The Kurdish Cultural Movement in Mandatory Syria and Lebanon: An Unfinished Project of “National Renaissance,” 1932–46

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries diverse, and sometimes competing, movements of cultural renaissance emerged in the Middle East. Within this context, the Kurdish cultural renaissance in the Kurmanji dialect appeared relatively late and moreover its fruits were curtailed by two major events: the First World War and the establishment of the Turkish republic. From 1923 onwards, the task of animating the Kurdish cultural renaissance fell on the Kurds exiled first in mandatory Syria and Lebanon and then in Europe. In exile, Kurdish intellectuals benefited from some advantageous conditions such as freedom of speech and organization. Yet Kurdish intellectual endeavors in the Levant were to face political, social and economic challenges. Using French records and Kurdish newspapers, this article explores both the opportunities and the constraints for the consolidation of the Kurdish cultural renaissance under colonial rule. In doing so, the article intends to enrich the debate on the formation of nationalisms in the interwar era on the one hand, and the relationship between colonial powers and minorities in the Middle East, on the other.

Notes

¹For a comprehensive overview of competing movements of cultural renaissance in the late Ottoman period, see F.M. Göçek, “Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Greek, Armenian, Turkish, and Arab Nationalisms,” in Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East, ed. Fatma Müge Göçek (New York, 2002), 15–83.

²The most important of the Kurdish Clubs in Istanbul was the Kurdistan Teali Cemiyeti (Committee for the Recovery of Kurdistan) founded on 17 December 1918. The association endowed itself in 1919 with a journalistic voice, which played a predominant role in the formulation of Kurdish nationalism, the journal Jîn (Life).

³See Jordi Tejel Gorgas, Le mouvement kurde de Turquie en exil. Continuités et discontinuités du nationalisme kurde sous le mandat français en Syrie et au Liban, 1925–1946 (Bern, 2007).

⁴Philip S. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920 (Cambridge, 1984), 78.

⁵M. Mazower, “Minorities and the League of Nations in Interwar Europe,” Daedalus 126, no. 2 (1997): 51.

⁶Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (hereafter CADN), Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1367, “Répartition de la population de la Haute Jézireh,” Beirut, April 1939.

⁷R. Thoumin, “Deux quartiers de Damas. Le quartier chrétien de Bâb Mushallâ et le quartier kurde,” Bulletin d’études orientales T. I, (1931): 116–35.

⁸See N. Fuccaro, “Ethnicity and the City: The Kurdish Quarter of Damascus between Ottoman and French Rule, c. 1724–46,” Urban History 30 (2003): 206–24; B.T. White, “The Kurds of Damascus in the 1930s: Development of a Politics of Ethnicity,” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 6 (2010): 901–17.

⁹Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, 526.

¹⁰N. Fuccaro, “Minorities and Ethnic Mobilisation: The Kurds of Northern Iraq and Syria,” in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives, ed. Peter Sluglett and Nadine Méouchy (Leiden, 2004), 595.

¹¹See Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (New York, 2007); Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York, 2003).

¹²Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism; Lenka Levonka, La confrontation franco-syrienne à l’époque du mandat, 1925–1927 (Paris, 1990).

¹³Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh, 2011), 209.

¹⁴Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (Cambridge, 2001); Senem Aslan, “Governing Areas of Dissidence: Nation-Building and Ethnic Movements in Turkey and Morocco” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2008).

¹⁵C. Velud, “L’émergence et l'organisation sociales des petites villes de Jézireh, en Syrie, sous le mandat français,” URBAMA 16–17 (1986): 85–103; Vahé Tatchijan, La France en Cilicie et en Haute-Mésopotamie. Aux confins de la Turquie, de la Syrie et de l'Irak (Paris, 2004).

¹⁶H. Bozarslan, “Les révoltes kurdes en Turquie kémaliste (quelques aspects),” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 151 (1988): 121–36; H. Bozarslan, “Tribus, confréries et intellectuels: convergence des réponses kurdes au régime kémaliste,” in Modernisation autoritaire en Turquie et en Iran, ed. Semih Vaner (Paris, 1991), 61–80.

¹⁷See J. Tejel Gorgas, “Le Khoyboun et la fabrication des premiers martyrs du nationalisme kurde,” Etudes kurdes VI (2004): 41–58.

¹⁸See Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 (Austin, TX, 1989); and Ihsan Nouri Pasha, La révolte de l'Agri-Dagh (Geneva, 1986).

