Abstract
The city of Sanandaj,1 where Ahmad Moftizadeh was born, has always viewed itself as a sort of cultural capital for not only Kurds in Iran but also the greater Kurdish Sorani-speaking population which stretched well into Northern Iraq. As the administrative capital of Iran’s Kordestan province, Sanandaj benefitted more from cultural and commercial exchange with the rest of the country than other cities in the Kurdish region.2 When speaking to Sanandaj’s citizens, this perceived centrality exudes a tenor of arrogance vis-à-vis the rest of Kurdistan. At the same time, Sanandaj was very much a secondary city in Iran’s twentieth-century catapult toward modernity, in a very much secondary region. Manifestly inconsequential to much of Iran’s social and political history until the revolution, there is no doubt that Sanandaj, like the Kurdistan in which it saw itself a flag-bearer, suffered from an identity crisis.3
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Ezzatyar, A. (2016). The Muftis of Iranian Kurdistan and the Dawning of an Activist. In: The Last Mufti of Iranian Kurdistan. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56324-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56324-8_3
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56525-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56324-8
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