In this paper a hidden Markov model and harmony search algorithms are combined for writer independent online Kurdish character recognition. The Markov model is integrated as an intermediate group classifier instead of a main character classifier/recognizer as in most of previous works. Markov model is used to classify each group of characters, according to their forms, into smaller sub groups based on common directional feature vector. This process reduced the processing time taken by the later recognition stage. The small number of candidate characters are then processed by harmony search recognizer. The harmony search recognizer uses a dominant and common movement pattern as a fitness function. The objective function is used to minimize the matching score according to the fitness function criteria and according to the least score for each segmented group of characters. Then, the system displays the generated word which has the lowest score from the generated character combinations. The system was tested on a dataset of 4500 words structured with 21,234 characters in different positions or forms (isolated, start, middle and end). The system scored 93.52% successful recognition rate with an average of 500 ms. The system showed a high improvement in recognition rate when compared to similar systems that use HMM as its main recognizer.