A major new scholarly work by Egyptian historian and international relations expert Dr. Mohamed Rifaat Al-Imam offers one of the most comprehensive and authoritative accounts of Kurdish history in the modern era, tracing the fate of Kurdistan and its people from the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Dr. Al-Imam, a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Damanhour University and a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, the Union of Arab Historians, and the Egyptian Society for Historical Studies, is widely recognized for his research on ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. His previous studies on Armenians, Kurds, Iranians, Greeks, Baha’is, and genocide studies give this book exceptional academic weight and regional depth.
The book presents the Kurds as one of the most ancient peoples of the Middle East and, at the same time, the largest nation in the region to have remained without a centralized state. It explains how geography, tribal structures, and regional and international rivalries confined Kurdish political development while anchoring their identity in the mountain ranges of Zagros, Taurus, and Ararat. These mountains, the author argues, were not only a refuge from imperial domination but also the cradle of a culture of resistance, freedom, and collective memory, symbolized in Kurdish mythology and the Newroz tradition.
Dr. Al-Imam tackles one of the most difficult challenges in Middle Eastern historiography: the absence of a unified Kurdish state and the dominance of imperial and colonial narratives. He reconstructs a Kurdish-centered historical narrative by critically examining Ottoman, Safavid, Persian, Russian, and British sources, placing Kurdish agency back at the heart of regional history.
Structured in seven analytical chapters, the book covers the rise and fall of Kurdish emirates, Ottoman and Persian centralization, the impact of the Eastern Question, the Crimean War, Pan-Islamism under Sultan Abdulhamid II, the Hamidiye regiments, and the emergence of Kurdish nationalism during the constitutional revolutions in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. It also documents key uprisings and the dismantling of semi-autonomous Kurdish principalities such as Baban, Soran, and Botan.
By ending with World War I and the international agreements that fixed new borders across Kurdistan, the study explains how the Kurdish people entered the modern era divided among emerging nation-states and confronted systematic policies of Turkification, Persianization, and Arabization.
Combining rigorous academic method, geopolitical analysis, and deep knowledge of minority histories and genocidal policies, Dr. Mohamed Rifaat Al-Imam delivers a definitive reference on Kurdish history in the modern period. The book stands as an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, and readers seeking to understand the historical roots of the Kurdish question and the long struggle of a “nation of mountains” for identity, survival, and self-determination.
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