Dimdim Castle: A Resistance That Became a Legend

At a Glance

Dimdim is the name of a mountain near Lake Urmia and of the castle on its summit; it lies today within the borders of Iran.
In the winter and spring of 1609 and 1610, Emîr Xan, the mîr of Biradost, held this castle against the Safavid army. The siege ended in a bloody fall.
The people call Emîr Xan by another name: Xanê Lepzêrîn, the khan of the golden hand. Lep means hand, zêrîn means of gold.
The sources give the start of the siege between 1608 and 1609; the castle's fall is dated to the summer of 1610. To fix it to a single year would not be honest.
The event was set down by the Safavid court historian of the era, İskender Bey Münşi: through the eye of the state, in the language of the state.
The same event became an epic in the people's tongue: Kela Dimdimê. The researcher Amir Hassanpour counts it the greatest Kurdish epic after Mem û Zîn.
The oldest written working of the epic is attributed to the poet Feqiyê Teyran (roughly 1590 to 1660).
The epic lives in the Kurmancî and Soranî dialects, and in Armenian variants too; it sits at the head of the dengbêj repertoire.
Ordîxanê Celîl published a study of the epic in Moscow in 1967; Erebê Şemo wrote the novel Dimdim in 1966.
History counts, the epic magnifies. This article tells the two layers apart on purpose, because each has its own worth.

Southwest of Lake Urmia, above the Barandûz stream, a mountain stands. On its summit, heaps of stone, pieces of wall. Sheep graze among them. Four hundred years ago these stones were a castle, and the name of this mountain was written into a people's memory in blood.

Now picture a village room in the same geography, centuries later. A dengbêj (the master singer who carries a people's memory) closes his eyes and begins to sing Kela Dimdimê. Everyone in the room knows the end: the castle will fall. Still they listen. Some of their eyes fill. Why is a story whose ending is known listened to for four hundred years?

This article follows that question. But with one rule: we will not put history and legend in the same vessel. First we will hear what the documents tell, then what the people sing. Two layers, side by side, without mixing.

One Event, Two Tellings

Two kinds of source tell of Dimdim. The first is written history: the chronicles of the Safavid court and the modern historians who study them. The second is the oral epic: the Kela Dimdimê narrative that dengbêjs carried from generation to generation.

Are these two the same thing? They are not. The chronicle gives dates, gives names, gives numbers; but it is written with the pen of the state. The epic gives feeling, gives meaning; but it exaggerates, adds, transforms. Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, in his handbook on the Kurds, defines this epic as the legendized narrative of a real siege. The definition sits just right: the core is real, the shell is epic.

For the reader the healthiest road is to read the two apart. So first let us look at the stone and the document.

1609: What Happened South of Urmia?

Let us anchor the time. 1609 is the year Galileo first turned a telescope to the night sky. In those same years, on the throne of Safavid Iran sat Shah Abbas the First. (Safavid: the empire that ruled Iran at the time.) In the long wars between the Ottomans and the Safavids, the borderland, that is, the Kurdish geography, lay between two millstones.

Biradost is a Kurdish principality in the mountains west of Urmia; at its head is Emîr Xan. Mîr is the title of the ruler of a Kurdish principality. Shah Abbas had first recognized Emîr Xan's inherited right over Biradost and Urmia. Then Emîr Xan rebuilt the old castle on Mount Dimdim. Why does one castle frighten an empire? According to what Hassanpour relays, the Safavid court counted this building an act of preparation for independence. The castle was strong: the Safavid historian of the time, İskender Bey Münşi, describes it with five separate ramparts, protected cisterns, and snow wells. The Kurds around, including the rulers of the Mukri region, began to gather around Emîr Xan.

What followed is the siege. The army under the Safavid grand vizier Hâtem Bey surrounded the castle. Dr. Izady puts the start of the siege at 1608; Chyet's dictionary places the event in the range of 1608 to 1610; Hassanpour, resting on Münşi's chronicle, tells of a long and bloody siege stretching from November 1609 to the summer of 1610. The range is wide, the result is certain. The record is clear: the castle fell, and the defenders were put to the sword. In Dr. Izady's words, the defenders resisted to the last living man.

It did not end with the fall. Shah Abbas ordered a general slaughter in the Biradost and Mukri regions. The Turkic Afshar tribe was settled in the area; many Kurdish tribes were exiled to Khorasan, in the far east of Iran. Dimdim's stones were not left in peace either: in 1729 the commander who would later become Nadir Shah had the castle torn down. Today, researchers write, pieces of wall and heaps of stone can still be seen on the mountain's summit.

