Mahābād

Mahabad lies south of Lake Urmia among the valleys of Kurdish Mukriyan. Formerly known as Savojbolagh, it became a seat of the Mokri principality in the seventeenth century. Its congregational mosque is associated with the Kurdish ruler Budaq Sultan. The Mokri chiefs had to navigate the rivalry of the Ottoman and Safavid empires: their ruler Amira Bey acknowledged Ottoman authority in the 1580s and later faced Shah Abbas I.