By #Lazghine Ya´qoube#
Though the crisis in Syria has lifted its Kurds from profound obscurity into global recognition, this newfound visibility has also made them the subject of smears and disinformation campaigns. These efforts have surged since December 2024, giving free rein to new falsehoods- a sequel to the state’s decades-long distortion of history and deeply ingrained aversion.

The official undisputed adage, embraced blindly by those entertaining intense antipathy towards the Kurds, alleges that thousands of “Turkey’s Kurds” immigrated to the vast “virgin” plains of the Syrian Jazira in 1920s, consequent on the aborted uprising of Sheikh Said of Palo.

Successive Syrian regimes have always ascribed the Kurdish presence in (immigration to) the country’ northeast region to the post- 1925 era, dealing with Kurds either as second- rate citizens at best, or failing that, considering them strangers.

Over the last century, Damascus– whatever the nature or ideology of its regime may be– has always sought, and still seeks, an end similar to that which the Ottoman Turks had always pursued during the last two centuries against the Kurd.

In the very same manner, the uprising was employed to eradicate Kurdish identity in Northern Kurdistan, Syria’s Islamists rulers- emulating the Baathists- citing the epoch- making event in introducing Syria as the Kurd’s country of adoption, not that of origin.

To avert complications of the past, it is completely inadmissible for the Kurd to remain satisfied or be anesthetized with a few hackneyed phrases affirming traditional gossips, or to have merely a plaster on the unhealed wounds.

While Syria’s century- long stately denial of the Kurd is a bred- in- the- bone- state ideology, it has turned to be inveterately engraved in the country’s communal mentality, in a true realization of Joseph Goebbels theory of the Big Lie (illusive truth).

Last year, the Baathist dictatorship- not regrettably- was consigned to the past, but not its chauvinist ideology, which– strengthened by religious fanaticism– still gathering momentum yet more ferociously.

Since taking power, Islamist rulers seem more amenable to the outdated narrative. Bashar Assad’s fall has turned a gaggle of Jihadists, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, into a religious tyranny, surpassing its predecessor in notoriety, body and soul.

In a remarkable precedent, al-Sharaa’s government has staked fervent claim to Rojava, accusing it of harbouring secessionist ideas against the state’s security, calling the Kurd’s millennia- old presence into question.

It is plain that some hundred years ago, the term Rojava was not yet coined as Kurdistan still was making one compact geographical unity. It is likewise an admitted fact, not without the most reliable authority, that the first Kurdish occupation of Rojava amounts up to antiquity even beyond the reach of records.

Jazira– a main part of Mesopotamia– abounds in extensive and numberless natural excrescences- mounds and hills- whose contains are history not romance. The table-like country, which was intersected by numerous streams and seasonal creeks, was dotted, likewise, by numberless hut-like and largely kinship- focused settlements, whose occupants subsisted on the prolific produce of the land, and livestock products.

While this land was closed to the outer world, presented a most interesting field for geographical and general exploration, it, however, offered the visitor neither courage nor interest to penetrate deeper into its expanse.

Syria’s Kurdish Question, therefore, cannot by fully understood without turning the spotlight on to the country’s history. It is therefore, imperative to look back- way back- some 100 years ago, to late 1900s, and further beyond, to shed light on unopened books, which may hopefully conduce to a better understanding of the Kurdish occupation of Rojava.

Admittedly, one of the major problems for the student of the very recent history of the Syrian Jazira lies in nearly the scarcity or the non-availability of material concerning the area spanning 1880s up to 1900s, which is very essential in the formation of today’s Rojava.

Official Ottoman records which have been released, ministers’ diaries and politicians’ memoirs which have seen their way to publication, devote tiny a space- if any- to the Kurdish affairs in general and to Jazira in particular in the period under consideration. However, discoveries by European travelers, missionaries, and later diplomats, which started in the first half of 1800, and increased in the second half, are of considerable value. They introduce a salutary effect in this regard.

