Mullas, Suhs and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society
Martin Van Bruinessen
The Isis Press
"Compared to the unbeliever, the Kurd is a Muslim" (ft gora gawiri Kurd misilman e). I do not recall where I First heard or read this unflattering Kurdish saying, but it was uttered with a certain pride.1 I suspect that it was originally a Turkish or Arabic saying; it is the sort of thing people who feel that they are better Muslims than the Kurds would say. In fact, one often comes across beliefs and practices in Kurdistan that are hard to reconcile with Islamic orthodoxy. Kurdish nationalists of the 1920s and 1930s were fascinated with, and took pride in, such deviations from Islam, "the Arabian religion," interpreting them as rebellions of the Kurdish spirit against Arab and Turkish domination. During its first years the nationalist cultural magazine Hawar, published in Syria from 1932 to 1943 by Djeladet and Kamran Bedir-Khan, showed a great interest in Zoroastrism as one of the sources of Kurdish cultural identity. With its Zoroastrian roots, the Yezidi religion, which had long been discriminated against and condemned as "devil worship," was idealised by some nationalists as the Kurdish religion par excellence. But these nationalists were a tiny minority, and the followers of all heterodox sects combined form only a small fraction of the Kurds. The vast majority are Muslims, and many of them take ...
Table of Contents
The religious mosaic 1. "Religion in Kurdistan", Kurdish Times (Brooklyn, New York), vol. 4 nos. 1-2, 1991, 5-27 / 13
2. "The Kurds and Islam", This chapter grew out of lectures I gave in Paris and Tokyo in the course of 1998. The present version was published as Working Paper No. 13, Islamic Area Studies Project, Tokyo, Japan, 1999. Another version appeared as the introduction to a special issue (titled "Islam des Kurdes") of the journal Les Annales de I'Autre Islam (No. 5, Paris, 1998) that I edited with Joyce Blau / 37
3. "The Christians of Eastern Turkey, the state and the local power structure" This paper was originally written as an expert's report submitted to the Netherlands Council of State when this was reviewing the trial of a group of Syrian Orthodox asylum seekers, October 8, 1978. It was published in ICMC Migration News no. 3-4(1979), 40-46 / 59
Learning and mysticism in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
4. "Religious life in Diyarbekir: religious learning and the role of the tariqats", Originally a section of the introduction to: Martin van Bruinessen and Hendrik Boeschoten, Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbekir, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988, pp. 45-52. I have made some additions to the original text to allow it to stand by itself / 69
5. "The Naqshbandi order in 17th-century Kurdistan", First published in: Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic et Thierry Zarcone (ed), Naqshbandis: cheminements et situation actuelle d'un ordre mystique musulman. Istanbul-Paris: Editions Isis, 1990, 337-360 / 87
6. "The impact of Kurdish ‘ulama on Indonesian Islam", A revised version of "Kurdish ‘ulama and their Indonesian students", in: De Turcicis aliisque rebus commentarii Henry Hofman dedicati [= Utrecht Turcological Series, vol. 3]. Utrecht: Instituut voor Oosterse Talen en Culturen, 1992, pp. 205-227. The present version was also published in Les Annales de VAutre Islam 5 (1998), 83-106 / 111
7. "A nineteenth century Kurdish scholar in South Africa", Revised version, with additional information, of a brief notice that was originally published as the final section of "Kurdish ‘ulama and their Indonesian students" and that was left out in the later version of that paper / 133
The social and political roles of sufi orders in Kurdistan
8. "Popular Islam, Kurdish nationalism and rural revolt: The rebellion of Shaikh Said in Turkey (1925)", First published in: Janos M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke (eds.), Religion and Rural Revolt. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 281-295 / 143
9. "Vom Osmanismus zum Separatismus: Religiose und ethnische Hintergriinde der Rebellion des Scheich Said", First published in: Jochen Blaschke & Martin van Bruinessen (Hrsg), Islam und Politik in der Tiirkei. Berlin: EXpress Edition, 1985 (Reprinted: Berlin: Parabolis, 1989), pp. 109- 165 / 159
10. "The Sadate Nehri or Gilanizade of Central Kurdistan", Appeared in Journal for the History of Sufism 1 (1999) / 199
11. "The Qadiriyya and the lineages of Qadiri shaykhs in Kurdistan", Appeared in Journal for the History of Sufism 1 (1999) / 213
12. "Sûfîs and sultans in Southeast Asia and Kurdistan: a comparative survey", First published in Studia Islamika (Jakarta), vol. 3, no.3 (1996), 1-20 / 231
Heterodox religious formations in Kurdistan
13. "When Haji Bektash still bore the name of Sultan Sahak. Notes on the Ahl-i Haqq of the Guran district", First published in: Alexandre Popovic & Gilles Veinstein (eds), Bektachiyya: etudes sur 1'ordre mystique des Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach. Istanbul: Editions Isis, 1995, pp. 117-138 /245
14. "Haji Bektash, Sultan Sahak, Shah Mina Sahib and various avatars of a running wall", Revised version of an article that first appeared in Turcica XXI- XXIII, 1991,55-69 / 271
15. "The Shabak, a Kizilbash community in Iraqi Kurdistan", Les Annales de I'Autre Islam 5 (1998), 185-196 / 295
16. General Bibliography / 305
PREFACE
The articles collected here are the result of a quarter century's involvement in and research on Kurdish society. They were conceived independently of one another and over a time period of two decades, but together they give what I believe is a coherent overview of the role of religion in Kurdish society. There is perhaps more on Sufis here than on either mullas or heretics; but then, many Kurdish mullas, especially the more learned 'ulama among them, are also Sufis, and the various heterodox communities of Kurdistan, even those ostensibly non-Islamic, appear to have historical connections with individual Sufis or Sufi orders. If the Sufi orders appear much in these pages, this reflects both the significant roles they have played in Kurdish society during the past few centuries and the autobiographical fortuities of my involvement with the Kurds.
