Daughters of Allah: Among Moslem Women in Kurdistan
Henny Harald Hansen
George Allen & Unwin Ltd
In 1957 the author was invited to take part in an archaeological expedition to the site of the projected Dokan Dam on the Little Zab river in Northern Iraq. Her responsibilities were ethnological, but instead of settling down with the expedition and visiting the Kurdish villages from the camp, she became the guest first of a local sheik and later of her interpreter's family. As a result, the doors of many Kurdish homes were opened to her that normally would have remained closed to foreigners, especially to a non-Moslem woman. She travelled widely among the mountain villages of Iraqi Kurdistan and was able to see from very close range the everyday life of the women of this strange and ancient race. It is very much a woman's view, of course, but few have had such an opportunity as this to penetrate the invisible wall which in a Moslem community divides the female world from the male. The Kurds have inhabited since antiquity roughly the same region as they occupy today; even in 400 B.c., returning from Babylon, Xenophon and his Greeks had to battle with the Kurdish ancestors. They have been subject to frequently changing foreign rule and today their lands lie within the frontiers of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and the U.S.S.R. Recent unrest among the tribes and the news of bands of Kurdish refugees on the move has centred interest on a people of whom the public knows little, but of whom Henny Hansen has much to tell that is intimate and fascinating.
Contents
Introduction / 7
1 A Year Without a Summer / 17 2 Here Comes the Bride / 23 3 My Kurdish Costume / SI 4 A Child and a Servant / 69 s The Child that Died / 86 6 Snakes and Scorpio11s / 97 7 'Granny, are you going to be a Cowboy?' / III 8 Beggars and Magicians / 134 9 The Perpetual Fire / 142 10 The Waterless Village / 153 II Illiteracy / 163 12 Allah's Daughters / 174 13 Farewell / 186
Index / 191
Illustrations
1 The author in her Kurdish costume. - frontispiece
2 Making tea on the terrace at Topzawah. - facing page / 64 The daughter of the house cooking at the kitchen fire. Topzawah.
3 Goats are milked in the mountains above Topzawah. / 65 My village home, the sheikh's farm at Topzawah.
4 Veiled Moslem woman at Erbil. / 80 Woman in black aba and veil entering a house at Sulaimaniyah.
5 Mother and child at Halabja. / 81
6 Woman with rich gold ornaments on her turban, at Sarkan. / 128
7 Some of the family with my magnificent riding horse. Sarkan. / 129
8 Making cigarettes. / 144 Milking a goat in traditional Kurdish way from behind.
9 Women at work in a house with a stmken oven. Sulaimaniyah. / 145
Maps
1 Map of the Middle East. 2 Local map of the area covered.
INTRODUCTION
After completing the manuscript of this travel book, I was' told that the first claim which the reader may fairly make on the author is to be informed at the start who is going where, and why. So, I hasten to repair the omission.
Early in 1957 the Danish Dakan Expedition, which proposed to carry out archaeological excavations in Iraq in the area shortly to be flooded by the construction of the Dakan dam on the Little Zab river, approached the Ethnographical Department of the Danish National Museum with a view to the possible inclusion of an ethnologist in the party. In the region of the projected excavations there were Kurdish villages which would be suitable for ethnological research. The choice fell on me. Besides making general ethnological studies I should have the possibility, as a woman, of penetrating that invisible wall which in a Moslem community divides the female world from the male-a possibility that would not be open to male research workers.
The Carlsberg Foundation having generously provided the required funds, I left Denmark on the fourth of May, via Baghdad and Kirkuk, to join the expedition at the Dakan Dam Site, which is situated in Kurdistan in northern Iraq, at the intersection of longitude 45°E. and latitude 36°N. It was originally the intention that I should be stationed with the other members of the expedition in their encampment at Tell Shemshara, visit neighbouring villages from there, and perhaps spend a short period in a Kurdish village home. In the event my stay of four months took a different form. Instead of accompanying the expedition to the camp I made arrangements, soon after my arrival at the Dakan Dam Site, to stay as a paying guest with the sheikh of the neighbouring village of Topzawah, from which the dam drew some of its workers.
The services of a female interpreter were essential for my ethnological work. Through a former minister, His Excellency Tawfiq W ahbi, and the mutesarrif of the local capital of Sulaimaniyah I succeeded, a fortnight after my arrival in the village, in getting into touch with a young Kurdish teacher, Maliha Kareem Said, who agreed to join me as my interpreter. Later I had a long stay with my interpreter's family at Sulaimaniyah, and in her company I visited several villages where her extensive family relationships opened the doors of other homes to me. So instead of living with my own people during my stay in Kurdistan and visiting the native population for only a few hours a day, I spent the whole of my time among the Kurds. I thus had a far wider opportunity of studying the cultural pattern of these people than I should otherwise have had. I visited the Dokan Dam Site about once a fortnight when the expedition car went there from Tell Shemshara for supplies. This enabled me to maintain contact with the expedition, and I went with its members to Baghdad in order to complete the necessary papers covering the export of my collections to the National Museum in Copenhagen. Otherwise I worked on my own, helped by my interpreter.
