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.[7][8] During the Iran–Iraq War the city was attacked by Iraqi planes and saw disturbances.[9] Since 2019, UNESCO has recognized Sanandaj as Creative City of Music.[10]
The city is located between the Qishlaq river, a tributary of the Diyala, and Mount Awidar, which separates it from the old Ardalan capital of Hasanabad.[11] Carpet making is the biggest industry in Sanandaj.[11]
History
The name "Sinna" first appears in records from the 14th century CE.[12] Before this, the main city in the region was Sisar, whose exact location is unknown.[12] 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".[12]
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.[12] 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.[11] 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.[11]
Sinna was developed significantly under the reign of Aman Allah "the Great" (from 1797-1825).[11] 19th-century Sinna was "a lively commercial center, exporting oak galls, tragacanth, furs, and carpets".[11] Its population was mostly Kurdish, with a significant Jewish minority and smaller numbers of Armenian and Chaldean Catholic Christians.[11]
People
At the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 311,446 in 81,380 households.[13] The following census in 2011 counted 373,987 people in 106,771 households.[14] The latest census in 2016 showed a population of 412,767 people in 126,240 households.[3]
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.[7] 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.[15]
The economy of Sanandaj is based upon the production of carpets, processed hides and skins, milled rice, refined sugar, woodworking, cotton weaving, metalware and cutlery.[16][17]
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BC.Diakonoff, I. M. (1985), "Media", The Cambridge History of Iran, 2 (Edited by Ilya Gershevitch ed.), Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-0-521-20091-2
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