The Kurdish world is a liminal space. Within this space, one consistently experiences thresholds of war and peace, resistance and receptiveness, objectivity and subjectivity, social transition, and social distortion. This article emphasizes the experiences of the most renowned woman in Kurdish history within this liminal space, namely Mestûre Ardalan, a Kurdish princess of the principality of Ardalan. A poet and author, she was also the only female Middle Eastern historian active by the end of the nineteenth century. This article explores how Mestûre's liminal experiences structured her formative and transformative space, which represents what Victor Turner (1974) calls a “rite of passage” because it shows the drama and flow of daily social life and the significance of rites in social transformation.
The article explores liminality in three different contexts in relation to Mestûre’s experiences. First, liminality in the sense of being diametrically opposed to the existing structure. Second, liminality as a form of symbolic transitional status. Finally, liminality as self-abnegation related to the gender-neutral way she channeled her identity crisis in a patriarchal manner similar to that in which she had been subjected. In this context, liminality refers to crossing a new threshold or boundary, thereby voluntarily or accidentally leaving the old space and entering a new one.
