(b a Kurdish village in the Cizre region [now Turkey], 1904; d Baghdad, 1949). Kurdish singer. She was one of the few female singers in the male-dominated environment of Kurdish music. Born to a poor family, she moved to the newly created state of Syria, where she married a member of the aristocratic Bedir Khan family. Her husband restrained her from singing, and she separated from him and resettled in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1924. In the late 1930s she returned to Baghdad where European phonograph companies had created a thriving recording business. She stayed with Sit Almas Mihammad, another female singer whose home was frequented by singers, and became the second female Kurdish singer to perform on phonograph records produced in Baghdad (the first being Bahija Ibrahim Ya’qoub). Although her voice was stigmatized by some male listeners as ‘shrill’, Miryam was the first woman singer on Radio Baghdad’s Kurdish section, which began broadcasting in 1939. Her songs, all of which she learnt from rural performers, number about 30, divided almost equally between strân and lawik. The songs are in Kurmanji dialect and some are sung as duets with the singers Hasan-e Jiziri, Mihammad ‘Arif-e Jiziri and Sit Almas.
Isma’il Badi: ‘Miryem Xan: dengekę zelal … evînîyeka paqij … vexerkirineka zűyî …’ [Miryam Khan: a clear voice … a clean love … an early farewell …], Dihok, no.2 (1998), 22–6
AMIR HASSANPOUR, STEPHEN BLUM