Soran-Persian War (1829-1834)

The Soran-Persian War or Qajar-Soran War was a series of border fights between Qajar Iran and the Kurdish Soran Emirate from 1829 to 1834. It took place in the Kurdish lands between today’s Iraq and western Iran. The war began when Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz, ruler of the Soran Emirate, occupied many Kurdish villages that were under Qajar rule. Iranian forces tried several times to stop him, but they failed to take back the border districts. Because of this, many Kurdish and Iranian writers describe the conflict as a Soran victory.

 Background 
In the early 1800s, the frontier between the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran in Kurdistan was not clearly fixed. Local Kurdish emirates such as Baban, Ardalan and Soran were important powers in this border zone. The Ottomans and Qajars often tried to win Kurdish rulers to their side, or to weaken them, in order to control the frontier.

Between 1821 and 1823, the Ottoman–Persian War of 1821–1823 changed the balance of power in the region. Qajar crown prince Abbas Mirza invaded eastern Anatolia and parts of Ottoman Kurdistan. After the war, a first Treaty of Erzurum confirmed the old borders in general, but many local frontier questions stayed open.

In the 1820s Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz made the Soran Emirate one of the strongest Kurdish states. From his capital Rawandiz, he extended his rule over Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and other districts in what is now the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Both Kurdish and Persian sources describe his emirate as rich, safe and well governed, but also very ambitious and sometimes brutal towards neighbours and religious minorities. His expansion soon reached the frontier with Qajar Iran.

 Road to war 
By 1829 Mir Muhammad began to move into areas that Qajar Iran saw as its own Kurdish borderlands. A letter from the Qajar official Amir Nizam to the Ottoman grand vizier complains that the “Soran pashas” had taken many Persian Kurdish villages, including places in the Mukriyan region such as Lajan, Sauj Bulag (today’s Mahabad) and Sardasht. The letter also says that Mir Muhammad had made raids towards Salmas and Urmiyah.

These actions were part of a wider struggle for influence in Kurdistan between Istanbul and Tehran. The Qajar government feared that the strong Soran Emirate could push the border westwards and damage Iranian authority over its Kurdish subjects. At the same time, the Ottomans were also worried about Mir Muhammad, because he was becoming too strong inside Ottoman lands. This meant that both empires saw the Soran Emirate as a problem, but in 1829-1834 it was mainly Qajar Iran that faced direct raids and loss of territory on its side of the frontier.

 Course of the war 

 Soran offensives into Qajar territory 
The first phase of the war (around 1829–1831) was driven by Soran expansion. Mir Muhammad’s forces attacked and occupied Kurdish districts on the Iranian side of the border. Kurdish and Persian sources mention parts of Mukriyan, including Lajan, Sauj Bulag and Sardasht, as well as villages near Salmas and Urumiyah, as areas affected by Soran raids or temporary occupation. Local Kurdish tribes sometimes changed side between the Ottomans, Qajars and Soran, which made the situation even more complex.

It is also said that Mir Muhammad exercised authority over the Qotur region (Maku).He is reported to have defeated an expedition sent to Khoy and to have liberated the cities of Maragheh and Tabriz.

During this time, Qajar power in the northwest was still recovering from defeats against Russia and from internal problems. This limited the ability of Abbas Mirza and the central government to send large, well-organised campaigns against Soran. Instead, they relied on smaller punitive expeditions by local governors and tribal allies.

 Qajar counter-attacks and stalemate 
In the second phase of the war (about 1831–1833), Qajar commanders tried to push the Soran troops back from the occupied districts. There were several clashes between Soran fighters and Iranian forces in the rugged mountains along the border. The Soran army knew the terrain well and used hill-top positions and narrow passes to its advantage. Contemporary sources say that Qajar troops could sometimes re-enter the disputed areas, but they did not hold them for long and did not reach Rawanduz itself.

At the same time, Mir Muhammad continued to expand on the Ottoman side. In 1833 he captured Cizre Jazirat Ibn Umar (modern Cizre area on the Tigris River), taking advantage of the Egypt–Ottoman war that weakened Istanbul’s control over eastern Anatolia. In this period Soran power reached its peak. Even though these successes were against the Ottomans, they also strengthened Mir Muhammad’s position in his confrontation with Qajar Iran.

 Local truces and end of fighting (1833–1834) 
By the mid-1830s both sides had reasons to de-escalate the border conflict. The Qajars faced new internal and external problems, and Abbas Mirza needed peace on the western frontier. Mir Muhammad, for his part, had to manage his growing realm and new enemies on the Ottoman side. As a result, the war did not end with a big treaty but with local agreements and a de facto line of control.

