Qualla: Mahabad

Mahabad: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Houshang tabrizi, CC BY-SA 4.0. For eleven months in 1946, Mahabad was a capital. Not of a province or a district, but of a republic -- the only independent Kurdish state in modern history. That experiment ended with an execution, but the idea it represented did not. Today, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization still recognizes Mahabad as the capital of Iranian Kurdistan, a designation that says less about current politics than about what this city of 168,000 people means to the Kurdish imagination. Tucked into a narrow valley 1,300 meters above sea level, south of the shrinking expanse of Lake Urmia, Mahabad carries the weight of a cause far larger than its geography.

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Image: Houshang tabrizi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mahabad: Cold Spring, Many Names

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Houshang tabrizi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before it was Mahabad, the city was Savojbolagh -- a Persian corruption of the Turkic phrase soghuk bulak, meaning "cold spring." The Kurdish version was simpler: Sablagh. The current name arrived after World War I, during the reign of Reza Shah, when the city's identity was bein...

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Image: Houshang tabrizi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mahabad: Eleven Months of Sovereignty

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simko at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On January 22, 1946, Qazi Muhammad, a respected religious jurist and Kurdish nationalist, declared Mahabad the capital of an independent republic. Soviet forces, who had occupied northern Iran during World War II, backed the venture. The republic governed a small cluster of Kurdi...

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Image: Simko at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Mahabad: A City of Poets

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diazinon.bm, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mahabad has produced a disproportionate number of Kurdish writers and poets. Hejar, whose given name was Abdurrahman Sharafkandi, wrote the first Kurdish-Kurdish-Persian dictionary in Iran. During the brief life of the Republic of Mahabad, he and the poet Hemin were named Kurdist...

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Image: Diazinon.bm | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mahabad: Life in the Valley

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karwan Doorandish, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mahabad sits 122 kilometers from the provincial capital of Urmia and 679 kilometers from Tehran. Its population, predominantly Sunni Kurdish, also includes speakers of Persian and Azeri Turkic. Neo-Aramaic-speaking Jews once inhabited the city as well, adding another thread to th...

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Image: Karwan Doorandish | CC BY-SA 3.0