Background
She was born in 1847 to a leading family in Sanandaj, second largest city of Iranian Kurdistan.
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Lady Khanem
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Adela Khanem was of the famous aristocratic Sahibqeran family, who intermarried with the tribal chiefs of Jaff. Lady Adela exerted great influence in the affairs of Jaff tribe in the Sharazor plain. Later Osman Pasha was appointed the kaimakam of Sharazor, thus allowing Lady Adela to take over.
The revival of commerce and restoration of law and order in the region of Halabja is attributed to her sound judgement.
She was known for saving lives of many British army officers during World War I and was awarded the title of Khan-Bahadur by the British commander.She died in 1924 and buried in Halabja. Gertrude Bell, British politician and writer, describes Adela Khanem in a letter in 1921 as follow: " The feature of Halabja is "Adlah Khanum the great Jaff Beg Zadah lady, mother of Ahmad Beg.
She is the widow of Kurdish King Osman Pasha Jaff, sometime dead, and continues to rule the Jaff as much as she can and intrigue more than you would think anyone could, and generally behave as great Kurdish ladies do behave. She has often written to me, feeling, I"ve no doubt, that we must be birds of a feather, and I hastened to call on her after lunch.
She is a striking figure in her gorgeous Kurdish clothes with jet black curls (dyed, I take it) falling down her painted cheeks from under her huge headdress.
Vladimir Minorsky has reported his meeting with Lady Adela in the region of Halabja in 1913. Major Soane wrote about her in his book To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise: "a woman unique in Islam, in the power she possesses, and the efficacy with which she uses the weapons in her hands. In a remote corner of the Turkish Empire, which decays and retrogrades, is one little spot, which, under the rule of a Kurdish woman has risen from a village to be a town, and one hill-side, once barren, now sprinkled with gardens.
And these are in a measure renovations of the ancient state of these parts.".
