1. Most of the Jews in Iranian Kurdistan lived in isolated towns, such as Qesr, Bicar of Gerus, Sine, Kirmaşan, Seqiz, and tiny groups of Mukri Kurdistan. The fundamental work on the history of all Iranian Jews, including the Kurds, is still the three-volume Persian work by Levy, Ḥabīb, Tārīkh-i Yahūd-i Īrān (Tehran: Librairie Y. Beroukhim et fils, 1955–60; repr., Beverly Hills: Iranian Jewish Cultural Organization of California, 1984)Google Scholar. Though indispensable, it is in need of much revision.

2. Despite the prominence of Persian in the archives, the Jews of Kurdistan spoke a distinctive dialect of neo-Aramaic very similar to that of the surrounding Kurdish community. See Sahim, Haideh, “Languages and Dialects of the Jews of Iran and Afghanistan,” in Esther's Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews, ed. Sarshar, Houman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 287Google Scholar.

3. First of all, see Magnarella, P. J., “Jewish Kurds of Iran,” Jewish Digest 15 (1970): 17–20Google Scholar. Other helpful works, mostly concerned with folkloristic or ethnographic themes, include Sabar, Yona, trans. and ed., The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, “Nursery Rhymes and Baby Words in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Zacho (Iraq), Journal of the American Oriental Society 94 (1974): 329–36; idem, , “The Arabic Elements in the Neo-Aramaic Texts of Nerwa and Amadiya, Iraqi Kurdistan,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984): 201–11Google Scholar; Shai, D., “Changes in the Oral Tradition Among the Jews of Kurdistan,” Contemporary Jewry 5 (1980): 2–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, S., “Die Juden von Kurdistan,” Ariel 51 (1982): 66–79Google Scholar; Ammann, B., “Kurdische Juden in Israel,” in Jahrbuch für vergleichende Sozialforschung, 1987–88 (Berlin: Berliner Institut für vergleichende Sozialforschung, 1990), 241–58Google Scholar; Schwartz-Be'eri, O., “Clothing of the Kurdish Jews,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1992), 5:825–26Google Scholar; idem, “Kurdish Jewish Silversmiths and their Craft,” International Journal of Kurdish Studies 6 (1993): 12–24; and Brauer, Erich, The Jews of Kurdistan, comp. and ed. Patai, Raphael (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

4. A Persian librarian mentioned to me the existence of a “very few French documents” that relate to the more Westernized Jewish Kurds, but I have not had the opportunity to look at them or to record their titles.

5. No part of this collection is reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, photocopying or recording, including any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Iranian Parliament Records. I have attempted to include some documents of the Jewish Kurds that have not been treated by earlier scholars, and I have incorporated some basic bibliographical notes. However, because of the sensitivity of the Kurdish-Jewish theme in Iran, I can claim neither completeness nor consistency in these matters.

6. Note that Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, etc., are sometimes referred to by their Jewish equivalents, Afrāyim/Abrohom, Moši, etc.

7. Kirmān is situated in southern Iran.

8. Kāšān is a central city of Iran.

9. This Persian record has not been available to me. Moreover, there is, to my knowledge, no “Ilyās” school in Kurdistan. The reference is probably to the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in Kurdistan. On the establishment of the Alliance schools in Kurdistan and Persia, see especially the material in Faryar Nikbakht, “As with Moses in Egypt: Alliance Israélite Universelle Schools in Iran,” in Sarshar, Esther's Children, 199–212.

10. The reference is to Ayūb Luqmān Nehūrāy, the active representative of the Jews in the Iranian Parliament or Majlis (1909–43) and one of the founders of Zionism in Iran. Cf. Shirin D. Daghighian, “Political Life: Jewish Iranian Intellectuals in Twentieth Century Iran,” in Sarshar, Esther's Children, 261–73.