Dimdim

   In Kurdish history and heroic folklore, Dimdim (in Persian, Dumdum) has become a sort of Kurdish Masada. It was at this mountain fortress (elevation c. 2,000 meters) near the western shore of Lake Urmia that Hatem Beg, the grand vizier of the Safavid Persian shah Abbas the Great, besieged the Baradust mir Khan Yakdas from November 1609 to the summer of 1610. When Dimdim was finally captured, the Persians massacred all the defenders. Remains of the walls and piles of building stones are still visible to this day. Bayti Dimdim treats the siege of Dimdim as a Kurdish struggle against foreign domination and is considered by many as a national epic second only to Ahmad-i Khani's Mem u Zin. Numerous modern poets and historians have also written about the revolt. In the United States, taped recitations of Bayti Dimdim are held in the ethnomusicological archive at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

   See also Literature.