Kurdistan
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an extensive geographical, though not political, reg region of Asia, for the most par included within a line drawn from Sivas in Asia Minor by way of Diarbekr, Sulimanieh, Kermanshah and Urmia (in Persia), Mount Ararat, and Erzerûm, back to Sivas. Kurdistan thus belongs to both the Turkish and Persian monarchies, chiefly to the former, and contains about 50,000 square miles, with a population estimated at more than 2,250,- 000, thus distributed: Nearly 1,500,000 in Turkey, 700,000 in Persia, 45,000 in Russian Transcaucasia, and about 5,000 on the Afghano-Persian frontier (transplanted thither by Nadir Shah). The country embraces the mountainous chains that abut upon the Armenian plateau on the S. and on the Iranian plateau on the E. Thus its surface ranges from 5,000 up to 15,000 feet in altitude. The principal products soil and of native industry are wool, butof the ter, sheep, gum, gall-nuts, hides, raisins, and tobacco. The bulk of the inhabitants are Kurds nomad ( the ancient and pastoral Carduchi, and), a partly race settled partly and agricultural. The Kurds speak a language called Kermanji, derived from an old Persian dialect. They predatory and impatient of political are subjection, but recognize a code of rude chivalrous honor and and brave. They live are under hospitable chiefs of to their own, but are nominally subject the Porte and the Shah of Persia respectively. Their origin is traced back to the Turanian Gutu or Kurdu, who were times. a The powerful great Saladin people was in Assyrian of Kurdish descent. In 1880 an extensive Kurd- (köpfer- The chief towns are Bitlis, Van, Urumia, ish rising against Persia took place. Diarbekr, and Kermanshah. Estimates 2,500,000 to the Turkish portion, and from 400,000 to 500,000 to the Persian part.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, Kurdistan "belonged to both the Turkish and Persian monarchies" and had no political existence; within two years the Ottoman Empire was gone, and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 dropped the Kurdish autonomy that the abandoned Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 had dangled. The region was carved instead among four states — Turkey, Iran, the new British-mandated Iraq and French Syria — and the Kurds became the largest nation in the world without one, numbering some 30 million or more rather than Collier's 2,250,000. The one place the name became official is northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government has run its own affairs since 1991 and was recognised in the Iraqi constitution of 2005; its 2017 independence referendum passed overwhelmingly but was rejected by Baghdad and the neighbours. The towns are on today's maps under other spellings — Diarbekr is Diyarbakır, Erzerûm Erzurum, Sulimanieh Sulaymaniyah — and Kermanji survives as Kurmanji, one of the main Kurdish literary languages beside Sorani.
Written for this edition, 2026.