Kurdish Culture and Identity
Philip Kreyenbroek
Christine Allison
Zed Books
Since the Gulf War and the Kurdish exodus of April 1991, there has been an internationalisation of the Kurdish issue. The wall of silence that had surrounded it for several decades collapsed just as the Berlin Wall fell. At present, the Western press publishes information regarding events in Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan quite regularly. Although the Kurdish issue has yet to be placed on the United Nations agenda, it has at least managed quite evidently to raise questions in the conscience of the world. It is not necessary, therefore, to give an exhaustive list of facts and data describing the present conditions of the Kurdish people. However, as reference will be made to such facts in the course of this chapter, I shall itemise a few points and bring into perspective the facts relating to the current situation. This will be followed by a general overview of the historical background.
Christine Allison read Classics and French at Oxford, after which her interest in the peoples and cultures of Kurdistan led her to embark on a doctorate on Kurdish Oral Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She has lived in the Safe Haven of Northern Iraq for a considerable time, and she has also travelled widely in Iran and Turkey. She is the author of a number of publications on Kurdish oral literature.
Philip G. Kreyenbroek is Reader in Iranian Languages and Religions in the University of London. Before coming to Britain in 1988 he taught Persian, Kurdish, Zoroastrianism and ancient Iranian languages in the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He is especially interested in Zoroastrianism and its textual tradition, Sufism, Yezidism, and oral literatures in Iranian cultures, and has published extensively on several of these subjects. His recent publications include a monograph, Yezidism: its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition. He is the founder of the Society for Iranian Oral Studies (SIOS). | 
