Religion in Kurdistan

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

important role as cultural brokers mediating between the Indian Muslims who wrote in
Persian on the one hand and the Turkish- and Arabic-speaking world on the other. Kurds
teaching in Mecca and Medina left a lasting impact as far as Indonesia.17 The madrasas
(traditional Muslim schools) of Kurdistan used to have a good reputation, but it is no doubt
true that only a small elite studied there. The development of modern secular education (and
the closure of the madrasas in Turkey under Atatürk) has to some extent drained the madrasas
of intellect. But even so, the clandestine madrasas of Kurdistan were the only place in Turkey
where traditional Muslim learning continued during the period of high Kemalism, and
students from all over the country had to go to the Kurdish area for a thorough traditional
education.18
The learned ulama were of course always a small elite only, and certainly not
representative of the Kurds at large. Their piety and learning were admired and respected,
especially by those who lacked these qualities. The common people often believed that the
presence of ulama in their midst could compensate for their own religious shortcomings. The
men of religion were often seen as mediators between ordinary men and God, who through
their intercession could secure salvation for their followers. This belief gave the more
enterprising ulama a fair amount of political leverage. A certain class of religious authorities
in fact acquired considerable worldly powers. These were the shaikhs, the leaders of mystical
orders.
The Kurdish conception of Islam has strong mystical overtones, and many Kurdish ulama
were and are affiliated with a tariqat, or mystical order. Each tariqat has its distinctive
mystical exercises, consisting of the regular recitation of God's names or other pious
formulae, breath control, various forms of asceticism and meditation techniques. The tariqats
are led by shaikhs who are the spiritual guides of their disciples, not only leading them onto
17 Biographical notices of important Kurdish ulama are collected by Mulla `Abd al-Karim Muhammad al-
Mudarris in his `Ulamâ’unâ fi khidmat al-`ilm wa'!-dîn (Our ulama in the service of learning and religion)
(Baghdad: Dar al-Hurriyya, 1983). On their role as cultural brokers and their influence in Indonesia see my
"Kurdish `ulama and their Indonesian students", in: De Turcicis aliisque rebus commentarii Henry Hofman
dedicati. (Utrecht: Instituut voor Oosterse Talen en Culturen, 1992), pp. 205-227.
18 The Turkish mulla Turan Dursun, who later became an atheist and published highly polemical anti-Islamic
articles in the weekly 2000'e Dogru, studied as a boy in a Kurdish madrasa. He writes extensively, and with
rancor, on this education in his autobiographical Kulleteyn (Istanbul: Akyüz, 1990). Dursun, who was murdered
in 1990, was a very learned man with a better command of the Islamic sources than his more pious opponents —
which is a tribute to the quality of his education.​

 

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

the spiritual path but also mediating between them and the unseen world. The more important
shaikhs usually have a number of deputies (khalifa) to whom they delegate some of their
authority and who are their representatives in other localities and, as it were, mediators
between the common followers and the shaikh. The tariqat thus has a hierarchical structure,
which is further emphasized by the importance of initiation. Not every follower of a shaikh is
an initiate, but in order to take part in the mystical exercises of the order one has to receive an
initiation, which is at the same time an oath of allegiance to the shaikh.
Several tariqats were active in Kurdistan in the past, but at present only two play a role of
importance, the Naqshbandiyya and the Qadiriyya. In Iraq the Talabanis and the Barzanis are
two well-known families of shaikhs, the Talabanis associated with the Qadiris and the
Barzanis with the Naqshbandis. Mulla Mustafa Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the major
nationalist leaders, were not shaikhs themselves, but the former especially owed much to his
family's traditional religious role. The most important southern Kurdish nationalist leader of
the 1920s, who even proclaimed himself king of Kurdistan, was Shaikh Mahmud Barzinji,
the head of the most influential family of Qadiri shaikhs. His contemporary, Shaikh Sa`id,
who led the first Kurdish rebellion against Atatürk's regime in Turkey, was a Naqshbandi and
so were the most important local leaders in this rebellion. The very first Kurdish rebellion of
a nationalist character was led by another Naqshbandi shaikh, Ubaidullah of Nehri, in
Hakkari in 1880. In the half century following Ubaidullah's rebellion, it was primarily shaikhs
who provided leadership to the incipient Kurdish movement.
There had occasionally been shaikhs of great political influence in Kurdistan before,19 but
from the second half of the nineteenth century on we see tariqat shaikhs emerge as the most
important class of political leaders. This is directly related to changes in the political
environment, which were in turn responses to European imperialism.20 The Ottoman
government had, under European pressure, embarked upon a policy of administrative reform,
breaking up the formerly semi-autonomous Kurdish emirates and for the first time bringing
the area under direct central control. Most of the tribes had previously been part of one of the
emirates, so that their conflicts could be held in check by a higher authority, the Kurdish
19 0ne striking example in the seventeenth century is discussed in my article, "The Naqshbandi Order in l7th-
Century Kurdistan," in Marc Gaborieau et al., eds., Naqshbandis: Historical Development and Present Situation
of a Muslim Mystical Order (Istanbul and Paris: Isis, 1990), pp. 337-360.
20 The following paragraphs are a summary of the argument developed in greater detail in my Agha, Shaikh ond
State.​

