Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [48]
In the tenth century AD, the Kurds entered what some scholars call their “golden age.” Kurds served as generals in the Islamic army, scholars and administrators in the Islamic court, and rulers of wealthy semiautonomous fiefdoms, which thrived on trade from the Silk Routes then passing through the area. The most famous Muslim warrior of all time, Salah al-Din, or Saladin, was a Kurd born in AD 1137 in Tikrit—also the hometown of Saddam Hussein, the infamous former president of Iraq. Of the Hadhabani tribe, Saladin reconquered Jerusalem from Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades. He established the Ayyubid dynasty, which ruled in some form until the end of the fifteenth century. It is unlikely, however, that Saladin thought of his central identity as Kurdish; first and foremost, he was Muslim.
The vast majority of today’s Kurds are also Muslim, with at least 75 percent belonging to the Sunni branch and 15 percent to the Shiite. Sunnis and Shiites are the two great factions of Islam, a schism based largely on the question of leadership succession. The Sunnis, who comprise about 90 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion Muslims, believe that the Prophet Muhammad’s successors should be chosen by consensus; the Shiites, who live mostly in Iran, believe that his successors should be his direct descendants. But whether Sunni or Shiite, most Kurds view themselves as moderate Muslims. The political side of Islam has also at times created tension between their Muslim and Kurdish identities. Some nationalist Kurds even say that Islam is detrimental to their people, as it subjugates the Kurdish cause to the larger Islamic goal of a united world community of believers. “Don’t have any confidence in a holy man even if his turban should be straight from heaven,” goes one Kurdish proverb.
The Kurdish region is religiously diverse, with many other Kurds belonging to one of three small religious groups—the Yezidis, Ahl-e Haqqs or Kakais, and Alevis—whose faiths combine pre-Islamic and Islamic beliefs; some scholars classify the Ahl-e Haqqs and Alevis as Muslim. Non-Kurdish Christian groups such as the Assyrians and Chaldeans (a Catholic branch of the Assyrians) also live in the area, as do evangelical Christians and a few Armenians, though most Armenians left the region following the Turks’ massacres of their communities in the 1890s and 1915. A large Jewish Kurdish community once lived in Kurdistan, but departed the area after the founding of Israel.
The 1200s and 1300s brought disaster to the Kurdish lands. First came waves of Mongol invasions headed by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, destroying many Kurdish villages and major towns. Then came the invasions of the emperor Tamerlane and his son, who, after capturing Baghdad and Damascus, again sacked hundreds of Kurdish settlements.
But by the sixteenth century, the region was again flourishing. Under the reign of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, which rose to power in Turkey and Persia respectively in the early 1500s, Kurdish princes ruled over emirates with such romantic-sounding names as Bahdinan, Bitlis, and Jazira bin Umar. Often only loosely controlled by their Turkish and Persian overlords, the princes had powerful militias—composed of nominally allied tribes—at their command, and courts filled with musicians, poets, scientists, and religious scholars. A complex social and political order was maintained, as the Kurdish princes, Kurdish tribes, Ottomans, and Safavids successfully balanced power among them for about three hundred years.
With the passing decades, however, cracks appeared in the system. The importance of the Silk Routes declined, the rule of the empires became more oppressive, and quarrels among