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Cultural and Religious Links in Early Modern and Modern Periods
The Kurds are essentially linked to the Caucasian region by geography,
history and culture.
Although all these have centuries-long history (for instance, Kurdish
ruling dynasties in
Transcaucasia in the 9th-13th centuries), the following article summarises
cultural, historical
and religious links between the Kurds and the Caucasus in Early Modern
and Modern
periods.
Cultural and historical links between the Kurds and the Caucasus
There is a common linguistic heritage: at least one more language in
the region, Ossete,
together with Kurdish belong to the same Iranian group and Kurdish
and the Caucasian
languages alike have experienced a certain impact of Arabic, Persian
and Turkish.
The shared cultural heritage is reflected in music (especially in Kurdish
and Armenian one)
and folk stories. Thus, a Kurdish popular hero Mirza Mahmud has a Georgian
wife; the
Armenian legend speaks of a certain Kurd named Shavo, after whom a
mountainous path is
named, and an Azeri popular poem glorifies the daughter of Kurdistan.
Moreover, a Sufi
Shaikh San‘an gave up his religion for an Armenian lady and became
poetically immortalised
by the Kurdish classic Faqi Tayran.
An interesting evidence for Caucasian idea in the Kurdish society are
proper names. There
are several wide-spread names amongst the Kurds which allude to various
Caucasian ethnic
groups such as:
Gurco [Georgian], a male name;
Ecem [originally Persian, but also Azeri], a male name;
Chachane [probably, Chechen], a female name;
Cherkez [Circassian], a male name;
Lezgîn [Lezgin], a male name.
According to Vladimir Minorsky, from the very ancient times the Kurds
were living in
Transcaucasia. T. Aristova, a Moscow ethnographer, dates some Kurdish
villages in the
Nakhichevan and the borderland between Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh
and Armenia by
the 10th century AD. However, larger waves of Kurdish arrival to the
region fall on the 19th
century as a result of Gulistan and Turkmanchay peace treaties between
Russia and Persia.
The further increase of the Kurdish population in the Caucasus took
place after Russia's
victorious wars against Turkey in 1828-1829 and 1877-1878. The process
of migration
continued until 1925.
The Kurds moved to rural settlements in Armenia and Azerbaijan and settled
in Tbilisi and
some other Georgian cities. In 1923-1930 there was a short-living Kurdish
autonomy in
Azerbaijan, bordering Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and in 1930-s and
1944 as a result
of Stalin’s policy a part of the Caucasian Kurds were displaced to
the Central Asia and
Kazakhstan. In late 1980-s and early 1990-s because of wars and economic
hardships
thousands of Transcaucasian Kurds migrated to North Caucasus: Krasnodar
and Stavropol
regions and some autonomous republics within the Russian Federation.
In a word, the 19th-20th centuries made a part of the Kurds live in
all over the Caucasus and
have a contact with dozens of local nationalities.
It goes without surprise that Soviet scholars of Kurdish descent have
been dealing with the
history and culture of their people both in the Caucasus and beyond.
Much more remarkable
is the interest towards the Kurds displayed by the Armenian, Georgian,
and Russian
scholars, many of whom had personal impressions of the Caucasian Kurds:
Niko Marr,
Vladimir Minorsky, Basile Nikitine and even the current Russian foreign
minister Yevgeni
Primakov (due to his Caucasian childhood and his unofficial role of
the Soviet envoy to
Mustafa Barzani´s movement). Moreover, at present many Kurdish
scholars from
Transcaucasia work in academic centres in Paris, Vienna and Brussels.
ARMENIA. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the Armenians
were in many cases
pioneers and promoters of Kurdish studies. As early as in the 17th
century Simeon Lehazi,
an Armenian from Lvov, visited the Middle East and left an extensive
report on the Kurds. A
century later Artemi of Ararat would write new ethnographic notes on
the Kurds.
The classic of the modern Armenian literature, Khachatur Abovian (1809-1848),
in his
studies indicated on elements characteristic of both the Armenians
and the Kurds. In the 19th
century there were several outstanding Kurdologists such as S.A. Egiazarov
whose works on
Transcaucasian Kurds remain very useful and S. Aykuni who collected
Kurdish folklore. This
tradition was continued in the Soviet period when Armenia became a
heaven for Kurdish
studies and culture:
- about 80-90 % of Soviet Kurdish intelligentsia was educated in Armenia;
- The Soviet Kurdish newspaper, Riya T'eze (The New Path), daily radio
broadcasting and
book-publishing were centred in Yerevan;
- The first all-Soviet Conference on Kurdish studies was held in Yerevan
in July, 1934;
- The Institute of Oriental Studies and other institutions in Armenia
were extensively dealing
with the Kurds, their history, religion, language, and culture.