Besides Topzawah, the adjacent village ofRakawah, and Sulaimaniyah, we stayed at the ferry-point of Mirza Rustam on the Little Zab between the Dokan Dam Site and the expedition camp. We drove to the village of Shadala and rode on from there across the Charmaban Mountains to Sargalu. We visited Halabja, Balkha, and Tawela up in the mountains close to the Persian border. We also stayed in the village of Sarkan near Penjwin, and finally we drove through Kirkuk to Erbil, Mosul, and Rowanduz, to get an impression of the most northerly region of Iraqi Kurdistan. During the concluding stay in Baghdad I was able to visit Hilla and Babili, to the south of the national capital.
Finally, a few geographical and historical facts about the land and people I visited. The Kurds can trace their history a long way back in time. They have inhabited since antiquity roughly the same region as they occupy today. About the year 400 B.c. Xenophon and his 10,000 Greeks, returning home from Babylon, where they had been summoned by a Persian prince, had to fight the Carduchi in those same mountains which the Kurds still inhabit. In the course of history the Kurdish tribes have been subject to changing foreign rule. Persians, Arabs, Persians again, Mongols, and during the 400 years down to 1920 the Turks have held control. At the present day the Kurdish region is divided among Turkey, Syria, Iran (Persia), the Soviet Union, and Iraq. Those Kurds whom I visited in Iraq are under Arab rule.
By religion the Kurds are Moslems of the Sunni sect, like the Turks and most of the Arabs. Their language is related to Persian and so, like ours, is an Indo-European language, in contrast to Arabic, which is a Semitic tongue. In mode of life some Kurds are nomads making regular seasonal migrations; but those I stayed with were sedentary farmers, growing wheat, rice, tobacco, cotton, and fruit, according to the varying resources of soil and situation. The Kurds in the towns of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah with whom I stayed were business people. The oil field at Kirkuk was exploited by the Iraq Petroleum Company (I.P.C.) even before the First World War.
The idea of an independent Kurdistan was discussed at the peace negotiations which took place at Sevres in 1920, but was abandoned three years later at Lausam1e. The resultant disappointment gave rise to rebellions in the Sulaimaniyah liwa in the 'twenties and early 'thirties, which are chiefly associated with the name of Sheikh Mahmud of Sulaimaniyah. 1
The results of my scientific work will be written up later. Lti this travel book I have given an account of my experiences, as a woman living among Moslem women, of the people who were described until recently as 'the most turbulent tribes of the Middle East'.
1 For further information about the history, politics, and geography of Kurdistan and the Kurds, which is beyond the scope of this short travel book, see: C. J. Edmonds: Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: Politics, Travel, and Research in North-eastern Iraq, 1919-1925. Oxford University Press, 1957. Stephen Hemsley Longrigg and Frank Stoakcs: Iraq (Nations of the Modem World). Benn, 1958.
1-A Year Without a Summer
When I left Denmark it was early May in a short and leafy spring. When I returned September was half over. There was a touch of autumn in the air and I heard talk of the annual Christmas greetings to Greenland.
'I've had no summer this year,' I felt with a sudden little stab of nostalgia. To call that summer which I had experienced twenty latitudes to the south did not occur to me. That which in our climate we yearly hope for, dream of, and sometimes get for summer is something gentle and friendly, something blissful: the optimum of human life. What I had experienced when real summer passed over Denmark was something quite different. The first time I heard at the Dokan Dam Site that work on the damming of the Little Zab would soon have to stop in the middle of the day because the workers would be unable to touch metal parts without burning their hands, I heard it with my ears only. It did not enter fully into my consciousness. There are dimensions -and degrees of heat- which have to be experienced to be realized.
Then came a day in the middle of the desert north of Baghdad. Actually, it is not a desert, though it is always described as such; to be exact, the country north of Baghdad is a desert-like bush steppe. It was afternoon in a car. Local low pressures were raising the dust into columns which stretched from the ground into the …
Henny Harald Hansen
Daughters of Allah Among Moslem Women in Kurdistan
Ruskin House George Allen & Unwin Ltd Daughters of Allah Among Moslem Women in Kurdistan Henny Harald Hansen Translated from the Danish by Reginald Spink
Ruskin House George Allen & Unwin Ltd Museum Street London
First Published in 1960 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
