Understanding the Truth, Issue 1, January 1, 1918 Têgeyştinî Rastî (Understanding the truth) was a semiweekly newspaper published by the command of the British army in Iraq in 1918–19. At the time, Britain was at war with the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Iraq since the 16th century. When British forces …

Mahabad – the first independent Kurdish republic By Mufid Abdulla:   One of an occasional series of articles on aspects of Kurdish history The first independent Kurdish republic was in Iran. The ‘State of Republic of Kurdistan’ was founded in Mahabad in January 1946 and, although it survived for less …

BEDIR KHAN BEDIR KHAN (Badr Khan; d. 1867), last ruler of the principality of Cizre-Botan and by extension also the name of a well-known Kurdish clan that has played important political, social, and cultural roles in Kurdish history since the mid-13th/19th century. The princi­pality of Cizre-Botan was, like those of Bābān and the …

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925 By Robert Olson, University of Texas Press, Austin The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first large-scale nationalist rebellion by the Kurds. The role of the Azadi was fundamental in its unfolding. Kurdish intellectuals and military officers lay at the …

Kurdistan in the shadow of Western betrayal: A critical historical overview   Kurdishaspect.com – By Kirmanj Gundi   Introduction   Kurds are descendants of the Medes who are mentioned ten times in the Bible. In 700-550 BCE, the Medes created one of the mightiest empires, the Medean Empire. They were …

The Shake Hand of Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji with the “dirty” British  By Minhaj Akreyi   We live in a society where our source of information is received in many different forms. The information is often without any concrete evidence and we tend to believe quickly, spread it, and before we …

Origin of The Kurds By Prof. Mehrdad A. Izady Being the native inhabitants of their land. there are no “beginnings” for Kurdish history and people. Kurds and their history are the end products of thousands of years of continuous internal evolution and assimilation of new peoples and ideas introduced sporadically …

The Akkadian Empire Near the end of the second millennium BCE the king of Akkad, Sargon the Great, had brought all the cities of Sumer under his rule. He had marched his armies into Elam to the east and then west into Syria securing the frontiers for trade and commerce. …

  The Legacy of Ur-Nammu The Akkadian Empire had fallen to the Gutians and ancient Iraq was in chaos. Centuries of civilizations efforts were undone as cities were sacked, canals were abandoned and roads became impassable.  Within a short time the regions infrastructure toppled under the weight of the Gutian …

The Kurds – One Of The World’s Most Ancient Peoples. Before the great city-states of ancient Sumer and Akkad people chose the caves and foothills of Kurdistan for their dwellings. Most history books have but a few references to the geographical region known as Kurdistan because it is not a …