Sufis I began my first fieldwork among the Kurds in 1974. It had been designed as a traditional anthropological study, in which I was to spend my entire research period in two or three Kurdish villages in west Iran. Circumstances — the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq and Iran’s deep involvement in it — prevented me from carrying out that plan and resulted in my staying in many different parts of Kurdistan for shorter periods. Instead of an in-depth study of a small-scale society, my research became necessarily more comparative and wide-ranging in space (and later, in historical time as well). I focussed on changing patterns of social and political organisation, and Sufi orders constitute, besides the tribes, the most significant type of “traditional” association between the level of the individual family and that of the state. I was aware that many of the earliest Kurdish rebellions with a certain element of nationalism were led by Sufi shaykhs of the Naqshbandiyya or Qadiriyya orders — most prominently Shaykh 'Ubaydullah of Nehri, Shaykh Mahmud of Sulaymaniya and Shaykh Sa'id of Palu. Precisely because I was forced to move from place to place during my field research I met with many shaykhs and their disciples.
A different sort of encounter, but one that also made a great impression on me, was my discovery of the seventeenth-century Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi and his Book of Travels, the Seyahatname. Evliya had travelled the length and width of Kurdistan and had taken notes on whatever he saw and experienced, without regard for the canon of what was considered worth knowing in his day. He is the only Ottoman author of his period who wrote about popular culture, including popular religious practices and pious legends. The wealth of fascinating information contained in the Seyahatname constituted a strong incentive to learn Ottoman Turkish. Like many of Evliya's readers, I became a great fan and spent many a pleasant evening deciphering his notes and imagining the world he had seen. With Evliya as my companion, I ventured into seventeenth-century social history of Kurdistan and the Ottoman Empire generally. Two of the articles here, dealing with Sufis and scholars of the seventeenth century, owe much to this encounter with Evliya. A number of other Evliya-inspired articles, dealing with different aspects of Kurdish culture, will be part of a second volume of my writings.
Mullas During my fieldwork of the mid-1970s I met quite a few mullas; those whom I still remember were respected community leaders in their villages, who spoke of the Kurdish nation as much as of the duties of Islam. It was only later that I became aware of the contributions of Kurdish 'ulama to Islamic learning. It was, surprisingly, in Indonesia (where I spent most of the 1980s and early 1990s) that I discovered how important a role Kurdish 'ulama had played in the transmission of learning between the great cultural regions of the Muslim world. This discovery resulted, besides the more general observations in the first two articles, in the survey of Kurdish influences in Indonesian Islam that is reprinted here. It is complemented by a brief study of one particular Kurdish scholar, who was sent to South Africa in the 1860s as a Muslim missionary (da'i) in the service of the Ottoman sultan.
Heretics Two of the important heterodox religions formations of the Middle East emerged in Kurdistan: Yezidism and the Ahl-i Haqq religion. There exists moreover a specifically Kurdish variety of Alevism (the Qizilbash religion), which shows up similarities with the other two religions. I visited the Ahl-i Haqq of Dalahu (west of Kermanshah) in 1975 and 1976 but have not been able to return to the region. In Turkey and Syria 1 met individual Yezidis, but it was only later, due to contacts with Yezidis who had migrated to Germany, that I did some research on their religion as such. Most of the Yezidis from Turkey have left that country because of various forms of oppression. Their situation is similar to that of the Syrian Christians described in an article in this book; both communities have by now virtually evacuated their regions of origin and are making efforts to reconstitute themselves on European soil. A high proportion of the Kurdish Alevis too have left their ancestral homes. I have had many Alevi friends since the 1970s, but it was only in the late 1980s that Alevism became to them an important part of their identities. The three articles in the final section reflect my interest in these heterodox religious formations and the elusive relations existing between them.
Acknowledgements Rereading all these articles, 1 became aware again of how much I owe to others. One of the greatest pleasures of research consists in the friendships one makes in the process. Numerous Kurdish men and women helped me in the course of my fieldwork of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Three Naqshbandi shaykhs need to be mentioned first. Shaykh Nurullah Varol of Cizre welcomed me in his home and taught me much about Islam and about his Sufi order; Shaykh Osman allowed me to stay as a guest in his village of Duru and to witness his interactions with disciples; Shaykh Muhammad 'Isa of Damascus took me under his protection and was an inexhaustible source of information on the politics of religion. Mela Hesen Hi(yar of Qamishliyya told me of his experiences with Shaykh Sa'id and the other Naqshbandi shaykhs taking part in the 1925 uprising.