From 1908 till 1914, i.e. from the accession to power in Istanbul of the Young Turks, till the very first shots of the war, Turkish pan- Turanist policy in Kurdistan became markedly aggressive and (as a cancerous gangrene) went immensely invasive, tightening the screw on the Kurd.

As an ominous sign, the same year that saw the rise to prominence of the Young Turks, saw, likewise, the demise of the last of Kurdish dominions– that of Ibrahim Pasha of Millan.

Militarily might, the pasha played his cards politically wrong by putting all his eggs in the unrestorable basket of Sultan Abdul Hamid. The Young Turk put an end to Ibrahim’s authority, which made itself momentously felt as far as the confines of Deir Ezzor.

In 1914, German Admiral, Wilhelm Souchon, dragged the unwilling empire of Ottoman into the Great War, during which, Faisal of Mecca, contacted by MI5, would be hoodwinked into the mendacious promise of Syria’s crown, a reward for successfully playing off the Arab against the Turk.

Although the 1916 Sykes- Picot Agreement allotted Syria to France, alarming military situation as the war drew to a close, necessitated British forces to conquer Syria. Likewise, the Armistice of Mudros, 1918, gave Britain a free hand to control Kurdish areas without much fighting.

By the Syrian Agreement, 1919, Britain finally ceded Syria and the Kurdish areas to France, not without compensation; Mosul, ending Faisal’s short- lived Kingdom, which never took shape in the Kurdish north.

In the wake of the victory attained in Maysalun, on the preceding day, Mariano Goybet, Commander of the French Forces, strutted unfettered into Damascus, July 25, 1920.

Syria, as a successor state to the decrepit Ottoman Empire, or rather more precisely, as a product of filthy British- French imperialist machination, has come into existence, with boundaries still unmarked and largely porous.

In the Middle East’s most formative period, military machine of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, in a scorched land policy, would bring the Kurdish uprising of 1925 to heel, driving, in consequence, thousands of Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, and Syriacs further south, to the sparsely populated Jazira.

Undeniably, no Kurd with the slightest sense of reality lays the tiniest doubt on this historical fact, not, however, to the effect of the claim that prior to 1925, there existed no Kurdish presence– sedentary and transhumant– in Jazira.

To proceed. Turning the clocks back to the scenes of earlier history, the area spanning the period 1830s up to 1890s, witnessed several punitive expeditions with the aim to restore the unaffected Kurdish centres, dispersing in the result plain people to mountains and cities.

Notwithstanding, one of the most densely populated areas of Jazira has always been the one that stretches alongside the road from Amuda in the north, up to Hasaka further south, and the area that extends from Amuda to Ras al-Ain (Sere Kaniye) to the west. Any traveller- past and present- would easily come across numberless villages dotted in an endless expanse.

In 1816, British traveler, James Buckingham passes through the villages of Tal Sha’ir, Dughir, Chil Agha, and further eastward to the mound of Rumailan. From Nusaybin up to Aznaour, to the east, he comes across “several villages on our right and left, but I could not learn their names.”

Three years prior to that date, 1813, Scottish officer and diplomat, John M. Kinneir, makes nonsense of the claim that Jazira was a barren desert land before the state of Syria came into existence. Proceeding from Nusaybin to Shorik and Chil Agha, Kinneir says: “We travelled through a plain partially cultivated, and containing many villages.”

The upon the spot observations of Kinneir and Buckingham, among others of greater antiquity, seem to be the most valuable one in the field. Likewise, John Taylor, in 1861, spots a considerable number of villages in east and west Nusaybin on his famous map. The British diplomat mentions, ‘Anteriye, Qortapan, Gire Mira, Bazara, Dalave Kara, Jawhariya, among others.

Uniquely, American missionary, Horatio Southgate, gives a broader play- by- play, and yet a true and fair view when revealing the fact that between the mound of Rumailan, and Nusaybin from one hand, and Mount Sinjar and that of Tur from another, there existed 54 villages, of which 9 inhabited by Yazidis, 18 by Muslims, and the remaining 27 by Jacobite Christians.

