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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
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.
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2 The most important of the Kurdish Clubs in Istanbul was the Kurdistan Teali Cemiyeti (Committee for the Recovery of Kurdistan) founded on 17 December 1918. The association endowed itself in 1919 with a journalistic voice, which played a predominant role in the formulation of Kurdish nationalism, the journal Jîn (Life).
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21 The publication of the Hawar (The Cry) journal between 1932 and 1943 was important in many ways. It allowed the propagation of the Kurdish alphabet elaborated by Jaladat Bedirhan; the comparative study of different dialects of the Kurdish language; the publication of Kurdish folklore (legends, stores and songs); the publication of Kurdish classics; the publication of ethnographic study on the Kurdish costume; and the publication of studies on the history and geography of Kurdistan. Finally, it encouraged instruction in the Kurdish language. In addition to Hawar, the Kurds of Syria could depend on its supplement Ronahi (1924–45) and the revue Roja Nû (1943–46), edited in Beirut by Kamuran Bedirhan.
22 Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre (hereafter SHAT), 4H 319, No. 3, “The Kurds,” No. 465/CER: Beirut, January 19, 1943.
23 During the Second World War, the High Commission again encouraged Kurdish nationalist activities in Syria and in Lebanon, when faced with political and military pressure from the nationalist Syrians, the Germans and the British.
24 CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1055, Damascus, December 28, 1932.
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32 CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1055, From the Minister-Delegate of the High Commissioner to the Director of the Institut Français de Damas, No. 881, Beirut, July 25, 1933.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Born in 1904, Pierre Rondot entered the military school at St-Cyr in 1922 and joined the Foreign Legion in 1926. Accepted in 1928 into the Service de Renseignements, he was transferred to La Section d’études du Levant in Beirut. He met Robert Montagne who directed him toward the study of the Kurds in the framework of the French Institute of Damascus.
36 Born in 1914, Roger Lescot earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a diploma in Arab literature in 1935. He then earned diplomas in Turkish and Persian. In 1935, Lescot started to study Kurdish, following in the footsteps of Rondot, and envisaged the edition of a thesis on the Kurds. He twice visited the Yazidi Kurds in Northern Syria in 1936. Lescot is also the author of a Kurdish grammar book which appeared in 1991.
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