Abdiissettar Hayati Avşar, Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, Zeynelabidin Zinar, Malmisanij M. Tayfun, Rohat Alakom, Miifid Yiiksel, Fadil Ahmad Karim and Mi hemmed? Mela Kerim answered questions about traditional Islamic learning in Kurdistan. Eulya Atacan, Ruşen Çakir and Laie Yalçm-Heckmann shared with me their relevant research findings.
I would probably not have become acquainted with the Ahl-i Haqq of Dalahu if Ahmad Baba'i of Kermanshah had not taken me there and if he had not been such a good musician. Once there, Sayyid Nasruddin, the highest living religious authority of the community, invited me to stay in his house and gave the kalamkhdn Ka Karîm permission to discuss with me the esoteric meaning of the sacred songs of this branch of the Ahl-i Haqq.
Of the many colleagues I met in Tehran between visits to Kurdistan, John O'Kane, Peter Wilson and Jean During did much to stimulate my interest in the learned variants of Islamic mysticism and esotericism. It was extremely helpful to discuss my observations 'with them; Peter and Jean, moreover, helped me with useful introductions to Sufi and Ahl-i Haqq circles in Tehran.
My explorations in Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname were not solitary travels either. Henri Hofman introduced me to Ottoman Turkish and shared with me his vast knowledge of Evliana and related literature; Richard Kreutel generously gave me his microfilm of Evliya's Book IV and answered my queries from beleaguered Kabul, where he was the Austrian ambassador; and Rik Boeschoten, Machiel Kiel, Hanneke Larners and Marc Vandamme were stimulating fellow "Evliologists".
Alexandre Popovic, Gilles Veinstein and, somewhat later, Thierry Zarcone drew me into the Paris-based Sufi order studies network. Hamid Algar was always generous and very knowledgeable in answering queries concerning the Naqshbandi order. Irene Mêlikoff similarly shared her vast knowledge of the Bektashi order and popular Alevism. Fred de Jong, who probably was my first contact in this circle of tariqa scholars, helped me in various ways over the years, and invited me back to Utrecht University in 1994, when there was a possibility to develop Kurdish studies. The presence of Bemd Radtke and Machiel Kiel at the same Department of Oriental Studies (along with colleagues with whom I share other interests) has made this a very compatible environment to continue my studies of Islamic learning, Sufism and heterodox movements. I hope all these friends and colleagues have derived as much pleasure from our co-operation as I did.
Utrecht, February 2000 Martin van Bruinessen
Religion in Kurdistan
"Compared to the unbeliever, the Kurd is a Muslim" (ft gora gawiri Kurd misilman e). I do not recall where I First heard or read this unflattering Kurdish saying, but it was uttered with a certain pride.1 I suspect that it was originally a Turkish or Arabic saying; it is the sort of thing people who feel that they are better Muslims than the Kurds would say. In fact, one often comes across beliefs and practices in Kurdistan that are hard to reconcile with Islamic orthodoxy. Kurdish nationalists of the 1920s and 1930s were fascinated with, and took pride in, such deviations from Islam, "the Arabian religion," interpreting them as rebellions of the Kurdish spirit against Arab and Turkish domination. During its first years the nationalist cultural magazine Hawar, published in Syria from 1932 to 1943 by Djeladet and Kamran Bedir-Khan, showed a great interest in Zoroastrism as one of the sources of Kurdish cultural identity. With its Zoroastrian roots, the Yezidi religion, which had long been discriminated against and condemned as "devil worship," was idealised by some nationalists as the Kurdish religion par excellence. But these nationalists were a tiny minority, and the followers of all heterodox sects combined form only a small fraction of the Kurds. The vast majority are Muslims, and many of them take their religion very seriously. The editors of Hawar discovered that the journal had to change its tone in order to find a wider readership. From 1941 on, each issue opened with Kurdish translations from the Koran and Traditions of the Prophet. Many other Kurdish secularised nationalists, before as well as after them, made the same discovery that in order to gain influence among the Kurds they had to accommodate themselves to Islam.
This was never an easy thing to do since most of these nationalists considered Islam as one of the major forces oppressing their people. The nationalist and poet Cigerxwin (1903-1984), who belonged to the circle around Hawar, toward the end of his life expressed his frustration with the Kurds' lasting attachment to Islam. Cigerxwin had himself in his youth pursued traditional religious studies at madrasas in various parts of Kurdistan. Later his Islamic piety gradually gave way to a strong emotional devotion to …..
1 It is often quoted in the literature of the first half of this century, for instance by Kamran Bedir-Khan in an article on ancient customs of the Kurds, in the journal Hawar 26 (August 18).
Martin Van Bruinessen
The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society
The Isis Press
The Isis Press Mullas, Suhs and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society Collected Articles Martin Van Bruinessen