Being an exception to the rule, Southgate passes the Sinjar Desert to Nusaybin, eight years after the destructive campaign of the ill- famed Ottoman governor, Hafez Pasha, a Circassian by birth, against the Yazidis, which had deleterious effects on the region as a whole.

In 1840s, missionary George Badger while in the village of Amuda observes “the plain, which might be rendered one of the most fertile in the world, is only cultivated her and there by the Kurds, and a few Arabs of the Jubur and Tay Arabs.” The latter, Badger asserts, speak Kurdish as well as their own language.

In his second journey to Kurdistan, Badger, in 1850, observes upon leaving Diyarbakir (ancient Amed) towards Mardin, “we had now fairly entered upon the Kurdish district, as nearly all the villages from Diyarbakir to Mosul are inhabited by this race.”

However, the appointment in 1835 of Mohamed Pasha (Ince Bairakdar) to the vast Pashalik of Mosul was a turning point not only for Jazira, rather for the whole of Kurdistan. Upon crushing his opponents, one- by- one, Bairakdar would exploit his office to the limit.

The importance of this epoch for the history of Jazira could hardly be underestimated. The crushing of the Rawanduz emirate, which extended under its daring leader, Mohamed Bey the blind, up to Mardin, and that of Ishmael Bey of Amedi, and the Ridwan Emirate. All these incidents took place in 1835, 1836, and 1837. These were fateful years for the Kurds.

It must be conceded that the region suffered grievously at the hands of Ince Bairakdar, a groom who jumped into a provincial governor in Homs and Aleppo. Bairakdar did bestride the whole region, sultan and all, like a colossus.

The Ottoman defeat to the Egyptian Army of Ibrahim Pasha in the two- hour battle of Nazib (June 24, 1839), served as a landmark in the Ottoman history. Kurdish fighters who left the battle kept their arms and ammunition, posing colossal (perceived) threats to the weakened empire. As the Kurds were reconsidering their pledge of allegiance to the Sultan.

The defeat at Nazib seems to have given an incentive to the Kurds of Mardin to revolt against the demoralized Ottoman government on September 6, 1839. However, when Asaad Pasha of Diyarbakir failed to rise to the occasion, the task was assigned to Bairakdar, who would mercilessly quell the insurrection.

In plain words, Badger describes the horror he met upon entering the city of Mardin on October 27, 1842, exactly three years, one month, and 21 days after the insurrection. “On entering the city walls, we found ourselves amidst a heap of ruins, and it was some time before we could persuade ourselves that the place was not deserted.”

All these acts of vengeance devastated several Kurdish localities, including Mardin, where people could stumble on skeletons scattered in the alleys of the wretched city.

Ince Bairakdar, (died in 1843, being victim to his habit of drinking) rendered villages as desolate by unbearable taxes. Each village and hamlet was rendered as desolate by tax gatherers who turned into real bandits. Whole villages fled from the endurable oppression. Everywhere, in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, were roofless houses and deserted fields.

While the frequent and the long- continued oppression was ostensibly seeking to punish frightful marauding bandits, the punitive campaigns, which, a as part of their centralization policy, drove in the result people living in the open plain to the mountain peaks.

“We passed the market-place, where to our horror we saw no less than seven heads, covered with dust, lying upon the ground,” Badger relates.

Destruction laid so an immense a waste to the region in that it brought Nusaybin– a city of considerable importance in the past– to a miserable hut- like deserted village. In the wake of the Sinjar campaign of 1838, Hafez Pasha had his commander Mirza Pasha appointed to the superintendence of rehabilitating the city of Nusaybin. Mirza built a palace for his men. But to no avail.

The district between Mardin and Jazira was overrun by troops of marauders, who ravaged the villages everywhere. No efforts were made on the part of the local authorities to stay these freebooters, who daily plundered caravans, and committed several murders with impunity.

