Nehri

   The seyyids (sada, or those who claim descent from the Prophet) of Nehri were a powerful family of sheikhs in what is now the Turkish province of Hakkari in the extreme southeastern tip of Turkey near the borders with Iraq and Iran. Thus, the term Sadate of Nehri was sometimes used to refer to their domain. They claimed descent from Abdullah Qadir al-Jailani—known by many Kurds as the ghawth, or highest saint in the spiritual hierarchy—and for whom the Qadiri order is named. The family therefore also was known by the name of Gailanizade (Jailanizade). The Nehris adhered to the Qadiri order until they were initiated into the Naqshbandi order by Maulana Khalid after 1811.

   By the 1840s, Sheikh Sayyid Taha I of Nehri had become influential in the emirate of Botan by appealing to religion and inciting people against the local Christians. After the defeat of the powerful mir of Botan, Badr Khan Beg, in 1847, Sheikh Sayyid Taha fled to Nehri, the residence of the last mir of Shamdinan (now Turkicized as Semdinli). Nehri was the main village of the Shamdinan district and thus became the family home. At that time Shamdinan was still a small emirate and the sheikhs of Nehri for a while exercised a sort of dual rule with the mir until they eventually replaced him as the sole authority. It was around this time that Sheikh Sayyid Taha I of Ne-hri also apparently initiated Tajuddin (also sometimes called Abdul Rahman) into the Naqshbandi order and sent him to Barzan, where Tajuddin established the line of Barzani sheikhs.

   Calling upon both his spiritual and temporal authority, Taha's son, Ubeydullah, became one of the most powerful Kurdish leaders of the 19th century and led the famous, but ultimately unsuccessful, revolt of 1880, which in retrospect many see as a proto-nationalist Kurdish rebellion. Ubeydullah's two sons, Muhammad Siddiq and Abdul Qadir, also became very influential Kurdish leaders. The former was living in Nehri early in the 20th century and was considered the most influential sheikh in central Kurdistan.

   After Muhammad Siddiq's death in 1911, his younger brother Abdul Qadir emerged as an important figure in Ottoman politics. He played a role in practically all Kurdish nationalist activities in Istanbul and was also a member of the Ottoman senate and president of the Council of State. Although he was probably not involved with Sheikh Said's great rebellion in 1925, Abdul Qadir was arrested and executed by the Turkish authorities.

   Sayyid Taha II—a son of Muhammad and thus the grandson of the great Ubeydullah—played an active role in politics during the 1920s. He joined the famous revolt of Ismail Agha Simko in Iran and in 1922 began working with Great Britain against Turkish attempts to move into northern Iraq. The British eventually appointed him governor of the province around Rawanduz because of his influence over the local tribes. In 1932, however, Taha II accepted an invitation from Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran to journey to Tehran and was apparently poisoned there. His two sons, Sheikh Abdullah Effendi and Muhammad Siddiq (Sheikh Puso), remained respected among the locals, but their sons apparently did not become sheikhs.