Kurdistan and the Kurds
Royal Anthropological Institute
Compte d'auteur
This report is an attempt to collect and edit all information at present available about the Kurds and Kurdistan. It is based on the reports of military and political officers, especially of Captain C. F. Woolley and Major E. Noel, and on a paper written by Sir Mark Sykes in 1908 on " The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire." * The work of the" latter requires verification, as it is now nearly 15 years since he carried out his researches. The reports of the former are at present incomplete, as the country has only been accessible to British officers for six months.
No itinerary has been given, as almost the whole of Kurdistan has been ...
Contents
Chapter I.
Kurdistan and the Kurds.
Chapter I. Kurdistan and the Kurds.
§ 1 Kurdistan and its Boundaries.
§ 2 Northern Kurdistan.
§ 3 Southern Kurdistan.
§ 4 The Kurds.
Chapter II. The Kurdish Tribes.
§ 1 The Kurds round Uriah.
§ 2 The Milli Kurds.
§ 3 The Kurds on the Tur-el-Abdin and in the plain round Nisibin.
§ 4 The Kurds in Upper Kurdistan.
§ 5 The Kurds in the vicinity of Erzerum and Lake Van.
§ 6 The Kurds in Southern Kurdistan.
§ 7 The Yezidi Kurds.
Appendix.
Kurdish Tribes outside Kurdistan.
§ 1 Between Erzingan and Sivas, and in the neighbourhood of Marash.
§ 2 In Anatolia.
§ 3 In Syria.
Chapter III. The Kurdish Movement.
§ 1 The History of the Movement.
§ 2 The Origin and Causes of the Movement.
KURDISTAN AND THE KURDS
This report is an attempt to collect and edit all information at present available about the Kurds and Kurdistan. It is based on the reports of military and political officers, especially of Captain C. F. Woolley and Major E. Noel, and on a paper written by Sir Mark Sykes in 1908 on " The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire." * The work of the" latter requires verification, as it is now nearly 15 years since he carried out his researches. The reports of the former are at present incomplete, as the country has only been accessible to British officers for six months.
No itinerary has been given, as almost the whole of Kurdistan has been described in the " Handbook of Mesopotamia" (vols, i.-iv.) and in the "Military Report on Eastern Turkey in Asia" (vols, i.-iv.) It will be time to give a fresh account of the country when it has been re-explored.
As regards the numerous Kurdish tribes, it is feared that the account here given will be found very inaccurate. In the first place, there is much divergence in spelling, almost every report being based on a different system of transliteration ;. nor is this unnatural when it is borne in mind that the Kurdish language has never been reduced to writing. Secondly, many tribes are reported in various localities, sometimes in their winter quarters and sometimes in their summer quarters, without any indication being given as to which is meant; at other times it is uncertain whether the parent-tribe or an offshoot which has settled elsewhere is intended. A third difficulty lies in the custom of calling a tribe now by its tribal name, and now by that of its chief or even of one of his ancestors; consequently, what seems to refer to different tribes may in some cases refer to one and the same tribe.
All these questions require long and careful investigation ; and it is partly to draw attention to them and to provide a basis on which to work that this report has been compiled.
The map can only be regarded as approximately correct. It is impossible to locate exactly nomad and semi-nomad tribes, or to define boundaries where group overlaps group. Almost all the tribes mentioned in this book will be found in the map ; only those have been omitted whose position cannot be fixed, or certain sub-tribes of which the chief tribe has already been shown on the map.
Published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3, Hanover Square, London, W.
Chapter I
Kurdistan and the Kurds
§ 1. The Country and its Boundaries
Kurdistan embraces a wide tract of mountainous country, which bounds the fertile plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris on the north, almost from Aleppo to Lake Urmiyah, and on the east from Lake Urmiyah across the Persian frontier at Mendali to Pusht-i-Kuh. On the inner side of this half-circle the. frontiers of the country almost always coincide with the fringe of the low-lying plains and the skirts of the mountain-ranges; for the vast majority of the Kurdish tribes are mountain-dwellers and only descend to the plains at certain seasons of the year. On the outer edge, however, to the north and east, the limits of the country are less easily denned ; an almost countless horde of nomad and semi-nomad tribes move ceaselessly to and fro from mountain to valley and back again; small, unknown, tribes are settled more or less permanently wlierever a piece 'of land can be found suitable for cultivation; and all these Kurds are inextricably mixed up with Turkomans, Circassians, and Armenians; while religious differences form no less distinct divisions of these peoples than racial or national characteristics. ! Though, therefore, no definite! frontier can be traced, it can be said that Kurds predominate in all the country which is bounded on the south by the plains, and extends from Birijik, its westernmost extremity, northwards past Malatia almost to Erzing'an; thence the frontier runs along an ill-defined line to the river Araxes near Mount Ararat; from there it follows a southerly course past Lake Van to the north-west corner of Lake Urmiyah, and, skirting all the western shores of the lake, it passes down by Mundab to Khorsabad, and from there to Kermanshah ; and, finally, it bends round towards the east and strikes the plain of the Tigris at Mendali, on the Persian frontier, about 90 miles east-north-east of Baghdad. In the northern reaches of Kurdistan, however, we must except several clearly-marked stretches which are inhabited by peoples of a different race; Kharput is surrounded on the north, west, and south, entirely by Turks and Armenians; another large portion of Armenian territory encircles the town of Mush, though the city itself is occupied entirely by Kurds; round Lake Van is a wide belt of country populated exclusively by Armenians, and the western shore of Lake Urmiyah belongs equally to Turks, Armenians, and Kurds; and, lastly, another body of Armenians are settled in Julamerk and in the country west of the town, between these two lakes. Outside this area there are only a few unimportant colonies of Kurds, who have wandered away or been deported to Asia Minor or the Caucasus.
Royal Anthropological Institute
Kurdistan and the Kurds
Compte d'auteur
Compte d'auteur
Kurdistan and the Kurds
Royal Anthropological Institute