¹⁹See, for example, CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1054, Notice for Lieutenant Arnaud, SRC-2nd Section, Beirut, November 29, 1927; and CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 569, Report on “The Kurds and Kurdistan,” Damascus, February 1929.

²⁰CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 549, Report of Lieutenant Terrier, Qamishli, August 11, 1926.

²¹The publication of the Hawar (The Cry) journal between 1932 and 1943 was important in many ways. It allowed the propagation of the Kurdish alphabet elaborated by Jaladat Bedirhan; the comparative study of different dialects of the Kurdish language; the publication of Kurdish folklore (legends, stores and songs); the publication of Kurdish classics; the publication of ethnographic study on the Kurdish costume; and the publication of studies on the history and geography of Kurdistan. Finally, it encouraged instruction in the Kurdish language. In addition to Hawar, the Kurds of Syria could depend on its supplement Ronahi (1924–45) and the revue Roja Nû (1943–46), edited in Beirut by Kamuran Bedirhan.

²²Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre (hereafter SHAT), 4H 319, No. 3, “The Kurds,” No. 465/CER: Beirut, January 19, 1943.

²³During the Second World War, the High Commission again encouraged Kurdish nationalist activities in Syria and in Lebanon, when faced with political and military pressure from the nationalist Syrians, the Germans and the British.

²⁴CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1055, Damascus, December 28, 1932.

²⁵Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge, 1985), 22–4.

²⁶Ronald G. Suny, Looking Toward Ararat. Armenia in Modern History (Indianapolis, IN, 1993), 220.

²⁷CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 572, Booklet from the Société de bienfaisance pour l'aide des pauvres kurdes en Jézireh, 1932.

²⁸J. Bedirhan, “Buts et caractères de la revue Hawar,” Hawar I (1932): 29–30.

²⁹J. Bedirhan, “Merhele,” Roja Nû I (1943), 1.

³⁰CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 802, Délégation Générale de France au Levant, Sûreté aux Armées, Note No. 259/DB. Beirut, January 28, 1946.

³¹CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 572, Sûreté Générale, No. 4144, Beirut, December 12, 1934.

³²CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1055, From the Minister-Delegate of the High Commissioner to the Director of the Institut Français de Damas, No. 881, Beirut, July 25, 1933.

³³Ibid.

³⁴Ibid.

³⁵Born in 1904, Pierre Rondot entered the military school at St-Cyr in 1922 and joined the Foreign Legion in 1926. Accepted in 1928 into the Service de Renseignements, he was transferred to La Section d’études du Levant in Beirut. He met Robert Montagne who directed him toward the study of the Kurds in the framework of the French Institute of Damascus.

³⁶Born in 1914, Roger Lescot earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a diploma in Arab literature in 1935. He then earned diplomas in Turkish and Persian. In 1935, Lescot started to study Kurdish, following in the footsteps of Rondot, and envisaged the edition of a thesis on the Kurds. He twice visited the Yazidi Kurds in Northern Syria in 1936. Lescot is also the author of a Kurdish grammar book which appeared in 1991.

³⁷P. Rondot, “Les tribus montagnardes de l'Asie antérieure. Quelques aspects sociaux des populations kurdes et assyriennes,” Bulletin d’études orientales VI (1937): 27–8.

³⁸K. Bedirhan, Kamuran, “La femme kurde,” Hawar, no. 19 (1933): 390.

³⁹Institute Kurde de Paris (hereafter IKP), FONDS RONDOT, Dossier Kurdes de Syrie, Special Services of the Mohafazat of Damascus, No. 98/SS/VI, Damascus, January 10, 1941.

⁴⁰J. Blau, “Pierre Rondot (2 juin 1904–6 avril 2000),” Etudes Kurdes II (2000): 101.

⁴¹E. Haugen, “The Implementation of Corpus Planning: Theory and Practice,” in Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives, ed. Joshua A. Fishman and Juan Cobarrubias (New York, 1983).

⁴²CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 728, From the High Commissioner to the Director of the Foreign Affairs Service, No. 3186, Beirut, November 28, 1932.

⁴³N. Zaza “Perîshanî [Misery],” Hawar 35 (1941): 851–2.

⁴⁴SHAT, 4H 319, No. 3, “The Kurds,” No. 465/CER, Beirut, January 19, 1943.