The Kurdish National Movement

Abstract

A native of Iraq,Wadie Jwaideh founded the Islamic and Near Eastern studiesprogram at Indiana University (Bloomington) in the early 1960s and oversawitsrise to national and international recognition until his retirement in themid-eighties. Under his leadership, Indiana University became an internationallyrenowned center for the study of Islam and the Middle East. Hiscounsel was often sought by many, including heads of state. Moreover, hisencyclopedic knowledge of Arabic, Islamic history, and culture wasunmatched. In 2004, his students and friends founded the Jwaideh MemorialLecture. This book chronologically follows the developments of the Kurdishquestion from the suppression of semi-autonomous Kurdish emirates (principalities)in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, throughthe First World War and the Kurdish rebellions of the 1930s and 1940s andthe establishment and fall of the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.Although his main concerns revolve around the Kurdish nationalistmovement’s relative strength and relations to international politics in theMiddle East, he follows a comprehensive analytical approach and givesthe role of economic, religious, and psychological factors considerableweight.In his foreword, the well-known Kurdologist Martin van Bruinessenwrites that “many scholars have recognized its importance not only as astudy of the earlier phases of Kurdish nationalism, but also as a frameworkfor understanding later developments.” During the preparation of this study,which was originally a Ph.D. dissertation for Syracuse University in 1960,Jwaideh states of the Kurds: “Their behavior is one of the important factorsin the future stability and security not only of the Kurdish-inhabited countries,but of the entireMiddle East” (p. xiv). I strongly agree with Bruinessenthat this statement is more relevant today than ever; current events in Iraqonly serve to bear out how far-sighted Jwaideh was about the Kurds’ role inthe modern Middle East ...