Schikak (ethnic group)

The shikak or Şikak ( Persian شکاک, also Schekak , Schakkak, Schikakan ) is one of the largest Kurdish tribes in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan and the adjacent areas in Eastern Turkey . This tribe lives around the city of Maku and from there south to Urmia .

They speak a dialect of Kurmanji called Shakaki and are of Sunni faith. Their number in Iran was 4400 households in 1960. The number of shikak in Turkey is smaller. The shikak are often confused with the Turkic tribe of the shikaghi (also known as the shakaki) from Tabriz .

The shikak are made up of many clans and families, with the families of the 'Awdo K and the Kārdār being the tribal leaders.

history

According to their oral tradition, the shikak emigrated from Diyarbakır in the 17th century and settled west of Lake Urmi . In doing so, they displaced the trunk of the dumbuli .

The first known tribal leader was Ismail Agha, who died in 1816 and whose grave is on the Naslu River. His grandson Jafar Agha was executed as a bandit in Tabriz in 1905 . Jafar's brother Simko became the new leader and started a fight against the Iranian government for an independent Kurdistan . Simko was also responsible for massacres of Christians in the Urmia region before and during the First World War . Simko died in 1930 and was replaced by Amr Agha. He later took part with a few hundred fighters in the Mahabad Republic , which was founded in Mahabad in 1946 by the Kurdistan-Iran Democratic Party . Amr Agha himself was a member of this party.

But when the republic collapsed, the shikak came to terms with the Iranian government. The tribe maintained this pro-government attitude for the next several decades. This was also the case in 1979 after the Islamic revolution , when Kurdish parties such as the DPK-I and the Komalah rebelled against Khomeini due to the power vacuum in western Iran . Only a few shikak members took part, while the tribal leader Tahir Agha came to terms with the new rulers.

source

Martin van Bruinessen : Article Shakāk. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition
Martin van Bruinessen: A Kurdish Warlord on the Turkish-Persian Frontier in the Early Twentieth Century: Isma`il Agha Simko . In: Touraj Atabaki (ed.): Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers. IB Tauris, London 2006, pp. 69-93.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b M. Th. Houtsma et al.: Article Salmas. In: EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936 , Volume 4. EJ Brill, New York, 1993, ISBN 90-04-09796-1 , p. 118.
↑ ^a ^b M. Th. Houtsma et al.: Article Salmas. In: EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936 , Volume 4. EJ Brill, New York, 1993, ISBN 90-04-09796-1 , p. 290.

[Houtsma-118-1] M. Th. Houtsma et al.: Article Salmas. In: EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936 , Volume 4. EJ Brill, New York, 1993, ISBN 90-04-09796-1 , p. 118.

[Houtsma-290-2] M. Th. Houtsma et al.: Article Salmas. In: EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936 , Volume 4. EJ Brill, New York, 1993, ISBN 90-04-09796-1 , p. 290.