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FOREWORD
When the first edition of this bibliography was listed in J. D. Pearson's edition of Theodore Besterman, A World Bibliography Of Oriental Bibliographies, the writer was embarrassed because his work did not warrant such publicity. The first edition, The Kurds, a Minority in Iran, bears all the marks of a library school assignment. In many respects it suffers also from the time pressure under which it was produced. Moreover, it is no publication in the true sense since no more than twenty copies have been distributed.
The new title and the more dignified form of this second edition therefore seem justified, particularly because little remains of the original work - either in form or in content. The number of items has more than tripled so that a classified arrangement seemed more appropriate. Most of the works not seen in 1969 have now been examined and annotated. Some have been excluded because they turned out to be irrelevant or did not warrant inclusion for other reasons. The western encyclopaedias have been omitted as being too general.1 The annotations of the remaining titles have been reviewed and re-written whenever necessary. The work is now fully indexed.
This bibliography is not a comprehensive work of all the publications about the Kurds in Iran. There does not seem to be any reason to list monographs easily accessible in published bibliographies nor articles included in Pearson's Index Islamicus.2 Thus, the present work continues where the International Society Kurdistan's Kurdish Bibliography left off, filling the gap between. 1966 and 1975 as far as monographs are concerned.3 However, the material of my first edition has been incorporated with references to more recent editions. The inclusion of some other material seems justified on account of the annotations. Most of the material about the Kurds is about those in Iraq, where Sulaymaniyah has become the intellectual centre of Kurdistan; the situation in Iran is often only mentioned in passing. Books by and about the Kurds of Iran, and published in that country are difficult to control bibliographically and are not always available in western libraries. The same applies to reference works; therefore a seemingly large number of general reference books concerned with Iran has been included in the bio-bibliographical sections. Because of the marked lack of official documents about the Kurds in Iran the information from books must be supplemented by other sources such as Ittilacat and Le Monde (probably the most reliable western news media with regard to events in the Islamic world).
Much thought has been given to the problem of romanization: in this case an Arabic, a Hebrew as well as a Cyrillic type-writer were available, and printing costs did not have to be taken into consideration. Furthermore, there is no universally accepted transliteration scheme for any language; as a matter of fact, there is hardly any for Kurdish. Therefore in this work the main entry is listed in the transliteration used by the Library of Congress, but the body of the entry is in the original script. However, this still created problems when Kurdish or Armenian was written in Cyrillic letters because the typewriter used had no additional signs for letters like 'a' and 'h'. In such cases an exception had to be made. The titles of such works are transliterated, but the body of the entry is given under the Russian added title. In the index the transliterated titles are listed among the western works and the Russian added titles in the Cyrillic section. This applies analogically to the single Hebrew item listed.
The political situation of the Kurds has changed, since 1969: in the beginning of March 1975 the Shah of Iran and the Iraqi vice-president met in Algiers during the conference of the oil producing countries to settle the differences between Iran and Iraq. In return for a settlement of the Iranian-Iraqi differences over the border disputes the Shah promised to stop the unofficial assistance of the Kurds in Iraq and to close Iran's borders to the rebels. What will become of Mustafa Barzani and the Kurds in the Iranian refugee camps, overcrowded with women, children and old men, and whether the new circumstances will affect the Kurds in Iran, remains to be seen.
The bibliography has been compiled mainly from the Islamic union catalogue in Germany4 (the German equivalent to the British Union Catalogue of Asian Publications). Some additional material was gathered during visits to libraries in Canada and Great Britain. I would like to express my gratitude to the Library of the Prussian Culture Foundation for a study leave which enabled me to collect bibliographical material at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and also to its librarian Mr. Barry Bloomfield, for making the facilities of the School's library available to me. Foremost I have to thank my wife Brigitte Behn for supporting a project that could have been of little interest to her and putting up with my whims for a longer period than I care to admit.
1 With the notable exeption of the 13th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 13, P. 520-522 (the 1974 edition is disappointing in this respect).
2 An extensive bibliography can be found in Ismet Cheriff Vanly, Le Kurdistan Irakien, Entite Nationale; fetude de la revolution de 1961 (Neuchatel, 1970), p.- 390-414.
3 An expection has been made in the case of some periodical articles which, so far, have not been included in the Index Islamicds.
4 A description of the Islamic union catalogue in Germany published by the writer in M[iddlel E[ast] Librarians’] A[ssociation] Notes, no. 2 (April, 1974), p. 15-17.
Introduction to the first edition
Together with western technology western ideas and concepts have reached the countries of the Middle East and penetrated even the most isolated segments of its population. The Kurds, who, until quite recently, have been living on the borderlines between traditional and modern Middle Eastern society, have thus been influenced by modern western ideas such as nationalism. The origins of the Kurds' aspirations for national independence go back to the nineteenth century. Kurdish hope reached its height when, in the Treaty of Sevres, provision was made for an autonomous Kurdistan. However, in the Treaty of Lausanne, which superseded the Treaty of Sevres, no mention was made of this promise. The Kurdish struggle for freedom has been going on ever since, and it was temporarily successful when the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad was proclaimed in 1946. But Kurdish independence was short-lived, and the years following have seen more or less of a continual struggle against the central governments of Iran and Iraq.
The problem of the Kurds is a difficult one. In numbers they amount to a significant part of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Their deep attachment to their own language and customs makes it more natural for them to look to reunion with their fellow-Kurds in Iraq and Turkey than to a minority status in Iran. The Kurds, therefore, present a problem for the Iranian government mainly because its lack of respect for their traditions. The stubborn refusal to recognize the Kurds as being different, the attempt to consider them as Iranians, has in no small way contributed to the hostility of the Kurds to the Iranian government. Unless the government approaches these indomitable tribesmen with greater respect for their religious and social traditions, the Kurds will remain an irritant in the body politic, an obstacle to change in the borderlands which they inhabit.
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