S.9
«Au moment de la déb[â]cle turque, les chefs
kurdes se réunirent, au mois de mai 1919, près de
Malatia, à Kahta, pour organiser une action
antikémaliste. Le colonel Bell, chef de l'Intelligence
Service à Alep, vint les en dissuader au nom de son
gouvernement, tout au promettant de la part des Alliés que
les aspirations nationales kurdes seraient prises en
considération. Le traité de Sèvres
était déjà en vue ...» (Nikitine
Les Kurdes S.196)
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S.9f
«Trois délégués du Kurdistan Taali
Djémiéti; Les Emirs Djéladet et Kamouran
Aali Bedr-Khan et Djémil Pacha Zadé Ekrem Bey qui
se trouvaient à Malatia en mission, furent attaqués
par les forces que Moustafa Kémal dirigea contre eux.
Devant cette agression, ils se retirèrent sur les
montagnes de Kahta pour organiser une force Kurde et chasser ces
hordes que Moustapha Kémal avait envoyé contre eux.
Ils avaient déjà réuni quelque 3000 hommes
lorsque le même colonel Bell arrivant à Malatia leur
manda un officier anglais, Major Noel, qui au nom du Gougernement
Anglais les pria d'avoir à se retirer
immédiatement. Ils durent s'exécuter car de ne
point suivre ce Conseil c'était en combattant les Turcs
avoir les Anglais sur le dos.» (Chirguh [Bedir Khan] La
question kurde S.29; mit Setzfehlern wiedergegeben)
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S.21
“The many forms of speech known to outsiders as Kurdish do
not constitute a single, unified langugage. Instead it can be
said that the various Kurdish dialects, which are clearly
interrelated and at the same time distinguishable from
neighbouring but more distantly related Western Iranian
languages, fall into three main groups. The differences between
dialects are generally proportional to their distance apart and
beyond a certain distance certainly make them mutually
unintelligible.” (Bois „Stichwort: Kurds,
Kurdistan“ S.479)
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S.28
“For pragmatic reasons I use a rather loose and wide
definition, including all native speakers of dialects belonging
to the Iranic languages Kurmanşi or Zaza, as well as those
Turkish speaking persons who claim descent from Kurmanşi or Zaza
speakers and who still (or again) consider themselves as
Kurds.” (van Bruinessen „The Ethnic Identity of the
Kurds“ S.613)
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S.29
“Many Shafi‘i Kurds, in fact, refuse to consider the
Alevis and Yezidis as Kurds. Intermarriage between these
religious groups is extremely rare, much rarer than between
Turkish and Kurdish Alevis or even Turkish and Kurdish Sunnis.
It might, in fact, be more apt to consider the Kurds not as one,
but as a set of ethnic groups [...]” (ebenda S.614)
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S.30
“Other, secondary symbols are even less apt to define a
boundary: ‘Kurdish’ dress, music, folklore, cooking,
etc. show great regional variations, while the similarities with
those of other ethnic groups in the same region are sometimes
striking.” (ebenda S.614f)
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S.31
“These symbols of separateness have since the late 1920s
been suppressed by the republican Government, which paradoxically
made it possible for the nationalist movement of the 1970 to
promote a re-invented, more unified Kurdish tradition [...]”
“People started wearing Kurdish clothes again – in many
cases a fancy dress, based on that worn by the Iraqi Kurds.”
(ebenda S.614f und S.620f)
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S.38
“The Dumbuli (Dümbeli), for instance, are mentioned in
the Šarafnama as a Kurmangi-speaking tribe,
originally Yezidis but later converted to Sunni Islam. Part of
tribe having moved from the mountains south of Lake Van to the
area of oy, their chieftains allied themselves with the Safavids
[...] During the following centuries, the Dumbuli continued to
play a prominent role in regional politics, gradually
Turkicising. At present, all Dumbuli are turcophone Twelver
(ithna ‘ašari) Shi‘is. An example of the
reverse development is the Karakeçili tribe, seminomads
living on the slopes of the Karacadag mountain to the
southwest of Diyarbakïr. They are kurdophone, but according
to local tradition they were originally Türkmen from Western
Anatolia, who had been settled in this region by Sultan Selim I
after the Ottoman conquest. Sections of the Karakeçili who
stayed behind in Western Anatolia retained their Türkmen
identity; the ones settled on Karacadag gradually
Kurdicised, as a result of intermarriage and the incorporation
of Kurdish allies into the tribe.” (ebenda S.618)
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S.38b
“Rarely do analysts using supposed ethnic names probe their
actual usage: it is too easily assumed, for example, that Baluch,
Kurd and Pathan are comparable identities, that each one keeps
the same meaning wherever it is used, and that each represents
a ‘real’ unity of origins and culture. An examination
of the immensely varied and complex popular discourses shows that
cultural identities, whether ‘ethnic’,
‘tribal’ or otherwise, make sense only in social
contexts. They are essentially negotiable subjects of strategic
manipulations; individuals claim status and present themselves,
in different ways in different contexts, and how they do so
depends particularly on power relations and on local hierarchies
– but also on policies and categorisations by the
state.” (Tapper „Minorities and the Problem of the
State“ S.1030)
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S.41
“Mediaeval Arab geographers used the term ‘Kurd’
(in its Arabic plural form ‘Akrad’) to denote those
nomadic (or semi-nomadic) tribes that were neither Arab nor Turk.
