| Battle of Dimdim | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618) | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Kurdish Principality of Baradust | Safavid Empire | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Amir Khan Lepzerin | Shah Abbas I Hatem Beg | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 10,000 Warriors/Kurdish Cavalry | 40,000 Troops (many different types of soldiers) | ||||||
The Battle of Dimdim is the name for the battle between the Safavid Empire and the Sunni Kurds of the Ottoman Empire between 1609 and 1610.
The battle
There are well documented historical accounts of a long battle from 1609 to 1610 between Kurds and the Safavid Empire. The Kurds were at a disadvantage numerically and technologically. After a siege lasting almost a year, the Safavid Grand Vizier Hatem Beg captured the fort and massacred the Kurdish garrison.[1]
Aftermath
After a long and bloody siege led by the Safavid grand vizier Hatem Beg, which lasted from November 1609 to the summer of 1610, Dimdim was captured. All the defenders were killed. Shah Abbas I ordered a general massacre in Bradost and Mukriyan (reported by Iskandar Beg Turkoman, Safavid Historian in the Book Alam Aray-e Abbasi) and resettled the Afshar tribe in the region while deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan region. Although Safavid historians (like Iskandar Beg ) depicted the first battle of Dimdim as a result of Kurdish mutiny or treason, in Kurdish oral traditions (Beytî Dimdim), literary works (Dzhalilov, pp. 67–72), and histories, it was treated as a struggle of the Kurdish people against foreign domination. In fact, Beytî Dimdim is considered a national epic second only to Mem û Zîn by Ahmad Khani. The first literary account of this battle is written by Faqi Tayran.[2][3]
See also
- Bradost
- History of the Kurdish people
- Iranian Kurdistan
- Kurdish people
- Safavid Empire
- Timeline of Kurdish uprisings
References and notes
- ^ Kelly, Michael J. (2008). Ghosts of Halabja: Saddam Hussein and the Kurdish Genocide. Praeger. p. 14. ISBN 978-0275992101.
- ^ "Battle of Dim Dim". Iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
- ^ O. Dzh. Dzhalilov, Kurdski geroicheski epos "Zlatoruki Khan" (The Kurdish heroic epic "Gold-hand Khan"), Moscow, 1967, pp. 5-26, 37-39, 206.