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Document Details :

Title: Sheikh 'Ubaidullah's Revolt and the Kurdish Invasion of Iran
Subtitle: Attempts at a New Assessment
Author(s): PISTOR-HATAM, Anja
Journal: Journal of Kurdish Studies
Volume: 4    Date: 2001-2002   
Pages: 19-30
DOI: 10.2143/JKS.4.0.519246

Abstract :
At the beginning of October 1880, more than ten thousand Kurdish fighters with some Nestorian Christians crossed the Ottoman-Persian border and invaded Iran. There, more Kurdish contingents joined them, forming an army of twenty t ofifty thousand. The towns of Sâdjbolâgh (Mahâbâd), Marâgheh and Miyandoâb fell, but 'Ubaidullâh's troops failed to take Orûmîyeh. IN Miyandoâb, however three thousand men, women and children, most of them Shiis, were massacred in revenge for the previous killing of the sheikh's emissaries there. The Sunni clergy of Mahâbâd declared the revolt djihâd against the Shiis.
Following an intervention of, above all, the British and the Russian ambassadors to th Sublime Port, Ottoman envoys captured Sheikh 'Ubaidullâh on his return to Ottoman soil and brought him to Istanbul in July 1881. A year later the sheikh again escaped. Nevertheless, Iranian and international diplomatic pressure resulted in his renewed imprisonment. Sheikh 'Ubaidullâh was then banned to Mecca where he died the following year. The destruction caused by the Iranian soldiers on their way through the frontier regions was at least as disatrous as the damage effected by the Kurdish fighters.

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