Sanandaj

Sanandaj (Persian: سنندج; pronounced [sænænˈdædʒ] ^ⓘ Kurdish: سنە, romanized: Senneh) is a city in the Central District of Sanandaj County, in the Kurdistan province of Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. With a population of 850,000, it is the second largest Kurdish city and 20th largest city overall in Iran. The city is considered a historic centre of Kurdish cultural and intellectual life, particularly noted for its tradition of Kurdish music, poetry, and carpet weaving.

Sanandaj's founding is fairly recent, (about 250 years ago), yet in its short existence it has grown to become one of the centers of Kurdish culture. During the Iran–Iraq War the city was attacked by Iraqi planes and saw disturbances. Since 2019, UNESCO has recognized Sanandaj as Creative City of Music.

The name "Sinna" first appears in records from the 14th century CE. Before this, the main city in the region was Sisar, whose exact location is unknown. Sisar was also called "Sisar of Sadkhaniya", or "Sisar of the hundred springs", and it has been proposed that the current name of "Sinna" is a contracted form of "Sadkhaniya".

The name "Sisar" disappears in the 14th century and the name "Sinna" replaces it, for example in the works of Hamdallah Mustawfi who refers to a mountain and a pass with this name. Then the Kurdish historian Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi mentions that in 1580 an Ardalan ruler named Timur Khan had a land grant including Sinna and the earlier Ardalan capital of Hasanabad. However, the local historian Ali-Akbar Munshi Waqayi-Nigar wrote in 1892/3 that Sinna was founded later, by the ruler Soleyman Khan Ardalan, on the site of an earlier settlement; the chronogram he gives for this event corresponds to 1046 AH, or 1636-7 CE.

Sinna was developed significantly under the reign of Aman Allah "the Great" (from 1797-1825). 19th-century Sinna was "a lively commercial center, exporting oak galls, tragacanth, furs, and carpets". Its population was mostly Kurdish, with a significant Jewish minority and smaller numbers of Armenian and Assyrian Christians (the latter of which are predominantly Chaldean Catholic).

The population of Sanandaj is mainly Kurdish. The city also had an Armenian minority who gradually emigrated from the city. Until the Iranian Revolution (1979), the city had a small Aramaic-speaking Jewish community of about 4,000 people. The city boasted a sizable Assyrian community that spoke a unique dialect of Aramaic called Senaya, they are mostly members of the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Kurdish character of Sanandaj has been extensively documented in urban studies scholarship. Alizadeh and colleagues (2019) characterise Sanandaj as a paradigmatic example of a traditional Kurdish city, noting that its urban morphology, architectural heritage, and social organisation have been shaped over centuries by Kurdish cultural norms.

The linguistic composition of the city:

The predominance of Central Kurdish in the city reflects the broader demographic composition of Iranian Kurdistan. Persian serves primarily as the language of education, government, and inter-ethnic communication, while Kurdish is the dominant vernacular of daily life.