Xanê Lepzêrîn: The Story of the Golden Hand

History calls the man Emîr Xan. The people gave him another name: Xanê Lepzêrîn, the khan of the golden hand. Lep means hand, zêrîn means of gold. In Persian sources the same epithet appears as Zerrîn-pençe.

Where does this name come from? What is told among the people is this: Emîr Xan lost his hand, in one telling his arm, in a battle. In the account Dr. Izady relays, this loss happened in Safavid service, and the khan wore a gold-plated artificial hand given to him. The epithet stays from there: the khan of the golden hand. The document, at this point, is silent. We hold no examination record of the khan's hand. The golden hand is not history; it is the badge the people pinned on him.

Let us not hide a snag either. Dr. Izady notes that there are chronological problems in matching the identity of the khan with the siege, and adds that the literary value of the epic is independent of this. This is how scholarship speaks: it says what it is sure of, and marks what it is not. We take the same road.

What Did the Safavid Scribe Write?

İskender Bey Münşi was a scribe and historian in the court of Shah Abbas. The name of his great chronicle is Âlem-ârâ-yı Abbâsî: the history that adorns the world of Abbas. The Dimdim siege is told in the pages of this chronicle through the eye of the state. As Hassanpour summarizes, the Safavid historians set the event in a frame of disobedience and betrayal. The same event, in the Kurdish oral tradition, would be told as resistance against a foreign yoke. Two windows, one event.

Münşi's pen documents something else too: the method of the era. Dr. Izady relays from the Âlem-ârâ Shah Abbas's northwest campaign: the emptying of the region stretching from north of the Aras to west of Urmia, between Kars and Lake Van, was ordered; those who resisted were met with the sword, settlements were burned, people were exiled. The one who wrote these lines was not an enemy propagandist; he was the state's own historian. For the historian this is a priceless situation: the perpetrator's own record.

Here we must stop and ask: where is the voice of a fallen people kept, when it falls from the pen of the state? The answer is in the second layer of this story.

Kela Dimdimê: From Castle to Epic

The stones of the castle were torn down; its story was not. The siege turned, in Kurdish oral culture, into the epic Kela Dimdimê; in the south it is known as Beytî Dimdim. Hassanpour counts this epic the second great national epic after Mem û Zîn and records its Kurmancî, Soranî, and Armenian variants. That a Kurdish epic is sung in Armenian too shows that in this geography the griefs and the melodies were carried in common.

Who carried the epic? The dengbêjs. Chyet's dictionary, in defining the dengbêj, counts two example epics: Mem û Zîn and Dimdim. So Dimdim is a narrative that has entered the very definition of the dengbêj repertoire. We told the world of the kilam (the long sung narrative) and the dengbêj in a separate article; for the map of the epic genre you may also look to our article on Kurdish folk epics.

The epic is more generous than history. In one variant Chyet records, the narrative sets a scene like this: a fly comes out of the nose of a sleeping shepherd, wanders, goes back in; the shepherd starts and wakes. History cannot write such a scene; the epic can. In the same dictionary one sentence sums up the epic's core idea: Lê bi dest xistina Kela Dimdimê ji bo eceman negengaz bû. To take Dimdim Castle was not easy for the Persians. That the besieging army is called ecem (Persian) shows from which side the narrative is sung.

The oldest written working of the epic is attributed to the great seventeenth-century Kurdish poet Feqiyê Teyran; the poet lived roughly between 1590 and 1660. The attribution is not certain, but it is meaningful: a poet contemporary with the siege may have taken the event into verse while it was still warm. In the folk variants compiled, the defenders are most often called martyrs. The epic honors its dead in the language of its own faith.

The Compilers: From Yerevan to Moscow

Had the oral epic not been recorded, we would hold scattered memories today. So who recorded this voice? At the head of the laborers stands the Celîl family. This Kurdish family living in Soviet Armenia compiled folklore village by village. Ordîxanê Celîl published his study of the Dimdim epic in Moscow in 1967; the book's Russian name carries the epic's epithet: The Golden-Handed Khan. Chyet, in the Dimdim entry of his dictionary, sends the reader straight to this work.

