The Kurdish woman's life
Field Research In A Muslim Society, Iraq
Henny Harald Hansen
Nationalmuseet - København
In the spring and summer of 1957 the Danish Dokan Expedition was working under Professors Harald Ingholt and Jørgen Læssøe on the Rania plain west of Lesser Zab, a tributary of the Tigris in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Expedition concentrated on the excavation of the mound Tell Shemshāra1. Before the expedition left Denmark it offered to take with it a cultural anthropologist from the Ethnographical Department of the National Museum, who, based on the excavation camp on the right bank of the Lesser Zab, would have an opportunity to investigate Kurdish villages in the vicinity. The assistance of the Carlsberg Foundation enabled my association with the Danish Dokan Expedition.
Being a woman anthropologist, I was given, in addition to general investigations of Kurdish ethnography, the special task of studying woman's cultural pattern, which in Muslim areas is difficult for male investigators to undertake.
.....
Contents
Preface / VII
Note on Transcription / XI
Introduction / 1
Chapter I / 5
Field of investigation: the Kurds viewed historically; statements concerning the Kurdish woman; demonstration of four separate female environments in the material investigated; the village scene.
Chapter II / 21
Material surroundings; Forms of dwelling; the leaf hut; the permanent house and its construction. The function of the dwelling; the environment of the woman of the village aristocracy; furnishing; sleeping habits; hygiene; lighting; the environment of the ordinary village woman; the environment of the educated and of the uneducated urban woman. Woman's activities in the home; baking of bread; treatment of milk, making of tea, cooking; fetching water, fuel supply, heating, washing up, laundring, cleaning, bed making, working postures; household activities in relation to the four female environments. Domestic industry; spinning; weaving; production of clay vessels.
Chapter III / 65
Appearance: Women's dress. Kurdish elements. Elements connected with Islam. Loans from Western culture. Distribution of the woman's dress within the four female environments. The "Kurdish elements" of women's dress viewed in a larger context. Elements of women's dress and their distribution. The production of female garments. Jewellery. Beauty culture. Men's dress. Kurdish elements. Men's dress of Sulaimani type. Men's dress of Rowanduz type. Footwear and headdress. Foreign elements of the men's dress. Accessories. Children's dress.
Chapter IV / 99
Life cycle: Birth; cradle types; analysis of cradle types; nursing; circumcision; naming; analysis of the child's status; schooling.
Marriage: choice of spouse; kinship terms; marriage possibilities; difference in position of man and woman on entering matrimony; marriage policy and negotiations; the marriage contract; social conventions of engagements; the bride-price, its employment and sociological significance; marriage preparations; the wedding; the importance of virginity; polygyny and divorce.
Death: hospitals and medical attention; health conditions; burial; washing of the dead; cerements; mourning period.
Chapter V / 145
Woman's place in the religous life of Islam. The five pillars: confession of faith; the dayly prayers; obligation to give alms; fasting; pilgrimage; domestic parallels to the days of pilgrimage; condition of uncleanliness; Sufism; superstition and magic; amulets; holy hand; visit to saints' tombs; prophecy; rag trees and rag poles; animal sacrifices.
Conclusion / 163
Woman's position in the community: analysis of veil types; woman's possibility of movement and seclusion; distribution of authority between man and woman; common domestic life; man's position in the house; analysis of the social structure of the Kurdish woman's cultural pattern in the light of the coming "emancipation"; difficulties in connexion with abolition of the veil in other Islamic areas; the wish for emancipation comes from the man; the marital position of the Kurdish woman; the structure of the home; the difference between the basis on which the emancipation of European women began and that existing in Muslim areas.
Notes / 187
Bibliography / 198
List of Kurdish terms employed. Normalized by Professor K. Barr / 205
List of ethnographical specimens / 209
List of illustrations / 211
PREFACE
For making it possible for a cultural anthropologist to join the Danish Dokan Expedition, I express my gratitude to Professors Harald Ingholt and Jørgen Læssøe, the leaders of the Expedition.
To Kaj Birket - Smith, Ph. D., D. Sc., I express my sincere thanks for his suggestion to undertake this work and for his faith in believing that I would be able to carry out succesfully an investigation of the cultural pattern of Muslim women. To him, I owe much gratitude for friendly encouragement and good advice, not only on this occasion, but for many years.
Prior to my departure from Denmark, Professor K. Barr initiated me into the Kurdish language, and later, he kindly normalised the Kurdish terms which occur in my material. For this, I tender my sincere appreciation.
