition to laying waste to Kurdistan, the Baath regime also was the major resource of barrier and problem for Kurdish language, history and culture. That’s why the Kurdish academy faces a difficult task in working toward solving the cultural and linguistic issues.
The Kurdish academy is consisted of 15 active members most of which are university professors, experts and scholars, 10 volunteering members and 15 assisting members.
The Kurdish academy from its very beginning has taken it upon itself to face the issues of Kurdish language and orthography. It has tried to bring different dialects, in particular Northern and Southern Kurmanji close together in order to form a unified standard language. In addition it has shouldered the issues if formal language and has held conferences on it but since these two issues are of great national significance they require more time.
Concerning the unified Kurdish orthography the academy has worked on a unified orthography, which the cabinet has confirmed, and still is working on advancing it, and it will be of great use today.
Dozens of vital and advantageous projects have been conducted by this institution covering literature, culture and history and dozens of other projects are on their way and dictionaries on water, economics, engineering, psychology, medicine and etc. have been written and the Kurdish academy has managed to preserve and protect and advance Kurdish language through these dictionaries. The academy has also published dozens of beneficial books.
The Kurdish academy was founded to bring Kurdish authors and intellectuals together to serve the Kurdish language and culture. Therefore we all should feel home in this institution no matter where we are. And this institution also calls for cooperation from all the Kurdish authors and intellectuals.
The managing board of the Kurdish academy decided to choose Majed Mardokh Rohani as the assisting member of the academy in the fields of science and culture in 2011/11/20.
Then Dr. Amir Abdollahi presented a speech about Ardalan dynasty in Zand era and declared: sadly those who write history have only passed over the history of Kurdistan while one needs to understand the history of Iran in order to understand the history of Kurdistan.
Those who have written the history of Ardalan were working in the offices of the local Ardalan government. Ardalans had many risings and fallings during the Zand dynasty yet they possessed enough power to claim power as an Iranian nation.
We cannot also ignore the place and position of Ardalans in the central government. They had been under the ruling of the central power for 6 or 7 centuries and had good relations with them. Ardalan Walis were fighting alongside the central rulers in the wars.
Then Soheila Mohammadi started his speech on the age of Khosrow the second and the events of the time saying:
The second Khosrow Khan since we had two ruling Khosrows and here we are talking about the second one. The second Khosrow is the eldest son of third Khan Ahmad Khan who managed to become the prince of Ardalan Kurdistan in the spring of 115 at the age of 20 by exploiting the power vacuum and support of people.
Khosrow Khan were in bad relations with Karim Khan of Zand, his nephew, when attacking Sanandaj and therefore was forced to approach Mohammad Hasan Khan of Qajar who also sought sitting on the throne.
The political arena of Iran was constantly changing and any such regions would fall under the reign of one for a short while who would then try to reach independence and then afterwards would change his allegiances. In the spring of 1170 Mohammad Hasan Khan moved to Azerbaijan and after reconquering Tabriz went for Urmia.
Azad khan who had the help of Salim Pasha were simultaneously moving toward Urmia too. The war thus started in Urmia and during the war one of the commanders of Azad khan called Shahwazkhan joined forces with Qajars and as a result Azad khan army left the battlefield hopelessly.
Urmia which was in siege fell after a few days and Fathali khan fled to his hometown and Azad khan took refuge with the second Soleiman Pasha of Baban for a few months and then upon the invitation of Soleiman Pasha left for Baghdad and resided there. Mohammad khan seized the power in Iran and issued an order installing Khosrow khan as the prince of Kurdistan in 1170. The prince soon enough started working toward making peace and prosperity.
After long years of war and struggle and migration, economically Kurdistan was in crisis. Farming lands and gardens and pastures had fallen into waste and no product was being produced, no business was being conducted. Sanandaj had be destroyed prior to 8 years and this led Khhosrow Khan to transfer his court to Hasanabad castle. He then started rebuilding Sanandaj and at the same time to ensure peace thwarted the evil plans of Ali Sulta and Khosrow Bag who were constantly scheming and trying to raise issues.
