My paper attempts to trace the vicissitudes of Kurdish notions of sovereignty and its enduring and complicated relationship with the early modern Safavid and Ottoman empires. I use the Sharaf-name, one of the first texts to articulate a distinct Kurdish sovereignty, to demonstrate how Kurdish ideas of historical and geographical singularity shaped the broader imperial policies of the region. I argue that it was not the Ottoman and the Safavid imperial rivalry and exchanges but rather the Kurdish internal political architecture that shaped the relations between Kurdistan and the two empires. In doing so, I hope to understand the ways in which the Kurdish borderlands were constitutive to the construction of the two Middle-Eastern empires. Further, I also wish to unsettle the modern reproductions of Ottoman and Safavid empires into nationally and territorially cohesive entities of Turkey and Iran respectively. Sharaf Khan, a Kurdish dynast and the author of Sharaf-name, spent the first half of his life in exile under the Safavid protection and received a royal pension for his tribe’s sustenance. The second half of his life was dominated by his interactions with the Ottomans, who invited him to take hold of Bitlis, his hereditary domain, in exchange for his loyalty, where served until his demise in 1603. Sharaf Khan’s reach in the imperial and administrative systems of both the empires was unusual. Thus, the Sharaf-name offers us a trans-imperial comparison that will be interesting to explore especially given the position of its author. Even as Sharaf Khan offers a fascinating window into the rhetoric and narratives of Kurdish sovereignty, it invites us to think critically about the role of history in constructing these narratives. Sharaf Khan mobilizes history to support his distinct and politically fraught claim. Every conqueror since Genghis Khan, he claims, enshrined Bitlis’s autonomy and distinguished the Prince of Bitlis among his Kurdish peers with prestigious titles and positions. The Sharaf-name repeatedly invokes the centrality of Kurdish lords in determining and establishing the great political traditions of the Chingisid and the Timurid empires. Sharaf Khan's work suggests that the attempts by the Ottoman and Safavid empires to integrate this region was not just a matter of geography. In integrating Kurdish interests, these empires were competing for the prestigious legacies of Eurasia’s greatest conquerors. In this intense symbolic succession struggle, the Kurdish principalities like Bitlis were decidedly perceived as the lynchpin of Chingisid and Timurid imperial prestige.