It was apparent that the government was intent to reduce the Kurd to a state of groveling poverty. William Ainsworth gives a true description of the city in January 1840.

“The kasr (palace) was still existed, but was untenanted; near it were also a mud barrack and a masjid, and a few trees withering in the sun. There was also a village, but it was difficult to find an inhabitant; of the shops, there was already no trace left.”

Not only Nusaybin, Cizire the capital of Botan, was reduced to a heap of ruins proper. “No inhabitants were to be seen: it absolutely contained none but a few hundred sickly and miserable soldiers,” an account reported on the authority of Thomas Laurie, in 1836.

It may be said without the fear of error that since 1514, the central government had never effectively established its real rule over the Kurdish districts, whose non- Muslim subjects were in a position of quasi- vassalage to the Kurdish emirs, on behalf of the Sultan.

With the new policy of centralization put into effect, the Turk had decided to bring the matter to his own hands. The signatures Sultan Salim and Idris of Batlis had appended to their long- standing agreement, in the wake of the battle of Chaldiran, was no longer of any value.

Claudius Rich reveals, in 1820, that the Kurdish Ashita tribe, situated in the plains extending between River Tigris, Nusaybin and Chil Agha, have gone so powerful and unruly, owing to the government laxness. The empire of Ottoman would soon flex its muscles against the Kurd.

In 1846, Hafez Pasha, who had been appointed governor of Erzurum, after the disastrous defeat of Nazib, ascended on Mukus (Van) to end the rule of Khan Mahmoud, Rob Roy of the Kurds, who would end up banished to Bulgaria.

However, the termination of the semi- autonomous Kurdish emirates in (existence since 1514) one- by- one amputated the limbs, but not the head, which was still animate elsewhere.

Then in 1847, came the turn of the noted Badirkhan Pasha (Cromwell of the Kurds) with all its entailed catastrophic consequences not only on Jazira, rather on the whole of Kurdistan for the long decades ahead.

The fall of Badirkhan was the end of an era, and start of another. However, the Kurds would, for the long years to come, bear the iniquities of a blunder they never committed.

The tyranny would induce people to forsake their villages and abstain from cultivating the soil. Henry Ross, in a letter dated August 1847, describes the situation in the aftermath of the surrender of Badirkhan that “misery amongst villages, and violence among the tribes. To this place it is going downhill like a rolling stone.”

From 1850s onward, it would become impossible for the European travelers, diplomats, and missionaries to close their eyes any longer to the progress of events. Even those friendly to the Turkish empire, would, astoundingly, give expression to their surprise at the number of deserted villages, and the amount of destruction caused to houses in major cities and towns.

When the area (including Sinjar) was attached to the vilayet of Mosul, “the Pashas of Mosul began generally to look upon an annual hunt of the Yazidis as a legitimate recreation, and a cheap means of recruiting their revenues,” highlights Oswald Parry, months after the ravaging campaign of ‘Fariq’ Omar Pasha in 1892.

It may seem impertinent to the reader, it must, however, be admitted that, in many cases, the tyranny of the pashas surpassed the Sultan’s authority. The pasha (and vali) who was slave to his caprices, and judged by his arbitrary will, was in the same sense the law, so to speak. Bribes (bakhshish) pervaded the whole rotten body of the sick man. Its stench could be smelled from a distance. The governor became buried in luxury, and the governed in poverty.

The bleak reality of Kurdistan was of the view that villages deserted, towns abandoned, trade at a standstill, harvest ready for the sickle, but none available to have it gathered. James Fletcher notes in 1844 that the miseries of the Turkish rule reduced the once plentiful and fruitful plains of Jazira to a barren and desolate wilderness. This made thousands of acres to remain untended and uncultivated, which, in the result, decreased the population annually.

In the vastly plain and low- lying unsettled and ill- governed country, not only tribal brigandage, ill- famed Gendarmerie, who were assumed responsible for the maintenance of the law and order, committed the most malicious acts, pushing people to seek refugee elsewhere, in the rugged and inaccessible fastnesses of mountains to the north. The armed mobs of Bashi- Bazoukhs fought on its own hook.