It was in these conditions that Azad khan came back to Sanandaj in the spring of 1172 with one goal in mind, to loot the livestock of Kurdish tribes in Shahrizor and thus to move the second Soleiman Pasha of Baban to punish Khosrow Khan. Khosrow Khan brought the people around the castle and their livestock and possessions inside. And he took real good care of people of Sanandaj during the war intending for no one to be hurt. The armies of Azad khan on the other hand had dug up their trenches, but still didn’t dare to attack the Hasanabad castle directly since it had never fallen in wars and had proved to be invincible.
After a while a man to man fight began and Khosrow khan’s army managed to defeat that of Azad khan. He was forced then to let go of the siege and retreat so it was in this way that Khosrow Khan managed to remove their common enemies with the help of Sheik Hali khan of Zand.
The second Khosrow Khan then managed this way to remove one of the most dangerous enemies of Iran’s throne. And it was why Karim Khan of Zand titled him Wali of Ardalan Kurdistan.
Afterwards the audience posed their questions and the participants answered.
The second panel on architecture and geography in Ardalan era had Dr. Houshmand Alizadeh as head and Dr. Ebrahim Zarei, Dr. Yamaghuchi, Dr. Saeid Khezri and Afagh Kazemi as participants. Dr. Zarei started this panel by his speech on the social, architectural, and urban engineering structure of neighborhoods in Sanandaj in Qajar period the summary of which is:
The Ardalan Family had an important role in urbanization. The four castles of Palangan, Hasanabad, Mariwan and Zalm were all ruling centers of Ardalans in different seasons.
After Isfahan Sanandah had the largest castle and Ardalans paid too much attention to urbanization and it was in part due to their strong ties with Safavids.
Two periods are of great significance in Ardalan era, one is the era of Soleiman khan of Ardalan and founding of Sanandaj in 1046 with four neighborhoods which each one of them is the place of one particular class of the society and second the age of Amanulla khan.
Sanandaj was consisted of seven neighborhoods up to the rise of Pahlavis, four of which were independent and original neighborhoods and the other three were dependent ones.
Followers of any religion whether it be Judaism, Armenian, Shiite, Sunni, Christian or otherwise were freely living together in peace in Sanandaj. Greatest changes happened during the reign of Amanullah Khan. He established strong relations with Qajar king from the very beginning and managed to bring peace and prosperity to the region in general and Sanandaj in particular.
The after building Chwarbakh and Khosroabad mansion outside of the neighborhood within the castle persuaded the elder, known figures of the city to move to other neighborhoods as well. This was an ongoing process in the times of other Walis after Amanullah Khan as well and in the time space between 1851 and 1956 AD Sanandaj had spread to 170 ha of area. And the population that year (1956) was 40600 people. Or better put we could say only 50 ha were added to city but the population had quadrupled.
Then afterwards Dr. Yamaghauchi who had participated from Japan presented his speech in English.
Dr. Saeid Khezri and Afagh Kazemi jointly presented a paper on the Ardalan geography that in short was as follows:
From a geographical-historic point of view the word Kurdistan or land of Kurds was formally applied only during the reign of Sultan Sanjar, the last Seljuk king. It was Hamdollah Mostowfi who used the term Kurdistan for the first time in his book Nazhat-ul-qoloob. The word Ardalan is a Median-Kurdish word located in the realm of Aryans.
Ardalan as a word is consisted of two parts, Ard meaning soil and homeland and Alan meaning Aryan, that is to say Ardalan means homeland of Aryans. This word was used first in 622 AD to signify a tribe and also a geographical region. In 1049 AH the Treaty of Zuhab was signed and as a result of it the territory of Ardalan came to be called Ardalan Kurdistan.
