Mastura Kurdistani

Biography

Mastura Kurdistani, Mah Sharaf Khanum (1805-1848), daughter of Abu al-Hasan Beyg Qadiri. A calligrapher, mystic, and poetess with the nom de plume Mastura. Born in Kurdistan, she was the niece of Mirza ‘Abd Allah Rawnaqi Sanandaji, the author of Hadiqa-yi Amanullahi, and the wife of Khusraw Khan, the governor of Kurdistan. Having completed her preliminary education, she assiduously furthered her studies of religious and literary disciplines. She wrote different calligraphic scripts masterfully. Her poetry, mainly in Persian, is elegant and delicate. Her original divan of poetry reportedly ran to 20,000 couplets the majority of which has been lost, but about one thousand couplets of her poetry appeared in 1925. She associated with Yaghma-yi Jandaqi and Mulla Khizr Nali. She also composed eulogies to the Prophets family (Ahl al-Bayt) which include mystical and social themes. She departed her homeland, accompanied by her paternal uncle and other relations, for Sulaymaniyah, Iraq where she died. Her works include Tarikh-i Kurdistan, also entitled Tarikh-i Ardalan, in Persian devoted to the accounts and rules of Ardalan rulers of Kurdistan from the establishment of the dynasty to the fourteenth century; Mu’jam al-Udaba’, also entitled Majma’ al-Udaba’, on Islamic beliefs and practical laws; divan of poetry, comprising about 2,000 couplets.

Asar-afarinan (5/ 230-231); Tarikh-i Mashahir-i Kurd (1/ 367-372).