|
KurdistanObserver.com
Famous Turkish Traveler Proves Kurdistan’s
Existence
Jan 17, 2006
By Vladimir van Wilgenburg
Turkish nationalists constantly say there is no
Kurdistan, but the Turkish traveller Evliya Ēelebi travelled extensively in
Kurdistan. In his ten thick volumes of his Book of Travels (Seyahatname)
constitute a unique work almost unparalleled in the travel literature.
This doesn’t only describe Kurdistan, but many more nations and countries
including my own. This traveler is hailed as one of the most prominent examples
of Turkish literature in that Evliya Celebi has fully employed his skill in
using Ottoman Turkish. He also appears on several Turkish government sites with
an gov.tr extension, but they write that he described “Anatolia”, not Kurdistan.
The Dutch independent famous social anthropologist and an expert on Kurds Martin
van Bruinessen (Whom I am going to interview soon) wrote about Evliya Ēelebi and
shows that the Turks in the past didn’t deny that there was a “Kurdistan”, but
off course then there was no reason then to deny the existence of a region
called Kurdistan, because Turkey didn’t exist at that moment.
In the article “Kurdistan in the 16th and 17th centuries, as reflected in Evliya
Ēelebi’s Seyahatname”, The Journal of Kurdish Studies 3 (2000), Martin van
Bruinessen wrote something interesting about Kurdistan.
I will quote:
"In official Ottoman parlance, Kurdistan was the name of a province (eyalet), an
administrative unit. For Evliya, the term refers primarily to the Kurds as an
ethnic category, irrespective of political and administrative boundaries. He
uses it in a number of different ways. Once he describes an inhospitable region
as "Kürdistan ve Türkmenistan ve sengistan", which perhaps is best translated as
"a land of Kurds and Turcomans and rocks", and in which one perceives something
of the educated urban dweller's disdain for rough and frightening rural folk. In
other passages, however, it is clear that he has a definite geographical region
in mind:
"It is a vast territory: from its northern extreme in Erzurum it stretches by
Van, Hakkari, Cizre, `Amadiya, Mosul, Shahrazur, Harir and Ardalan to Baghdad,
Darna, Dartang and even as far as Basra: seventy day's journeys of rocky
Kurdistan. If the six thousand Kurdish tribes and clans in these high mountains
would not constitute a firm barrier between Arab Iraq (sic!) and the Ottomans,
it would be an easy matter for the Persians to invade Asia Minor (diyar-i Rum).
(...) Kurdistan is not as wide as it is long. From Harir and Ardalan on the
Persian frontier in the east to Damascus and Aleppo [in the west], its width
varies from twenty-five to fifteen day's journeys. In these vast territories
live five hundred thousand musket-bearing Shafi`i Muslims. And there are 776
fortresses, all of them intact."
The fact that Kurdistan exists was reminded again by a college I attended on the
University of Leiden. In this college my professor of “Old History” said that
Kurdistan was the land, that used to be inhabited by Assyrians. Nowadays
Assyrian cities like Hakkari are totally filled with Kurds. In fact the city is
named after Kurds.
Also a book which was part of the curriculum of General Contemporary History in
university called A History of Western Society,by J.P. McKay – B.D. Hill – J.
Buckler, also showed that Kurdistan exits in one of the pictures of maps of the
Ottoman empire.
I want to remind my Turkish readers, that Kurdistan doesn’t officially exist as
a country in your Turkish schoolbooks and maps, but it still exists in the
hearts of many Kurds, old history maps, geography books, texts and it’s also
recognised that it exists by professors, etc. You can shout what you want, but
the reality is there.
You can read more about Evliya Ēelebi and
Kurdistan in the 16th and 17th century
here and more about Martin’s publications
here.
Vladimir van Wilgenburg is a Student/Journalist from Netherlands
http://vladimirkurdistan.blogspot.com/ |
|