Besides, many scholars of Armenian descent substantially contributed
to Kurdology such as
A. Saphrastian, the director of the Hermitage I. Orbeli (who set up
the Kurdish Department at
the Institute of Oriental Studies in Leningrad) and Zh. Musaelian who
has recently published
the most extensive Bibliography on Kurdology.
On the other hand the positive image of Armenia is attested in Kurdish
tradition. Thus,
Mohammad Mokri, a modern Iranian Kurdish scholar and politician (who
even was the first
ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Moscow and was running
for presidency in
Iran) published his study entitled Armenia in Kurdish folklore.
GEORGIA. With regard to Georgia, in 1970-s and 1980-s the interest
towards Kurdish theme
increased and Tbilisi soon became another centre for Kurdish cultural
life with classes at
schools, a theatre, musical groups, publication of books, weekly radio
broadcasting and the
Kurdish section in the Writers' Association of Georgia. The local scholars
were and are
dealing with Georgian sources related to the Kurds. Thus, the latest
monograph of V.
Macharadze is dedicated to Georgian documents on relationships between
the Georgians,
Kurds, Assyrians and Russians during the reign of the King Irakli II
of Georgia (the 18th
century). Another Georgian author, A. Menteshashvili, has published
in 1984 one of the most
comprehensive studies on the Kurdish social life.
Another interesting point is that while the absolute majority of the
Georgia's Kurds speak in
Northern (Kurmandji) dialect, the Soviet Kurdologist Q. Kurdoev recorded
two short texts in
Zaza dialect from the residents of a Zaza village near Batumi (Adzharian
Autonomous
Republic in Georgia).
AZERBAIJAN. Apart form autonomy experience in Azerbaijan in 1920-s,
there were made
major studies on the dialect and folklore of the Kurds living in Azerbaijan.
In 1931 the
Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan and the local Research Institute
jointly sponsored an
expedition headed by A. Bukshpan to the villages of the former autonomous
district. That
material was disclosed in A. Bukshpan's work on the Kurds of Azerbaijan
published in Baku
in 1932. Then, during the Soviet period N. Marr, O. Vilchevsky, B.V.
Miller and Ch. Bakaev
published their studies on the dialect and culture of the Kurds of
Azerbaijan.
Another source of the mutual Azeri-Kurdish sympathy is linked to 1946
revolution in Iranian
Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. It is reflected in literature, for instance,
by the two most prominent
Iranian Kurdish authors, Hajar and Hemin.
In recent years there are hints on the revival of Kurdish cultural
life in Azerbaijan, namely
newspapers, books and organisations. Another interesting point is a
small Kurdish-speaking
Khalaj minority in Azerbaijan whose name and culture could be traced
back to the famous
mystic al-Hallaj.
The Kurds in the Caucasian context from religious prospective
In terms of religion, the waves of the Kurdish migration to the Caucasus
since the 18th
century were as follows: the Sunni Muslim Kurds settled districts with
Muslim majority
(alongside Adzharian and Meskhetian Muslims in Georgia and Turkic groups
in Armenia and
Azerbaijan), whereas the Yezidi Kurds found refuge in predominantly
non-Muslim, or
Christian districts of Georgia and Armenia. Now, after the tragic events
connected with the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, all the Muslim Kurds had to leave Armenia,
and the republic’s
Kurdish population is exclusively Yezidi. Moreover, because of reasons
which I intend to
study, there is a new ideology shared by some Armenia´s Yezidi
Kurds and allegedly
sponsored by certain local circles which claim that the Yezidis constitute
a separate, non-
Kurdish ethnic group. In general, in terms of number Yezidis and Sunni
Muslims constitute
two equal parts among 250,000 Caucasian Kurds.
