Suramiri (tribe)

Mehmed Hurşîd Paşa, a member of the Russian-Ottoman-Persian boundary commission that surveyed the borders from 1848 to 1852, mentioned the Suramiri as a Feyli Kurdish tribe of Holeylan.^[2] The Suramiri and Rizawand, another Feyli Kurdish tribe, were initially united, although during the early tenure of Hassan Khan of the Vali dynasty (1797-1839), he divided the Suramiri and Rizawand tribes while dispersing and weakening both. It was also during his tenure when the Suramiri tribe left their traditional land in Posht-e-Kuh and relocated to Khanaqin, as well as Miqdadiyah, and other districts of Diyala where some of them also began speaking Arabic due to the presence of Arabs.^[3] In Khanaqin, it became one of the main Kurdish tribes.^[4]

After the Arab Revolt, the first Kurdish tribes to revolt against the Ottomans were the Suramiri, Bajalan, and Dilo tribes in Khanaqin, who made up a British contingent of two hundred tribal auxiliaries and fought the Ottomans along the Diyala River in April 1918.^[5]

Ely Bannister Soane, in 1918, wrote that the Suramiri tribe had migrated to Khanaqin around 100 years earlier from Zohab, and that they had earlier migrated to Zohab from Holeylan. He added that when the Bajalan left Zohab to migrate to Turkey, the Suramiri followed it before settling in Khanaqin.^[6]

In Tarikh-e Mardukh, the Suramiri were listed as a Kurdish tribe consisting of the Tutak, Antar, Ayina, Mamajan, and Kalhuri clans, numbering around 2,025 households, and living on the edges of Khanaqin, with the Antar clan also present between Miqdadiyah and Abu Jisra.^[7] In Zobde-ye Tarikh-e Kurd u Kurdistan, Muhammad Amin Zaki listed the same information about the Suramiri tribe as Tarikh-e Mardukh, although with only 225 households.^[8]

Sediq Safizadeh, who specialized in Iranian and Kurdish history, wrote that "Suramiri is one of the Kurdish tribes that live in Khanaqin, Aliabad, Haji Qara, and Qala-e-Werik. They have the clans of Qaytul, Tutak, Kalavani, Mamajan, and Kheyvelian. The leader of this tribe in the past was a person named Sura-Mir, who was a subject of the Ottoman government, and most of them are engaged in animal husbandry and agriculture."^[9]

In May 2019, Kamel Jamil Beg, the leader of the Suramiri tribe, in an interview, expressed support for the Peshmerga returning to Khanaqin as he complained about the deteriorating quality of life and safety after 2017.^[10]

• Feyli
• Kalhor
• Kurds