Kurdish and Iranian authors writing about this period note that the Soran Emirate kept its gains in many of the Kurdish districts it had seized from Qajar Iran. There is no evidence that Qajar forces destroyed Mir Muhammad’s power or forced him to evacuate all occupied villages before the later Ottoman campaigns against Soran began in 1834–1836. For this reason, they describe the 1829–1834 fighting as a strategic success for Soran, even if it was costly for the local population.

 Result 
Most modern studies that focus on Kurdish emirates present the Qajar–Soran War as a Soran victory for several reasons:

 Mir Muhammad kept control of many Kurdish districts on the Iranian side of the old border, especially in Mukriyan and nearby regions.  
 Qajar punitive campaigns did not destroy the Soran Emirate or reach Rawanduz.  
 The main fall of the Soran Emirate came later, through large Ottoman centralisation campaigns in 1834–1838, not through Qajar arms.

However, the war also brought heavy human costs. Raids, sieges and forced movements hurt Kurdish farming communities on both sides of the frontier. Later Kurdish memory remembers this period both as a high point of Kurdish power under Mir Muhammad and as a time of massacres and repression, including against Yazidis and Christian communities in the wider region. 

 Historiography 
The Qajar–Soran War is not always treated as a separate war in English-language history books. Many Western works mention it only as part of the wider struggles of Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz, the Ottoman–Soran War (1833–1835) and the politics of the Ottoman–Qajar frontier. Detailed narratives are more common in Kurdish and Persian sources:

 Kurdish (Sorani) writers often see Mir Muhammad as an early symbol of Kurdish nationalism and describe his fights with both the Ottomans and the Qajars as connected stages of one long struggle for Kurdish autonomy.  
 Persian historians and article writers usually focus on the damage that Soran raids did to Iranian Kurdish districts and the way these events influenced Qajar policy towards the Kurdish question and the Ottoman border.

Academic works in English on Kurdish emirates and on Ottoman–Qajar relations, such as the studies by Sabah Abdullah Ghalib (Bajalan), Sabri Ateş and David McDowall, now give more attention to this war and use both Kurdish and Persian materials to reconstruct it.

 Other link 
 Ottoman–Soran War (1833–1835)  
 Muhammad Pasha of Rawanduz  
 History of Kurds  
 Anatolian Disturbances (1832-1835)

 References 

 Notes 
 (in English) David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, I.B. Tauris, London, 2004.  
 (in English) Sabah Abdullah Ghalib (Bajalan), The Emergence of Kurdism with Special Reference to the Three Kurdish Emirates within the Ottoman Empire 1800–1850, PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2011.  
 (in English) Sabri Ateş, Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914, Cambridge University Press, 2013.  
 (in English) Roxane Farmanfarmaian (ed.), War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present, Routledge, 2008.  
 (in English) History of the Kurds, Kurdistan Memory Programme (online project).  
 (in Persian) «امارت سوران», ویکی‌پدیای فارسی (Farsi Wikipedia article on the Soran Emirate).  
 (in Persian) «جزیره ابن عمر», ویکی‌پدیای فارسی (Farsi Wikipedia article on Jazirat Ibn Umar / Cizre).  
 (in Persian) مقاله «مبانی مشروعیت امرا در امارت امراى كرد (قرون ۱۳–۱۶ هجرى)», فصلنامه تاریخی (study on legitimacy of Kurdish emirs, including Mir Muhammad of Soran).  
 (in Kurdish / Sorani) «خط کلاسیک و ویژگی‌های آن در كوردستان», پلاتفۆرمی زاگروس (Zagros Platform article on classic Kurdish politics, with a section on Mir Muhammad Rawanduz).  
 (in Kurdish / Sorani) «درس سی‌ام: كورد و كوردستان از جنگ جهانی اول تا جنگ جهانی دوم», پلاتفۆرمی زاگروس (Zagros Platform, with historical background on Kurdish movements and references to Mir Muhammad).  
 (in English) The Kurdish Frontier and Ottoman–Qajar Relations, chapter in a Cambridge volume on Qajar foreign relations.  
 (in English) The Kurds, the Armenian Question, and the History of Ottoman–Qajar Relations, academic article using Ottoman and Qajar documents on Kurdish emirates including Soran.

Category:Wars involving Qajar Iran

Category:Conflicts in 1829
Category:Conflicts in 1830
Category:Conflicts in 1831
Category:Conflicts in 1832
Category:Conflicts in 1833
Category:Conflicts in 1834
Category:Ottoman-Persian Wars
Category:Kurdish rebellions
Category:History of Kurds
Category:19th century in Iran
Category:19th century in Iraq

Category:Battles involving Turkey