 

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

emir, who could also unite the tribes for military purposes. With the disappearance of these
overarching emirates, Kurdish society disintegrated into quarrelling and feuding tribes. The
only Kurdish personalities left whose authority transcended tribal boundaries were the
shaikhs. It is true that some tribes were entirely the followers of one or the other shaikh, but
most shaikhs drew their following from more than one tribe, and the shrewder ones
established themselves on the boundary between two or more important tribes.
Another factor that played a part in the increasing prominence of the shaikhs during the
mid-nineteenth century is the extensive activities of European missionaries among the
Christian minorities, which caused concern about the Europeans' ulterior motives in the
region. The anti-Christian and anti-European reaction also stimulated Islamic sentiment and
thereby strengthened the shaikhs' position.
It was especially the Naqshbandi tariqat that took advantage of these changes, since it was
much more dynamic than the Qadiri. In the latter tariqat the position of shaikh had become
hereditary and was monopolised by a few families. The Naqshbandis had recently
experienced a revival through the activities of the charismatic Mawlana Khalid, a Kurd from
the Sulaimaniya region who had been initiated in a reformist branch of the order in India and
who, between his return in 1811 and his death in 1827, appointed over sixty khalifas all over
the Middle East, half of them in Kurdistan. In most cases these khalifas, whom Mawlana
Khalid authorised to act as shaikhs in their own right, did not belong to shaikhly families
themselves; the monopoly of the established shaikhly families was thereby broken. Many of
Shaikh Khalid's khalifas appointed their own khalifas in turn so that in a few decades all of
Kurdistan was covered by a network of Naqshbandi shaikhs and khalifas, some of whom
came to wield considerable political influence. The Kurdish shaikhs were not, in general,
unworldly characters; many felt as much at ease in the saddle as on the prayer mat and
handled their rifles as confidently as their rosaries. It was such men who became the leaders
or figureheads of the early nationalist movement. The Naqshbandi network showed itself
capable of mobilising large numbers of men from different tribes for common action.
Shaikhs and the Modern State
After Shaikh Sa`id's rebellion, the Turkish government banned all tariqats, a ban that is still
officially in effect. Even in recent years the press has occasionally reported police raids in
houses where clandestine tariqat meetings are held. In the 1930s and 1940s control was very​

 

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

tight indeed. Although the mystical exercises of the tariqats had to be discontinued (or at best
carried on in secret in ve1y small circles), the shaikhs did not lose their prestige among the
population. With the reintroduction of a multi-party system in Turkey after World War II,
tribal chieftains and shaikhs became important vote-getters for the political parties. The
political parties soon discovered that it was impossible to win elections in the Kurdish
provinces without the support of shaikhs or powerful chieftains. In exchange for delivering
the votes of their followers, the shaikhs could claim various favors from the central,
provincial or local government. This in turn helped them to dispense patronage and build up a
stronger following. The process obviously gave them a vested interest in the status quo;
although some of the shaikhs may have Kurdish nationalist sentiments, they are wary of
radical change.
The alliances with political parties are contracted on purely pragmatic grounds and have
nothing to do with the parties' political stand. At first sight some of the alliances are rather
surprising: the descendants of the Kurdish nationalist Shaikh Sa`id, for instance, joined so
unlikely a party as the pan-Turk fascist Party of Nationalist Action, as did several other
Naqshbandi shaikhs in the Malatya-Elazıg region. Another member of a famous shaikhly
family from Kurdistan, S. Ahmet Arvasi, became one of the chief ideologists of the Turkish
nationalist right wing and a staunch opponent of Kurdish separatism.21
With their increased political leverage, several shaikhs have again begun openly acting as
mystical teachers. The Naqshbandiyya has once again become a significant force in Turkish
politics. Several shaikhs in Istanbul have influence at the highest political levels (it is well
known that President Özal's family has Naqshbandi connections), while some of the Kurdish
shaikhs have countrywide influence among members of the lower middle class.22
In Iraq and Iran the tariqats were never banned, but the shaikhs paradoxically do not have
the political leverage that their colleagues in Turkey have by virtue of the liberal political
21 S. Ahmet Arvasi, Türk-slam Ülküsü (The Turkish-Islamic ideal), 2 vols. (stanbul: Türk Kültür Yayını,
1980). This book purports to give Turkish nationalism a conservative Islamic underpinning. Like many earlier
Turkish nationalist authors, Arvasi declares the Kurds to be full-blooded Turks. Earlier in the 20th century,
another member of the same family, Shaikh Sefik Arvasi, had played an active role in the Kurdish nationalist
movement.
22 On the Naqshbandiyya in modern Turkey see Hamid Algar, "Der Naksibendi-Orden in der republikanischen
Türkei," in Jochen Blaschke and Martin van Bruinessen, eds., lslam und Politik in der Türkei (Berlin: Express,​

 

