‘Keys to the Border’: Kurdish Ethno-Politics in the Early Modern World
- Djene Rhys Bajalan, D.Phil Candidate in Oriental Studies (University of Oxford)
- Wednesday 29 January 5pm, Faculty of Oriental Studies.

‘This lecture examines the nature of Kurdish ‘ethnicity’ in the early
modern world. More precisely, it seeks to look at the ways in which the
idiom of Kurdishness framed the relationship between the Ottoman
Sultanate and the Kurdish populated periphery between the sixteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. While arguing that it would be inappropriate
to describe Kurdish ‘ethno-politics’ in this period as either modern
Kurdish nationalism or even as a precursor to it, I contend that the
notion that the Kurds constituted a distinct ethnic community influenced
both the strategies pursued by the Ottoman centre in administering
‘Kurdistan’, as well as the way in which certain local elites envisaged
their ‘pact’ with the imperial state.’

Convenors (Faculty of Oriental Studies), Dr Özlem Galip and Prof Theo M van Lint:
[email protected]
[email protected]