Abstracta Iranica

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Posch, Walter
« What Is a Frontier? Mapping Kurdistan between Ottomans and Safavids », in : Éva M. Jeremiás, ed., Irano-Turkic Cultural Contacts in the 11th – 17th Centuries. Piliscsaba, [2002] 2003, pp. 203-215.

This all too brief article on the Kurdish borderlands between Ottomans and Safavid territory makes various important points. The border between the Safavids and the Ottomans, the author argues, is not be conceived of as a clearly demarcated line, but revolved around the control of key cities and their hinterland. The Kurdish tribes inhabiting these border regions were the real actors in the continuous struggle for power in the area. Loosely associated with the respective governments to which they were supposedly subordinated, they were the ones who defended the border against rivals across. Such ongoing tribal fights were typically ignored by the imperial powers, which only manipulated this lack of unity for their own advantage by luring the tribes in question into their orbit. What we now call Kurdistan thus never knew political unity.

Rudi Matthee

Pour citer cette recension

Rudi Matthee. Posch, Walter, « What Is a Frontier? Mapping Kurdistan between Ottomans and Safavids », in : Éva M. Jeremiás, ed., Irano-Turkic Cultural Contacts in the 11th – 17th Centuries. Piliscsaba, [2002] 2003, pp. 203-215., Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 26, mis en ligne le : 8 décembre 2005. URL http://abstractairanica.revues.org/document2819.html. Consulté le 25 novembre 2009.