This includes tribes that even the most extreme of Kurdish
nationalists would nowadays not reckon among his nation.
Occasionally even Arabic-speaking nomads were called
‘Akrad’ [...]” (van Bruinessen Agha, Shaikh
and State S.124)
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S.43
«Pourtant, hameau minuscule ou village important, le
peuplement montagnard est perdu d'ordinaire dans un espace trop
large, de circulation difficile, un peu comme ces premiers
centres du Nouveau Monde, noyés eux aussi dans un espace
surabondant, en grande partie inutile ou hostile [...] La
montagne est obligée de vivre sur elle-même pour
l'essentiel, de tout produire, vaille que vaille, de cultiver la
vigne, le blé et l'olivier, même si le sol ou le
climat s'y prêtent mal.» (Braudel La
Méditerranée et le monde
méditerranéen Bd.1 S.29)
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S.45
“Even on the level of the tribe unity against outsiders may
remain restricted to the domain of ideology. [...] In case of
conflict between two tribes it may happen that a section of one
of them makes common cause with the other one – either
because of a internal (blood) feud that is taken very seriously,
or (more frequently) because the sectional leader has an axe to
grind with the paramount chieftain. [...] there were perpetual
struggles for leadership of the tribe. Each of the rivals tried
to manipulate the socio-political environment in order to get the
better of the others. For such people the relevant classification
is not 'my tribe' vs 'the other tribes' but 'the power sources
my rivals are tapping' vs 'the power sources I might tap'. [...]
Manipulation of the central state in order to get the upper hand
in a local, tribal conflict is a recurrent theme in Kurdish
history.” (van Bruinessen Agha, Shaikh and State
S.71f)
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S.55
“[...] the fall of the Ayyubids was followed by one of the darkest
periods of Kurdish history. The Mongol horde swept over Kurdistan [...] For
two and a half centuries (1260-1502) the power of the Ilkhans Mongols and
that of Tamerlane and his successors was constantly resisted by the Kurds
[...] Once the tempest had passed, the native inhabitants rebuilt their ruins,
and in a few years re-established their industrial and commercial
concerns.” (Bois The Kurds S.139)
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S.57
“[...] the early history of the Kurds cannot be reconstructed with any
certainty. Unfortunately, the scarcity of evidence and the romanticizing of the
Kurds by Americans and Europeans [...] has resulted in an outpouring of
pseudo-scholarly nonsense, propounding wild theories that can never be
conclusively disproved.” (Limbert „The Origins and Appearance
of the Kurds“ S.48)
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S.83
“[...] every attempt at building an empire, since it required
centralisation of power and administration, had to work against the owners of
the great suyûrghâls.” (Fragner „Social and Internal
Economic Affairs“ S.508)
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S.87
“After nine centuries (639-1502) of utter suppression and laceration
Persia raised her head again, and, under the leadership of Shah Ismail Safavi
restored her united sovereignty [...]” (Safrastian Kurds and
Kurdistan S.39)
S.93
“[...] government, whether by foreigner or by native, is exercise of
power; and power, it is commonly and rightly said, sets up barriers, isolates,
puts him who exercises it in a different world from him who is subject to it.
Those who have power and those who do not have power are different
species of men.” (Kedourie „Introduction“ S.134)
S.96
“The Safavids' political organisation was openly tribal [...] This tribal
organisation clearly rivaled the sedentary structure of the Ottoman [...]
enterprise [...] it was modeled not on the Persianized bureaucracies of
classical Islam but on the Mongol political tradition, passed on in Anatolia by
the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu confederations [...] The Safavids provided
the nomads their acceptable alternative, and they seized it.” (Lindner
Nomads and Ottomans S.110)