Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T05:32:59.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Orientalist Views of National Identity and Colonial Maps of Kurdistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2020

Zeynep N. Kaya
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides the conceptual and historical underpinnings of the cartographic manifestation of the idea of Kurdistan through an overview of historical documents and the Kurdish revolts in the nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire. It argues that Kurdish nationalist historiography today interprets the historical uses of Kurdistan in history and the revolts through a retrospective lens. In so doing, it attributes modern meanings of territory and nation to past references of Kurdistan. The chapter discusses the use of the concept of Kurdistan in historical texts from the early thirteenth century to mid-nineteenth century and situates this discussion within historical processes such as the expansion of the Ottoman rule to eastern Anatolia, Ottoman–Safavid rivalry in the sixteenth century and the Ottoman Empire’s centralisation policies and the Kurdish revolts against the Ottomans in the nineteenth century. These revolts give significant insights to how Kurdish tribal leaders defined their territoriality. However, these revolts were the result of tribal leaders’ efforts to maintain their territoriality in the face of Ottoman centralisation policies, but these efforts were not underlined by nationalist sentiments in the way nationalism was defined in Europe in the nineteenth century or defined by Kurds today.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mapping Kurdistan
Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism
, pp. 43 - 63
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×