The Carlsberg Foundation enabled me to travel to Iraq and, by a generous grant, made it possible for me to spend four and a half month in Iraqi Kurdistan. This Foundation has also supported me in the course of my work with the material collected, and has defrayed the cost of printing. The translation of the Danish manuscript has been done by Major C. L. Bayliss with a grant from the Raskørsted Foundation. To these Foundations, a deep debt of gratitude is acknowledged.
I further wish to express my appreciation to H. E. Tawfiq Wahbi, formerly member of the Iraqi Cabinet, himself a Kurd, for introducing me to a woman interpreter Maliha Kareem Said.
This book owes much to Mr. J. G. Campbell, Resident Engineer of the Dokan Dam Project, who made arrangements for my stay among Kurds in a village from which the Project derived many of its workers.
Invaluable assistance was given by Mr. J. Taylor, a member of the Resident Engineer's staff, and his wife during my stay at the Dokan Dam Site.
Above all, I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to my unforgettable interpreter Miss Maliha Kareem Said, to her relatives and friends, as well as to Sheikh Taifur and his family in Topzawa who received me as a friend and in every way facilitated my research.
I express my gratitude to my fellow-members of the Expedition, the architects Mr. Mogens Friis and Mrs. Anne-Tinne Friis and Mr. Flemming Johansen. Together with the two leaders, they made my stay pleasant and helped me when help was needed.
Last but not least I thank my son, P. U. Hansen, an architect, who has turned my provisional drawings of Kurdish houses into ground-plans and sections of scientific use.
1961
Henny Harald Hansen
Introduction
In the spring and summer of 1957 the Danish Dokan Expedition was working under Professors Harald Ingholt and Jørgen Læssøe on the Rania plain west of Lesser Zab, a tributary of the Tigris in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Expedition concentrated on the excavation of the mound Tell Shemshāra1. Before the expedition left Denmark it offered to take with it a cultural anthropologist from the Ethnographical Department of the National Museum, who, based on the excavation camp on the right bank of the Lesser Zab, would have an opportunity to investigate Kurdish villages in the vicinity. The assistance of the Carlsberg Foundation enabled my association with the Danish Dokan Expedition.
Being a woman anthropologist, I was given, in addition to general investigations of Kurdish ethnography, the special task of studying woman's cultural pattern, which in Muslim areas is difficult for male investigators to undertake.
The necessary female interpreter for such investigations was obtained through the former Kurdish Minister, Tawfik Wahbi, who at that time was living in Baghdad and was in touch with the Danish Charge d'Affaires, F. Lystø, succeeded later in the summer of 1957 by F. de Jonquières. I left Denmark in May to join the expedition at the Dokan Dam Site, which is near the dam building over Lesser Zab, the Anglo-French2 engineering project in the Kurdish mountains started by the Iraq Development Board.
As it transpired that the neighbouring twin villages Topzawa-Rakawa, from which the British and French engineers obtained some of their workmen, offered excellent possibilities for study, it was arranged through the Resident Engineer of the Dokan Dam Site, Mr. J. G. Campbell, that, whilst waiting for a woman interpreter, I should be taken as a paying guest in Sheikh Taifūr's home in Topsawa as a member of this village-owner's family.
In the course of three weeks, through the good offices of Tawfik Wahbi and the mayor of Sulaimani3, the capital of the Liwa of Sulaimani, touch was gained with a young Kurdish woman school teacher, Malīha Karim Sa'īd, who, accompanied by her 13 year old half-brother, agreed to go with me to the villages mentioned and stay with me in the sheikh's home as long as my work out there went on. When this had ended, supplemented by a visit to and stay at the now evacuated and flooded ferry village, Mirza Rustam, with trips over the mountains to Shadala and Sargalu, the field of work was transferred to my interpreter's home in Sulaimani, a Kurdish provincial home. From here journeys ...
Henny Harald Hansen
The Kurdish woman's life
Field Research In A Muslim Society, Iraq
Nationalmuseet – København
Nationalmuseets Skrifter
Etnografisk Rœkke, VII
The Kurdish woman's life
Field Research In A Muslim Society, Iraq
Henny Harald Hansen
Nationalmuseet – København
1961
Published with the support of a grant from the
Carlsberg Foundation
Printed in Denmark by
Andelsbogtrykkeriet i Odense
1961 .
To Jørgen Læssøe in
Friendship and Gratitude
