Mahabad

Mahabad was built on the ruins of Sauj Bulagh, a Mongol-era town whose name recalls the Mongol passage through the region in the thirteenth century. For centuries it was a caravan stop on the road from Tabriz to Baghdad. Reza Shah Pahlavi changed its name in 1930 to Mahabad — after an ancient Iranian legend — in an attempt to erase its Kurdish identity, but the new name became a symbol of liberation rather than repression. In the autumn of 1945, with the Iranian army withdrawn from the Kurdish region in the chaos after the Second World War and Soviet troops briefly present, Kurdish leaders gathered around Qazi Muhammad, a respected cleric and judge of Mahabad, and founded the Komala party and then the Kurdistan Democratic Party. On 22 January 1946 Qazi Muhammad stood in Mahabad's Çwar Çira Square and proclaimed the Republic of Kurdistan. The red, white and green flag with the golden sun was hoisted for the first time in history. The Republic lasted only eleven months, but achieved in that short life what generations have learned from: it opened the first official Kurdish schools, printed Kurdish books, founded the Kurdish army under General Mullah Mustafa Barzani who had come from Iraq, and produced the first official Kurdish-language newspapers. Qazi Muhammad lived among his people in a modest house, holding court under a tree and receiving citizens himself. The Republic fell on 17 December 1946 with the Soviet withdrawal and the return of the Iranian army. On 31 March 1947 Qazi Muhammad was hanged with his brother and uncle on Çwar Çira Square itself — the square that had seen the Republic born saw its end. Barzani and his men escaped to the Soviets through the mountains in an epic march known to every Kurd. Today Mahabad is a city of about 200,000. The house of Qazi Muhammad remains a small museum visited by Kurds from all over the world. Çwar Çira Square still pulses with memory; demonstrations gather there on every anniversary of the Republic. Mahabad is now under Iranian rule and saw harsh repression during the 2022–23 Zhina-Amini uprising of 'Woman, Life, Freedom'. But the Republic's slogan — 'Kurdistan, cradle of freedom' — has never died in the city's heart.