| PREFACE
I am delighted as Mazda publishers’ Kurdish studies series editor to offer readers Essays on the origins of Kurdish nationalism as our fourth book in the series. The contributions are the most theoretically innovative, conceptually insightful, and historiographically comprehensive essays of the foremost scholars presently working in the fields of Kurdish nationalism, Middle Eastern nationalisms and of nationalism itself. These essays are much more than just "pioneering" as Abbas Vali, the editor of the volume, modestly states. They are thoughtful works written by scholars who have researched, deliberated, and argued their respective positions for a long time. Readers will be deliciously injected into the primordialist, ethnicist, coherentist, constructivist-modernist, and historical materialist arguments regarding the origins and evolution of Kurdish nationalism and, by extension, of other nationalisms. The editor and contributors make clear that their topic and cutting-edge scholarship is an on-going debate.
The essays in this volume are, indeed, pioneering. They provide not only original theoretical constructs and innovative methodological inquires regarding the origins, evolution and condition of Kurdish nationalism, but in doing so contribute to the study of nationalism in general. These essays are also pioneering in that for the first time studies focused on Kurdish nationalism provide constructs, inquiries, and insights that should, and in my view will, prove influential in scholars' studies of other nationalisms, especially Arab, Turkish, Persian, Armenian, but also European, Asian, and African nationalisms.
These essays firmly anchor the study of Kurdish nationalism in the current and most persuasive historiography of the study of nationalisms. From now on, the study of "other" nationalisms will be influenced by the studies offered in this volume. This is an "about turn" that many of us in Kurdish studies have awaited for some time. Bravo! Abbas, Amir, Hamit, Martin and Nelida. Our hats are off to you!
Robert Olson | 