The family's great compilation, Zargotina Kurda, gathers oral culture from the mouths of the Armenian Kurds. Let us be honest: in the first volume we hold, the Dimdim text does not appear; the epic compilations are in the family's other publications. The world of that generation, and Yerevan, where the kilam was recorded on the radio microphone, we told in a separate article.

The epic leapt into written literature too. Erebê Şemo, counted the first Kurdish novelist, published his novel Dimdim in Yerevan in 1966. The recording age did not forget the epic either: Hassanpour writes that tape recordings of Beytî Dimdim are kept in university archives in Illinois and Toronto, and in Baghdad. The castle is one; its copies are many. The stone was torn down, the voice multiplied.

Where Do History and Legend Part?

Now let us set the two layers side by side. What does history say? A mîr met an empire beyond his strength; his castle fell after a long siege; his people passed through slaughter and exile. What does the epic say? A khan stood with his golden hand against tyranny; his castle turned into a monument of honor; those who died became martyrs.

The difference is clear. History counts: year, name, army, result. The epic magnifies: the scene of the fly, the golden hand, the defenders resisting to the last breath. History records what was lost; the epic draws meaning from what was lost. Dr. Izady likens the spirit of this epic to two great examples: the honor duels of the warriors of Troy, and the resistance to the end of the defenders of Masada. The comparison is bold, but it tells the function: some defeats, told and retold, turn into a people's lesson in endurance.

So which is valuable? Both. Dry history cannot say how the people lived that event. The bare epic cannot say what the event really was. Whoever wants to see Dimdim whole opens both eyes at once: one eye on the document, one on the kilam. This is the secret of that story listened to for four hundred years. The castle fell in 1610; the telling still stands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Dimdim Castle? In the northwest of present-day Iran, southwest of Lake Urmia, on a mountain in the region of the Barandûz stream. It falls to the south of the city of Urmia; today only wall ruins remain.

When did the Dimdim siege take place? The sources give the start between 1608 and 1609; the account resting on the Safavid chronicle stretches the siege from November 1609 to the summer of 1610. What is certain is that the castle fell in 1610.

Who is Xanê Lepzêrîn? It is the popular name of Emîr Xan, the mîr of Biradost: the khan of the golden hand. According to the telling, he wore a gold-plated hand in place of the hand he lost in battle. He became legend as the leader of the resistance in the siege.

Who wrote the Kela Dimdimê epic? The epic is anonymous; the dengbêjs carried it from generation to generation. The oldest written working is attributed to the poet Feqiyê Teyran. Ordîxanê Celîl published the scholarly compilation of the epic in Moscow in 1967.

How faithful is the epic to history? The core event is documented: the castle, the siege, the fall, the slaughter. The details are the epic's work: the story of the golden hand, the extraordinary scenes, the frame of martyrdom. This article tells the two layers apart on purpose.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources (from the Bedel Boseli Collection):

Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook (4th edition); the chapters on early modern history and literature, the passages relayed from Münşi.
Michael L. Chyet, Kurdish-English Dictionary; the Dimdim entry, the notes on epic variants, and the reference to Ordîxanê Celîl's study.
Celîlê Celîl and Ordîxanê Celîl, Zargotina Kurda I; the Celîl family's compilation method and the context of oral culture.

Social Media Summaries

The following summaries are ready to share; copy and use them.

On a mountaintop near Lake Urmia lie heaps of stone. Four hundred years ago this was Dimdim Castle. The stone was torn down; the story still stands. bedelboseli.com/en/dimdim-castle-a-resistance-become-legend
In 1609 and 1610, Emîr Xan, the mîr of Biradost, held Dimdim Castle against Shah Abbas's army. The siege was set down by the Safavid court's own historian. The perpetrator's own record: bedelboseli.com/en/dimdim-castle-a-resistance-become-legend
The people called him Xanê Lepzêrîn: the khan of the golden hand. In the telling, he wore a gold-plated hand where he had lost his own. The document is silent; the name endures. bedelboseli.com/en/dimdim-castle-a-resistance-become-legend
One event, written in two languages: the Safavid chronicle called it disobedience, the Kurdish epic called it resistance. Kela Dimdimê is counted the greatest Kurdish epic after Mem û Zîn. bedelboseli.com/en/dimdim-castle-a-resistance-become-legend
History counts; the epic magnifies. At Dimdim the castle fell in 1610; the dengbêjs carried its epic for four hundred years. Two layers, one memory: bedelboseli.com/en/dimdim-castle-a-resistance-become-legend