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

system there. Shaikh Mahmud Barzinji of Sulaimaniya and Shaikh Ahmad Barzani of Barzan
in northern Iraq were popular leaders of resistance against the British in the 1920s. The
popular support they mustered was based as much on Kurdish nationalist sentiments as on
traditional religious loyalties; Shaikh Ahmad's younger brother, Mulla Mustafa, was the man
who first united the Kurds on a purely nationalist platform. Among the Kurds whom the Iraqi
government armed and paid to fight Barzani and his nationalists, we find traditional rivals of
the Barzani family, notably the rival Naqshbandi shaikh from northern Iraq, Shaikh Rashid
Lolan. In southern Kurdistan, a shaikh from the Barzinji family, Shaikh Abdulkarim
Kripchina, collaborated with the government against the Kurdish movement. These shaikhs,
however, gradually lost their influence over the younger generation and sank into
insignificance.
By far the most influential shaikh of southern Kurdistan in the mid-1970s, when I did
fieldwork there, was Shaikh Osman of Tawela in the mountainous district of Hawraman. He
was the scion of an important and rich shaikhly family on the Iraqi side of the border. After
the left-wing populist coup of Colonel Qassem in 1958 he fled to Iran, as did many other
landlords and tribal chieftains. He established cordial relations with the imperial authorities,
who did not interfere with the stream of visitors, foreigners as well as Iranian Kurds and
Turcomans. His following consisted mostly of peasants and poor townsmen from all over
southern Kurdistan. When the revolution brought the Shah down and a Shiite regime was
installed in Tehran, Shaikh Osman, who was then well over seventy years old, established his
own counter-revolutionary movement, the Supahi Rizgari ("Liberation Army"). Armed and
financed by Iraq, it was perhaps the last dervish army, consisting mainly of the shaikh's
Hawramani disciples. It did not prove a very effective fighting force; resistance against the
central government and the various Shiite forces in Iran was soon entirely dominated by the
two secular organisations, Komala and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan in Iran. After a
year or so, the "army" entirely disintegrated and the shaikh left, first to Europe, then to Saudi
Arabia. His influence in southern Kurdistan appears to have dwindled because of these
events.
Not all tariqat shaikhs in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan have seen their influence diminished,
however. One important exception is Shaikh Muhammad Khalid Barzani, the son of Shaikh
1985), pp. 167-196; Rusen Çakır, Ayet ve slogan: Türkiye'de islami olusumlar (Koranic verse and slogan:
Islamic formations in Turkey) (Istanbul: Metis, 1990), pp. 17-76.​

 

[Kurd Day]

رد: Religion in Kurdistan

Ahmad.23 He had long remained rather inconspicuous, outshone by Mulla Mustafa and his
sons, in whose entourage he lived in Iranian exile since 1975. In the mid-1980s he suddenly
appeared on the Iraqi Kurdish scene as the leader of a guerrilla force that called itself the
Hizbullahs of Kurdistan and vowed to expel the left-wing parties from the shaikh's ancestral
region. The Iranian regime, though continuing to support the (Iraqi) Kurdistan Democratic
Party of Mulla Mustafa Barzani's sons, made various attempts to establish among the Iraqi
Kurds Islamic parties that would be more easily controlled from Tehran. Of their various
clients, Shaikh Muhammad Khalid was the most credible because he could claim the
traditional authority of his family. His peshmergas were recruited among Kurdish refugees in
Iran loyal to the Barzani family. Generously armed and financed by Iran, the shaikh's
organisation presented itself as a serious rival to his cousins' Kurdistan Democratic Party and
an actual threat to the left-wing peshmerga units in the area. It was the only Islamic formation
among the Iraqi Kurds that had a more than ephemeral existence. Although never becoming
dominant, it is still a force to be reckoned with.24 While Mulla Mustafa Barzani's position as
a secular nationalist leader initially owed much to his family's religious authority, Iranian
support of Shaikh Muhammad Khalid thus reinforced the religious dimension of the family's
authority and strengthened the shaikh's position vis-à-vis the secular branch of the family.
Religious Modernism and Radicalism
Even before Atatürk banned the tariqats, a Kurdish religious scholar known as Sa`id Kurdi,
"Kurdish Sa`id", had declared his opposition to them — not on political but on religious
grounds. Sa`id Kurdi (later preferably known as Sa`id Nursi, after his birthplace, Nurs) was
probably the most original Muslim thinker to appear in Turkey in this century. In his youth he
had received a traditional Kurdish madrasa education, and at least one of his teachers had
been a Naqshbandi shaikh. In the first years of this century he moved to Istanbul where he
23 On the authority relations and succession problems within the Barzani family, see the more detailed notes
accompanying the genealogical charts in my Agha, Shaikh and State, chapter 4, appendix.
24 The actual military force of Shaikh Muhammad Khalid's Hizbullah remains unclear and their present
dependence on Iran untransparent. The first published interview of which I am aware was made as recently as
March 1991 by a Kurdish journalist from Turkey, Cevat Korkmaz, who reported it in his book Kürt Kapanı (The
Kurdish Trap) (Ankara: Yurt, 1991), pp. 49-69. Korkmaz unconvincingly tries to implicate the shaikh in alleged
Islamic terrorism in Turkey and throws little light on his activities in Iraqi Kurdistan.​