It is true that the region suffered greatly at the hands of the Ottoman valis and military commanders, it is likewise true that the Ottoman policies practically reduced the Jazira to numberless heaps of ruins which dwindled away in the distance to mere molehills, encroaching on the general boundless and the monotonous general features of the Mesopotamian scenery.

The attention of the reader should be drawn to one of the most important though largely unnoticed issues that drained Jazira of its inhabitants. That is the fines and taxes imposed by the authorities in the Kurdish localities- particularly the countryside.

Economically, tax evasion, so to speak, was a factor that contributed to the depopulation of numberless areas. Arthur Maclean and William Browne put it that taxes were very heavy to the effect that fields were out of cultivation because some of the bulls or buffaloes, which should plough them have been taken by authorities, or sold to pay taxes, or the owner has fled his area, been unable to afford for such a living.

“If we descend into the plains, build villages, plant vineyards, grow corn and barley, and till the barren soil, we are so overwhelmed with taxation and impositions of every kind. Our inability to satisfy the demands of our rapacious masters is looked upon as a crime, and in revenge our villages are razed,” a Kurdish man in the village of Khanike Jori tells Badger, who lays emphasis on the fact that had it not been for the Kurds, the district would have been a barren waste.

The heart- sickening story goes on “some of our people are murdered, and others are carried away captive. We leave our homes, and seek refuge among our brethren in the mountains, but even there we are liable every year to be hunted like partridges.”

The general perception was that the poverty- stricken inhabitants had been over- taxed by the Turkish authorities, and were driven to a real state of despair. In addition to the systematic rapacity practiced by the Turkish officers, the suffering inhabitants were also despoiled of the fruits of their honest belongings. Taxes had been placed upon every object that could afford them food, and upon their mills, their looms, and their hives.

There was no hope of improvement in the state of the country, which was fast falling into decay, and only tenanted here and there by a few miserable people, linger amongst the ruins. There was no tribunal nor honest authority they could address for redress. No offer of consolation nor that of relief was on the horizon.

In the same manner as the nascent empire was consecrated to war in its expansion, the aging state’s immersion, in its late years, in pillaging brought its downfall. In his memoirs, Ismail Kamal Bey, a former Ottoman official, who held several prominent positions within the state, in the period under consideration, makes the admission that “it was difficult to eradicate from the minds of the people the notion that the public authorities were there to plunder them.”

Yet, the hand of nature had also its share in the calamity. In 1880, owing to a well- nigh unbearable famine, the Turkish Government sent an order throughout Mesopotamia giving the local authorities the power to enter houses, and to seize whatever food they find, and distribute it among the people. The order was carried out not without alacrity.

Elsewhere, consequences of the rise in Saudi Arabia of Wahabists to a position of dominance in the 18 th century, would be felt in Kurdistan in the long term. The awkward revival of ignorance Wahabism brought about, caused likewise political upheavals. Waves of Arab (particularly Shammar) tribesmen would be driven northward to the Kurdish areas in Syria and Iraq, towards the territories adjacent to Mount Sinjar.

In 1805 alone, nearly 20,000 Shammar tribesmen would arrive on the southern bank of River Euphrates. Two years later, in 1807, the Shammar would make themselves felt in a raid mounted against Deir Ezzor. This incident introduced a domino effect.

Historically, this watershed incident is of considerable significance in that it would push the Ottoman authorities to woo Arab tribes to man the policing posts and halting places established across the trade routes in Mesopotamia against acts of brigandage particularly by Shammar.

Later, the very same offender would assume the role of defender. This would function as a wedge in that it would push the Tay Arabs further north, and likewise the Yazidis further east. The Shammar would play an unignorable role in the final battle against the Millan- led confederation in 1908.

