TEHRAN – A statue of Iranian Kurdish poet and historian Mastureh Ardalan in her hometown of Sanandaj has been granted National Tangible Heritage status. 

This statue is located in Khandaq Blvd. leading to the Khosroabad neighborhood, where Mastureh lived during the first half of the 19th century, the Sanandaj Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department announced on Thursday.

The cement statue, which is about four meters tall, was created by renowned Kurdish sculptor Hadi Ziaeddini. The statue was unveiled on the boulevard on December 17, 2011.

Ziaeddini has also made another statue of Mastureh set up in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Mastureh, who was also known as Mah Sharaf Khanum, was born in 1805 in the western Iranian city in Kordestan Province. She composed her poems under the pseudonym “Mastureh” of “Masture-ye Kordestan”. 

Her father, Abolhassan Beig Qadiri, was a great man in his time, and she studied Kurdish, Arabic and Persian under his supervision.

Her husband, Khosro Khan Ardalan, was the ruler of the Ardalan court, but after the death of her husband, she was forced to move to the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, where she died and was buried when she was only 43.
  
A new and unabridged edition of her book, “History of Ardalan”, which was first published over 170 years ago, was unveiled during a special ceremony at Khosroabad Historical Edifice in Sanandaj last summer.

“The significance of Mastureh is that she never limited herself to literacy, but she was seriously seeking to learn about the current knowledge of that time when it was taboo for women to acquire knowledge,” litterateur Jamal Ahmadi, who is an expert on Mastureh, told the Persian service of IRNA.

“The most important topic about Mastureh is that she was composed her love poems for a worldly lover, which was against the social traditions at that time,” he added.

“Poetesses in Persian literature limited themselves to composing mystical works; in contemporary Persian literature, even Parvin Etesami didn’t dare to compose love poems; Forugh Farrokhzad and Simin Behbahani were the sole Iranian poetesses after Mastureh, who violated the taboo against composing love poems,” he noted.

Jamali said that Mastureh composed her love poems for Khosro Khan Ardalan from their exuberant teens to their happy marriage. 

Photo: A woman takes photos of a statue of Iranian Kurdish writer Mastureh Ardalan in the western Iranian city of Sanandaj on December 23, 2018. (ISNA/Farshid Ardalan)

MMS/YAW