As Sulaymaniyah

Sulaymaniyah lies among the mountains of Kurdish Iraq, north of the Shahrazur plain. Founded in the 1780s as the seat of the Baban principality, it replaced the older capital at Qala Chwalan. Mosques, bazaars, caravanserais and public baths gave the new town the institutions of a princely capital. It grew into a centre of Kurdish literary and intellectual life as well as the home of the Baban court.

The Baban rulers held lands between the Ottoman and Iranian spheres and played a prominent part in their struggles. From the later eighteenth century they faced rival Kurdish principalities as well as pressure from Ottoman and Qajar rulers seeking stronger central authority. Their new capital expressed the ambitions of a dynasty whose power depended on negotiating these rivalries in the mountain country of Shahrazur.