Needless to say that the Northern Caucasus is the most expressive region
for Islamic
mysticism in the post-Soviet space. After Russia's wars in the 1850-s
the Qadiriya order
spread over the Northern Caucasus due to the shepherd Kunt Hadji Kishiev
who received the
khirqa from ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani in his dream. As is known, al-Gilani
and the tariqa
Qadiriya play a very essential role in the Kurdish tradition, too:
even the Yezidi religion
venerates the image of ´Abd al-Qadir. However, soon Naqshbandiya
Mudjadadiya Khalidiya
replaced Qadiriya as an ideology of resistance to Russian expansion.
This means another
Kurdish thread stretched to the Northern Caucasus.
The rise of the Khalidiya branch in both Kurdistan and North Caucasus
goes back to
Mawlana Khalid Baghdadi (d. 1827). He was a Kurd from Sulaymania, forced
by local amirs
in the Qadiriya-based Baban principality to leave the city. Besides
his religious devotion,
Khalid remained faithful to his homeland and his mother tongue, in
which he poetically
described his homesick feelings.
The Khalidiya supplanted almost entirely all other branches of the Naqshbandiya
in the
Middle East, and in Kurdistan it wrested supremacy from the Qadiriya
to become the chief
order of the region. Although the principal Kurdish khalifas of Mawlana
Khalid resided in
Ottoman empire, their influence was considerable among the Iranian
Kurds, too. Before long
Khalid´s Kurdish followers started to express both religious
and Kurdish national aspirations.
The latter was reflected in the great Kurdish uprising of 1880 led
by Shaykh Ubayd Allah of
Shamdinan, who, as a token of a higher political devotion, rejected
the Ottoman attempts to
stir him up against the Armenian and Assyrian Christians.
Furthermore, the immediate pretext for the ban of Sufi orders in Kemalist
Turkey was the
1925 Kurdish national uprising led by the Khalidi Shaikh Sa‘id. After
his defeat many of his
followers emigrated to the territory of Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan,
from where they were
displaced by Stalin’s order to Kazakstan. Another example of Naqshbandi
opposition to the
Turkish Republic was Shaikh Muhammad As'ad (Mehmed Esad, d. 1931),
a native of Arbil
and descendant of Mawlana Khalid. He became a leading shaikh in Istanbul,
but in 1931 he
was arrested on charges of complicity and died in prison hospital.
Descendants of Mehmed
Esad and other Khalidi shaikhs continue to be active in Turkey by integrating
themselves into
such political structures as the National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet
Partisi) and its
successor, the Prosperity Party (Refah Partisi).
Since in general active opposition and action, not just a contemplation,
is a feature of
Naqshbandiya, its Khalidiya branch expanded from Kurdistan to Talish,
and later to the
Northern Caucasus. This kind of religious inspiration for national
resistance became very
topical in Chechniya and Daghestan during the Caucasian wars of the
19th century and
during the Chechens´ forced migration to Kazakstan and Central
Asia in 1944-1957.
The future will demonstrate whether the Refah Partisi-type and Naqshbandiya-based
Islamic
politics could gain essential grounds in Turkey, Kurdistan and the
Northern Caucasus.
2.
Zorabe Budi (Aloiane)
European and East-European Links to the Kurds in the Past
The Kurds are rightfully viewed and studied in the context of the Middle
East. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the topic of the role of the European theme
in the Kurdish tradition
has been never the subject of special studies. Certainly, I leave out
the political implication of
the Kurdish issue which the European powers since the 19th century
were preoccupied with.
However, Europe was not an alien region to the Kurdish people. In other
words, the Kurds
did not appear in Europe from 'nowhere' and Europe was never a terra
incognita for the
Kurdish people. This statement is well based on oral and written sources.
Thus, according to one of the legends concerning the origin of the
Kurds, once King Solomo
who ruled over supernatural world called his angelic servants and ordered
them to fly to
Europe for the sake of bringing five-hundred beautiful women to him.
When his servants
were back they learned that their master had already passed away. Then
they retained those
women for themselves, and that was the origin of the Kurdish nation.
Kurdish folklore has more indications on contacts with the European
peoples and lands and
there are many such sources both recorded and preserved in an oral
way. I.A. Orbeli wrote
about links between Kurdish culture and cultures of some European peoples.
As an example
he wrote about parallels between the early medieval Kurdish epic story
of Mam u Zin, French
chivalrous novel of Tristan and Isolda and the story of the Persian
poet of the 11th century
Fakhr ad-Din Asad Gurgani Vis and Ramin.
