Dimdim Castle

Dimdim Castle
قلعه دم‌دم
Mount Dimdim in Iran
Coordinates	37°23′26.1″N 45°10′57.77″E

Dimdim Castle (Kurdish: قەڵای دمدم, romanized: Qelay Dimdim, Persian: قلعه دمدم) was a Kurdish fortress located on top of Mount Dimdim in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran, just west of Lake Urmia.^[1] This fortress was the location of the Battle of Dimdim.

According to Kurdish oral tradition the fortress was built in the pre-Islamic era.^[2] The castle suffered an attack by the Safavid Empire and was sacked in 1609,^[3] then rebuilt by the Amir Khan Lepzerin in the same year.^[2] Other source mentioned that the siege of Dimdim Castle was in 1610.^[1]

Name

The word "Dimdim" may be onomatopoeic for the noise which the stones of the castle made when they dropped from the castle into the valley.^[4]

See also

• Battle of Dimdim
• Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–18)
• List of Kurdish castles
• List of castles in Iran

References

1. Melville, Charles, ed. (25 February 2021). Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires: The Idea of Iran. Vol. 10. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 67. ISBN 9780755633791. Retrieved 21 April 2022.
2. Hassanpour 1995, pp. 404–405.
3. Allison, Christine; Kreyenbroek, Philip, eds. (1996). Kurdish Culture and Identity. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 31. ISBN 9781856493291. Retrieved 21 April 2022.
4. Allison, Christine (2010). "Kurdish Oral Literature". In Yarshater (ed.). Oral Literature of Iranian Languages. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 60.

Sources

• Hassanpour, Amir (1995). "Dimdim". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VII/4: Deylam, John of–Divorce IV. In modern Persia. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 404–405. ISBN 978-1-56859-022-6.