Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Kurds
- The Cambridge History of the Kurds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Legacies
- 1 The Rise and Fall of the Kurdish Emirates (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
- 2 Negotiating Political Power in the Early Modern Middle East
- 3 The End of Kurdish Autonomy
- 4 The Kurdish Movement and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1880–1923
- 5 Religious Narrations of the Kurdish Nation during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- 6 The Political Economy of Kurdistan
- Part II Regional Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- Part III Domestic Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- Part IV Religion and Society
- Part V Kurdish Language
- Part VI Art, Culture and Literature
- Part VII Transversal Dynamics
- Index
- References
3 - The End of Kurdish Autonomy
The Destruction of the Kurdish Emirates in the Ottoman Empire
from Part I - Historical Legacies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Kurds
- The Cambridge History of the Kurds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Legacies
- 1 The Rise and Fall of the Kurdish Emirates (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
- 2 Negotiating Political Power in the Early Modern Middle East
- 3 The End of Kurdish Autonomy
- 4 The Kurdish Movement and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1880–1923
- 5 Religious Narrations of the Kurdish Nation during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- 6 The Political Economy of Kurdistan
- Part II Regional Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- Part III Domestic Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- Part IV Religion and Society
- Part V Kurdish Language
- Part VI Art, Culture and Literature
- Part VII Transversal Dynamics
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter argues that one of the longest-surviving forms of local, indirect administration that actually predated the Ottomans were the Kurdish emirates. In most parts of the empire, the Ottomans, like the European governments, for example, relied on a system of indirect rule whereby the local magnates recognized the ruler’s suzerainty. The rise of the modern state and the expansion of its institutions diminished the need for what might be called a symbiotic relationship between the imperial centre and the peripheral power-holders like the Kurdish aristocracy. This practice of ending local autonomies, whereby central states abandoned their ‘confederal organization’ during widespread civil wars, allowed them to replace decentralized structures of politics with administratively and territorially cohesive regimes (Maier, 2006: 43). In Ottoman Kurdistan, the process of centralization and replacing the indirect rule of the Kurdish aristocracy with the direct rule of the government appointees was made possible by a parallel development: the making of the Ottoman-Iranian boundaries and the permanent division of Kurdistan that has been evolving for quite some time. The elimination of Kurdish dynasts, who hitherto held power at the borderland, facilitated the making of the boundary even as the making of the boundary facilitated their elimination.
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- The Cambridge History of the Kurds , pp. 73 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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