In this respect, there are the two most popular and wide-spread traditions
linking the Kurds
with the Europe: stories of Alexander the Great and the image of Constantinolpe
and
Byzantium in legends concerning Kurdish saints, warriors and brigands.
The latter tradition
was excessively recorded by European, Eastern and Kurdish scholars
and this material is
available in many publications. Moreover, with regard to the Kurdish
saints, there are written
sources in Arabic and Persian. The continuity of the Byzantine Empire
in Kurdish views was
so apparent that even now they call Turkey 'the Black Rome' (Roma Resh)
as a contrary to
'not black Rome', i.e. Byzantium.
As is known, the most prominent Kurd in the world history was Saladin
who, with the support
of his countrymen took over the position of the ruler and unifier of
the Islamic world.
According to Orientalists, Saladin (or Salah ad-Din) Ayyubi was the
second most significant
personality in Islamic history - after the Prophet Muhammad. Saladin's
image was elaborated
in the European literature and quite often his Kurdish descent also
was referred to (e.g. in
Lessing's Natan the Wise, Walter Scott's ´´Richard the
Lion Heart´´). Moreover, according to
Voltaire, Saladin was of greater dignity and significance for humanity
than Alexander the
Great.
While Europe experienced transition from the Middle Ages, the Middle
East was becoming
less advanced politically and economically and there the Middle Ages
lasted, no doubt,
longer. With the creation and advance of the Ottoman empire, many of
the Kurdish
aristocrats and men of letter supported the Turks and played an important
role in the
Ottoman army, administration and European campaigns. Thus, we know
that the Kurdish
rulers of Kilis region (modern Turkey) were with the Ottomans during
the Belgrade campaign
(1521), occupation of the Rodos (1522) and Moldavian war (1538). Moreover,
the members
of the same family accompanied Sultan during his campaign in Sziget,
Hungary, (1557) due
to which one of them Ali b. Polad-bek was later appointed an Ottoman
representative in
Transylvanian Kolozsvar (present-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania).
Members of another Kurdish noble family participated in the battle
at Eger and the famous
Hungarian novel ´´Egri csillagok´´ (Stars of
Eger) by Géza Gardonyi several times mentions
the Kurds who came with the Ottomans. One of the Kurdish nobelmen,
according to the
novel, revolted against the Ottoman authorities and was chained. Another
hero, a certain
Dzhekidzh from Bitlis, was captured by the Hungarians and was later
released.
The ruler of the ancient Kurdish province of Jazira fell into disgrace
of the Sultan and the
latter in 1583 sent him to Buda where he was supposed to live without
coming back to his
former possessions.
There are many other indication of the Kurds participating in the Turkish
military and political
matters in the Central Europe and one of the best examples of this
is the kunya (nick-name)
al-Busnawi (Bosnian) of the Kurdish ruler of Diyarbakir.
Another aspect of European theme amongst the Kurds is also worthy of
note.
The Baban aristocratic family which until the midst of the 19th century
controlled much of the
Southern Kurdistan (presently in Iraq) links its origin to the half-legendary
Bedeh-khan.
According to the Baban's genealogical tree, Bedeh-khan was a son of
Faki Ahmad who
escaped from Bilbas tribe and went to serve the Ottoman Sultan. Faki
Ahmad was in the
Ottoman army during the midst-17th century's wars with 'infidels'.
In one of the battles he
captured a French young lady who fought in the knight's dress. According
to the Baban
tradition, Faki Ahmad married her and they had two sons one of whom,
Baba Sultan, founded
a Sulaymani Baban branch, whereas Bedeh-khan was the founder of Bekzade
dynasty.
Besides ´´kings and aristocrats´´, Kurdish
theme is reflected in European spiritual life as well.
For instance, the Hungarian-born scholar Hugo Makas in the end of the
19th century
collected Kurdish texts for St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and
his collection was
published after the October Revolution: Hugo Makas, ´´Kurdische
Texte im Kurmanji Dialecti
aus der Gegend von Mardin´´, Leningrad, 1926. Hugo Makas
recorded the texts from a
Kurdish merchant Muhammad Emin who came to the Moravian city of Brno
for commercial
purposes. Moreover, Hugo Makas was also dealing with ´´Mem
u Zin´´ by A. Khani and thus
contributed to Kurdish literary studies.
