Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State
First and foremost, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my teacher and friend Stephen Dale for his support, encouragement, and guidance throughout the long years of this research. I feel truly fortunate to know him and privileged to call him a friend.
This book would not have been written if I did not have at my disposal the guidance and expertise of friends and colleagues at the University of Chicago including John Woods, Robert Dankoff, Cornell Fleischer, John Perry, Heshmat Moayyad, and Bruce Craig. At different stages of this work, I also benefited from the knowledge of Victoria Holbrook, Jane Hathaway, Selim Deringil, and Resat Kasaba.
I am also grateful to Yurdanur Serhat for introducing me to several Kurdish families through whom I collected much needed oral information about the previous generation of Kurds. Without her help, I would still be searching for the location of these people, let alone be able to convince them to sit down for an interview. With gratitude, I must also mention that the American Research Institute in Turkey partly funded this research. I am also indebted to Cambridge University Press and to Taylor-Francis Press (www.tandf.co.uk) for allowing me to utilize my previous articles in preparation of this book. In closing, I would like to thank my wife and daughters for providing me with the emotional support that enabled me to cope with the vicissitudes of such a long commitment. Needless to say, I accept full responsibility for the shortcomings of this book. | 