The third panel started with Dr. Navid Naghshbandi as the head and Mohammad Ali Qaradaghi, Naser Aliyar and Sayed Taher Hashemi as participants.
First Mohammad Ali Qaradaghi started his speech on the intellectual influence of Ardalan on Kurdistan which in short entailed the following.
What we have not valued so far is the intellectuality in the history of Kurd. If we were to study the whole history of Ardalan we wouldn’t find any discussions of intellectuality that for instance which mullah was in the place of influence, or what topics and disciplines were studied more back then.
The dispersion of scholars in Kurdistan back then was mainly in two ways. Since at those times it was easy to travel and come and go freely they used to travel a lot to different centers of science and knowledge to learn until they would be able to get their Ijtihad and the other way was that upon the invitation of Mirs and rulers they would choose to go and live there and Sananadaji Mardokh family were thus divided in four, a part was residing in Baghdad, another in Shekhani Siyagwez, another in Shekhani Qaradagh and the last part was residing in Sulaymaniyah.
Then he went on talking about the calligraphers of this family and continued discussing the issue of intellectuality in the history of Ardalan.
Naser Ali Yari afterwards started his speech on the revival of Ashʿari theological school of thought in Baban Emirate and asserted that: Emirates of Botan, Soran, Mokriyan, and Ardalan all were standing upon two pillars, the first being their rulers and princes and the other the religious figures.
Then he went on to talk about the rise and fall of Ashʿari Kalam school of thought and the causes of it.
The last speaker of this panel was Sayed Mo’tasam Hashemi who presented a theoretic analysis of Ardalan family: an important key point in the independence of Ardalan emirate is due to the fragmentary structure and system of ruling in the feudal age and that same local rule matches well with the aristocratic nature of the power.
Despite all the merit of Ardalan dynasty still there was no notion of a nation at work. In fact it was a sort of general feeling among the people that considered these emirates as Kurdish states and their fall as the fall of Kurds all.
If these emirates were not to be founded and their civil, architectural, religious … advancements were not to happen and the cities of Sanandaj and Sulaymaniyah were not to grow and turn to centers of progress, there would be no other way for Kurds to rise up the stairs of civilization and there would form a historical void that it would probably take centuries to fill.
At the end of this panel, the message of Rojyar Literary-cultural association to this conference was read by Hawraman Bahrami and the last panel of the conference started with Raouf Osman as head and As’ad Ardalan, Hesam Mrdokh Rohani and Kamran Rahmani as participants.
Dr. As’ad Ardalan spoke about the factors helping in the fall of Ardalans, one of which was the internal and official issues on which he said: one of the things that had hold up their rule temporarily was their marital relationships with kings and statesmen of Iran.
He then went on to speak about the history of those events.
Hesam Mardokh Rojani also spoke about the causes of Ardalan’s fall and collapse and declared that: Ardalan dynasty as the longest ruling emirate of Kurdistan, has played a highly significant role in the history and it was Ardalans that turned Sanandaj into a well-known knowledge center.
Kamran Rahmani also presented his speech on the same topic as the last participant of this panel.
At the end of this conference, Dr. Najmadin Jabari, the head of the Kurdish Studies Research Institute of University of Kurdistan thanked all the participants and the efforts and assistances of all the students and added: the papers and speeches presented in this conference only cover a little percentage of what Ardalans have done for this nation both in Kurdistan and Iran and it has certainly not quenched the thirst of the audience but it could be considered as a mere light on a long history of seven centuries ruling of Ardalans in Iran.
Dr. Jabari added: we tried to hold this conference as best as we could and we hope that we have done well enough to satisfy the audience.
He also paid his respects to Kurdistan’s governor Alireza Shahbazi, the president of the University Of Kurdistan Dr. Jahanshir Amini and also Ardalan Family.
In the end all the participants in this conference were thanked in an appreciation ceremony and the message of Ardalan family was as well read.