By the 1900s, the population of the Jazira was largely diminished, but not disappeared. The rest having been driven by oppression, sought shelter elsewhere. This bleak reality is observed by German archaeologist, Max Von Oppenheim, Ibrahim Pasha’s friend, who, in 1912, remarks that except for Nusaybin, there were “no big” settlements in this part of Mesopotamia.

“However,” Oppenheim retracts, “one can find very small villages, occupied by Kurds and former transhumant Bedouins”.

Echoing the very same dire situation, British Military Consul in Turkey, Captain Arthur Townshend observes in 1903, “to each inquiry about the next village, we received the answer that its name was “Khirba,” and so we found village after village with buildings of the lower empire date, and all deserted since many a long way”.

Up to then, the reader should bear in mind that the terms transhumant, nomad and Bedouin (Kochar) was not restricted to Arab tribes. This is true of the Yazidi tribes of Huwairiye and Sheikhani, and the Barazas in the Seruj Plain, whose members up to then lived in tents, consoling themselves with the privilege of paying no taxes.

The state of the things supports such a notion. Captain Townshend observes in 1903, “a certain number of the nomad tribes of Mesopotamia are composed of Kurds who are very tough customers, and spend much of their time in a sort of tribal warfare against the Arab tribes whose country marches with theirs.”

Prior to that date, Badger upon returning home from Mosul, notes that the all- Kurdish village of Chil Agha “was nearly deserted as all the Kurds having left the village seeking pastures for their sheep elsewhere”. The wonderful portrait owes to the fact that the village in 1840s, was made a humble resting-place for caravans, and a had a police post installed to maintain peace and security. By acts of tribes brigandage, Chil Agha in 1917, was found “ruined.”

This distressing state of the affair, added to the Arab tribal excursions, lootings, and the highly adopted plunder- and- recede into dim distance tactic, laid no inconsiderable waste to the grassy plain broken by occasional ravines and rivulets.

Further southward, although information is murky, and while Buckingham asserts in 1816 that Khatouniye is the largest Kurdish (Yazidi) town, the very same town- by a British document- is reported to have been reduced to the status of a wretched village in 1917.

In 1871, Henry Layard– atop Mount Kawkab– spots the endless encampment of the Millan and Kikan tribes scattered far and wide in the perimeter of Tal Mijarja’, in west Hasaka, not far from Mount Abdul Aziz– the ancient Koznitice.

Elsewhere, Parry notes that the year 1892 was a black- letter one in the history of recent Turkish government in country places. For two years the cords have been much tightened, and this combined with exactions of a syndicate formed for the collection of corn- tithes, have made it a very hard year for the village people.

Seven years after Layard’s journey into Jazira, Grattan Geary, observes first- hand how the government had planted 25.000 Circassian colonists in Rasl al-Ain, to serve as a breakwater against Arab brigandage and invasions against the Kurds in the city.

To cast the mind back. Upon the dissolution of the Janissaries, by Sultan Mahmoud, in 1826, the government– not being able to cope with inveterate marauders– would recourse to mobs, to undertake the task.

In order to give more strength to the cavalry, the central authority resorted to the employment of infantry auxiliary forces known as Bashi- Bazoukhs, made up wholly but not solely of Circassians, a war- like nation who had succumbed to Russians to be exploited by the Turks.

Ironically, these Circassians, upon keeping Arab invaders at bey, “came to be regarded as the most formidable robbers in the country,” outfitting the offenders. Geary’s statement is significant in that it directly highlights demographic change promoted by Sultan Abdul Hamid, and his predecessor Murad, in the Kurdish localities.

Anarchy and insecurity seem to have its effects on Sere Kaniye. British General, Charles Townshend, describes Ras al-Ain (which he passes as a prisoner- of- war) in May 1916 as a “small village” with a standing detachment of German engineers and transport corps.

Bearing the intended fruits, a report published the following year, calls the attention to the growing number of Circassians in the village, as well to Armenian deportees, since 1915.

