In general terms, the history of the Kurds in the medieval period—or at least those described as being Kurdish in our sources—has attracted relatively little attention within western academia. Moreover, those scholars who have thought to comment on the subject have in general relied on the work of the eminent Russian orientalist Vladimir Minorsky. Hence there has been very little re-examination of the Arabic sources which Minorsky consulted. This article constitutes a first attempt to re-examine some of the “historical orthodoxy” regarding the meaning and nature of the term Kurd in the Middle Ages. More precisely, it aims at questionning the work of those scholars who argue that, due to its ambiguous usage, the term Kurd in the medieval period did not denote an ethnic people. This paper argues that in fact the very ambiguity surrounding the term is indicative of its ethnonymic value and through an examination of the meaning of the term Kurd in this era we can gain a greater understanding of conceptions of ethnic difference in Arabo-Muslim sources.

Eli Teremaxi's Serfa Kurmancî has not yet received the critical attention it deserves. It was dismissed by Auguste Jaba as a text of “minor interest,” but in fact it is of paramount importance both for the study of the Kurdish language and for the history of Kurdish learning. Not only does it contain the oldest extant detailed remarks on Kurdish grammar, in all likelihood preceding even Garzoni's 1787 Grammatica; it is also among the first examples of Kurdish-language prose writing. The rise of prose texts of learning in Kurdish in the eighteenth century is an aspect of so-called “vernacularization,” i.e. the use of a vernacular language for new purposes of written literature and learning. Vernacularization is, this article argues, a crucial prerequisite for the rise of a national language. The article also briefly discusses traces of a similar development in some of Teremaxî's near-contemporaries.

Under the leadership of Sheikh Ubeidullah of Nehri, in the last months of 1880 tens of thousands of Iranian and Ottoman Kurds marched on northwestern Iran and temporarily took control of several cities. This movement, coupled with the response of the Iranian army, resulted in great violence and displacement. Despite its failure, in the limited literature on Kurds this revolt is seen as the birth of Kurdish nationalism. Using extensive and underutilized historical documents—including official correspondence from Iranian and Ottoman authorities as well as British consuls, and day-to-day reports and memoirs from American missionaries active in the region—this project suggests that Sultan Abdulhamid's (Sunni) pan-Islamist agenda, Shi'i–Sunni tensions, the rise of Armenian nationalism, and missionary activities in the region also played significant roles in the formation of this movement.

Current literature on twentieth century Kurdish history overwhelmingly covers Kurdish populations and national movements within the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. This article, hoin Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan,ever, focuses on Soviet Kurdistan and Kurdish policy in Azerbaijan between 1920 and 1937 through the broader question of national minorities within the republic. It is claimed here that the Soviet policy on Azerbaijani Kurds was part of a multilayered issue. First of vnall, the Kurds of Azerbaijan were semi-nomadic mountain dwellers transformed by the modernization policies implemented in Soviet territories. Azerbaijani Kurds were a national identity within the Soviet Union and thus subject to ethnophilic All-Union policies in those years. Finally, Kurds were one of the numerous national minorities in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan who were exposed to the national minority policies executed within the republic by the administration in Baku. The national minority policy in Azerbaijan was often contested and limited by local conditions and obstacles. Therefore, the granting of cultural rights in the 1920s to national minorities, which included the Kurds of Azerbaijan, the promotion of these rights in the 1920s and 1930s, and opposition to these policies can only be examined with regard to these three layers.

This article highlights the continuities and discontinuities between the settlement policies of the late Ottoman state and early Republican Turkey. It argues that although there was a certain degree of evolution in the language employed by the state between the late Ottoman and Republican periods, there is a significant amount of overlap between the policies pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress which seized power in 1913 and the Kemalist regime established in the early 1920s towards the Kurds. In short, the emergence of settlement policies aimed at assimilating the Kurds into the Turkish nation are not an innovation of the Kemalists; it is possible to trace them to the late Ottoman period. This is substantiated through a comparison of two laws relating to settlement; the 1916 “Ordinance Outlining the Transfer and Settlement as well as the Sustenance and Maintenance for Refugees arriving from Conflict Zones” prepared by the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Tribes and Refugees and the Settlement Law of 1934, which was implemented in Republican Turkey and which remained on the statute books until 2006.

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.