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Famous Turkish traveler proves Kurdistan’s
existence
17.1.2006
By Vladimir van Wilgenburg
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Turkish nationalists
constantly say there is no Kurdistan, but the
Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi 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
Çelebi 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 Çelebi’s
Seyahatname”, The Journal of Kurdish Studies 3
(2000), Martin van Bruinessen wrote something
interesting about Kurdistan. |
The famous Ottoman traveller and writer Evliya
Çelebi (1611- ..) travelled regularly by horse. |
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.
Vladimir van Wilgenburg is a Student/Journalist
from Netherlands
http://vladimirkurdistan.blogspot.com/
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