Metin Atmaca
The 19th century was a period of immense transformation for Kurdistan in terms of social, economic and political structure. At the beginning of the century it was already divided between two states, the Ottomans and Qajarian Iran. This division became more apparent when the two states tried to create a boundary. The boundary between Iran and the Ottoman Empire was made of mainly by Lake Urmia in the Northwest of Iran and the chain of Zagros Mountains between today’s Iran and Iraq. On both sides of this geographical frontier there were Kurdish Emirates (Kurdish: sing. mîratî, plu. mîratîyan) thus it was not easy to draw a precise borderline between both states. In fact more than half of the 19th century was spent between Iran, Ottomans, British and Russians in order to create a boundary on these lands, though with little success1.

2 LAZAREV M.S., MIHOYAN Ş. X., Kürdistan Tarihi, (translated by KALE I.), Istanbul, Avesta, 2001, p. (...)

2Besides divisions created by sporadic clashes between the two states in Kurdistan, two the European powers, the Russians and British, came in the region and deepen up this division further. After 1820s Russia started to descend from Caucuses to the North Eastern Anatolia and furthered to south of Kurdistan. The wars Russia waged against Iran and the Ottomans during this period, especially the war of 1828‑29 with the Ottomans helped its presence to become permanent. At the beginning the Russians wanted to make sure the Kurds remain non-partisan, thus keep them neutral. Later they expanded their policy toward the Kurds and tried to recruit allies among their tribes. On the other hand, the same Kurdish tribes in the Northern Kurdistan, after a while the tribes in the south of Kurdistan, found a third party in the region for the first time and started to adopt to this change by seeing Russians as an alternative to the Ottomans and Persians2.

3As the political and administrative divisions in Kurdistan increased the transformation of the land accelerated further. Thus, despite the Kurdish emirates lasted for several centuries, after the 19th century such political structures were replaced with the religious leaders and later with the tribal chiefs. Taking such a transformation into consideration one could follow three phases in the 19th century of Kurdistan: Firstly, the classical period, which was dominated by secular leaders, namely the emirates; secondly, the period of religious leaders, when the emirates were destroyed and replaced by sufi leaders; thirdly and finally, the period of tribal leaders, which became the rule of the day after 1890, when the Cavalry Regiments were established by Sultan Abdulhamid II.[1]
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