However, while the north of Jazira has always been predominantly Kurdish, and bears indelible marks of unmistakable Kurdish occupation, the line of demarcation or rather friction in the south between the spheres of the various Arab and Kurdish tribes had been at all times indefinite.

However, Khatouniye, al- Hol, Mount Kawkab, and Kazwan could be considered the farthest southern extent (natural barriers) where Kurdish presence (influence) could be felt, or more precisely commences.

A confidential British report prepared by the intelligence division on behalf of the Admiralty and the War office published in 1917, outlining the routes in Mesopotamia mentions, among others, the villages of: Mamashour, Kharab Rash, Shawiti, Joum’aya, Kharabe Kara, Khirbe Shamo, Qastapan, Na’matiyie, Kanya Sipi, Qasra Sipi, Servan, Bakrawan, Batirzan, Girke Zera, Tal Ya’qoube, Gundik, Deruna Qulinga, Tal Mus (likely Qara Chock) Tal Zambil, Qatrane, and notably Tal Khider, between the Radd and Tulehi streams, further south.

In west Nusaybin, the report mentions, among others, Tal ‘Afar, Tal Sha’ir, Kodo, Chol Dara, Dodan, Shorik, Haazde, and Qasrik. The vast majority of these villages were primarily populated by Kurds, and with a lesser degree, by Jacobite Christians. Some villages (Tal Jihan, for instance) had mixed Christian- Kurdish populations.

In 1881, Eduard Sachau makes the rare and seemingly the very first mention of Himo, and Kharab Kurd, west Qamishli. Khirbe Khajin, ‘Atbe, Hajilo, Taz Kharab, Mahmaqaya, Derun Agha, which had a police station, in the east, are mentioned by Sachau, among others.

The German orientalist and the MI5 report put the adage of the Kurd’s immigration from the north to the south of the Berlin- Baghdad Railway, (considered a de facto border between Syria and Turkey) to the biggest lie.

The occurrence of Kurdish names cannot be the result of chance. It gives particular countenance to the arguments in favor of the belonging of this land to the Kurd, and refutes in the very same manner fabrications of the otherwise hypotheses.

The “many”, “several” and “very small” villages as European travelers observe, and the “cultivated” fields, signify though variedly the Kurdish human occupation of the region. The study of the place names– ancient and modern- establishes a fairly well- defined impression that give precedence to the Kurdish ones.

Quite understandably, if Nusaybin and Ras al-Ain were still up to late 1910s considered small villages, then other smaller settlements could be considered huts at worst, or hamlets at best, which were abundant in Jazira.

Base on evidence, the long- debated hypothesis of terra nullius respecting Rojava–based on available resources which introduce a most salutary effect in this regard– has proven a historical nonsense.

In the 1860s and 1870s, the Ottoman sultans would be grappled with the wars in the Caucasus and in the Balkans. This would absorb all attention and entail the deployment of soldiers and recruitment of all means to the raging fronts there.

At this juncture, the Land Code of 1858, which necessitated stabilizing people to cultivate and enforce a continuous ploughing and sowing of both Miri (state) and Mawat (dead) lands, played into the hands of the Kurd.

Although the process as a whole would prove a failure– for deepening the disgusting feudal system, it would, however, with the passage of time, put spirit into the dead villages– khirbas– scattered across the vast Jazira. Unnoticed, the Kurd, would slowly though steadily lay down the cornerstone for the simple moulded into- bricks- clay Kurdish village in the now- largely deserted region.

In late August and early September 1894, the Armenian question would rise its head. The failure by the authorities to deal with conspicuous massacre in Sasoun, which would snowball and dominate the Turkish politics in the years to come, enabled the Kurd to breathe more freely, though for a short period of time.

The laxness in Kurdistan corollary to the crisis in Bosnia- Herzegovina 1908-09, the war, and the ensued defeat in the Balkans, and the loss of Cyrenaica and Tripoli to the Italians, in 1912, which caused so much bitterness in Istanbul, added to the waning influence of the Sultan, deprioritized the Kurdish provinces in the Ottoman circles. Demoralized, the time was ripe for the empire to have its death certificate signed.

The Great War had its own effects on the region, which was now an inconsiderable place. Pushed by poverty, and seeking to avert the famous and notorious mobilization act, known colloquially as Safar Barlik, which would tales the lives of thousands in the fronts, made people seek refuge in the countryside.

The world struggle, which began in 1914, did not end with defeat incurred on Turkey and Germany in October, 1918. It could be argued that when weapons fell silent, the war, for the Kurd, continued, although in another form.

The French would arrive in Jazira in mid- 1922. The unstudied Kurdish attack on the French detachment recently installed at the strategic hill of Bayandour, in 1923, would predispose the French against the Kurd for the years to come. However, by the departure of the mandatory forces in 1946, the Kurd would find himself under fascist tyrannies.

The growing preference given to pan- Arabist policies, in the aftermath of the creation in Palestine of the State of Israel (1948), and the propaganda, which introduced the Kurd as a second Zionist, would put the Kurd into denial.

While the post- independence Syria is falsely depicted as Syria’s democratic era, the country’s notorious exclusionist policy against the Kurd has already been put to definition. In the process, thousands of Kurds were not considered nor treated as citizens, simply because they were “foreigners” and did not “belong” to the land they occupied.

Later, based on data dating back to 1943, Nelida Fuccaro would put at roughly ten percent (10%) the number of Kurdish “immigrants”. The remainder, (80 %) were indigenous citizens.

In 1948, the National Bloc- led ultranationalist government granted Syrian nationality to hundreds of Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Libyans, who had served in the France’s Army of the Levant, and had put thousands of Syrians to the guillotine. Later, Arnauts, Bosniaks, and Caucasians would also have the same honor.

In a strikingly stark contrast, Kurdish commissioned and non- commissioned officers who had served in the Kurdish Regiment in the war against the State of Israel in 1948, were– later– denied that right, and stripped of their military statuses and civil rights.

Yet more sardonically, in 1962– in the few months preceding the Baathist military coup– Syria’s serving Chief- of- Staff, Tawfiq Nizam Addine, was stripped of his nationality by the so-called exceptional census, which, among other things, deprived the Kurds of their rights. A precursor to what would follow when the Baathists would take over the country on March 8, 1963.

Selected references:

Asahel Grant, the Nestorians; or, the Lost tribes. Containing an Evidence of their Identity. 1841.

Austen H. Layard, MP., Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert. 1871.

Captain A.F. Townshend, F.R.G.S. a Military Consul in Turkey, the Experiences and Impressions of a British Representative in Asia Minor. 1910.

Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, My Campaign. Two volumes. New York the James A. Mocann Company 1920.

Claudius James Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, and on the site of Ancient Nineveh. Two volumes.

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Grattan Geary, Through Asiatic Turkey, Narrative of a Journey from Bombay to the Bosporus. Two volumes. 1878.

Harry Charles Luke, Mosul and its Minorities, 1925.

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James T. Taylor, Travels in Kurdistan, with Notices of the Sources of the Eastern and Western Tigris, and Ancient Ruins in Their Neighbourhood.

John Macdonald Kinneir, Journey through Asia Minor, Armenia, and Koordistan in the Years 1813 and 1814.

John S. Guest, the Yezidis, a Study in Survival. London and New York.

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Rev. Horatio Southgate, M.A., Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian (Jacobite) Church of Mesopotamia; with Statements and Reflections upon the Present State of Christianity in Turkey, and the Character and Prospects of the Eastern Churches. 1856.

Rev. James. P. Fletcher, Notes rom Nineveh, and travels in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Syria. 1850. Two volumes.

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Rev. George Percy Badger, the Nestorian and their Rituals, a Mission to Mesopotamia and Coordistan in 1841- 1844.

Rev. Thomas Laurie, Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians. 1853.

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William Francis Ainsworth, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia. Two volumes. [1]