>> Hirad Dinavari: Hi, everyone.
Thank you for joining us, today.
In our panel symposium, today,
we are featuring Dr. Ori Z.
Soltes, who will be speaking
about the Druze and the Kurds:
Two Complex Models
in a Complex Region.
Dr. Ori Z. Soltes teaches in
Georgetown University's Center
for Jewish Civilization across
disciplines from art history
and theology to philosophy
and political history.
He is the former
director and curator
of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick
National Jewish Museum
and has curated more
than 90 exhibitions there
and in other venues across
the country and overseas.
He is the author of over 300
articles, exhibition catalogs,
and essays on diverse topics.
Among his recent books are
Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim Art
Draws From the Same Source,
Searching for Oneness, Mysticism
in Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, Untangling the Web:
Why the Middle East is a Mess
and Always Has Been, Growing
Up Jewish in India: Synagogues,
Customs, and Communities from
the Bene Israel to the Art
of Siona Benjamin, God and
Goal Posts: A Brief History
of Sports, Religion,
Politics, War, and Art,
and Identity, Art,
and Migration.
Without taking any further time,
I would like to welcome
Dr. Soltes
and I hope you enjoy this
wonderful, enchanting talk.
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Thank
you, so very much.
You're right, it's a
great pleasure to be here
and it was a great pleasure
to work for a couple of weeks
at the Library of
Congress researching.
The Middle East is a complex
and complicated place
to say the least.
The very terminology, do
we call it middle east?
Do we call it near east?
Do we call it southwest Asia?
Or it's geopolitical parameters.
Google 'Middle East' and you'll
find a half a dozen, at least,
different versions and visions
of what actually
constitutes the Middle East,
which countries get left in,
which countries get left out.
Part of that will depend
on whether the map was made
yesterday or 20 years ago.
Part of it will depend on well,
whatever the map maker
thought was correct.
It's a region that is
a complex interweave.
It's a tangle of religion,
politics, ethnicity,
nationality, economics,
all of which are interwoven
with very often difficult to
grasp definitions, conflicting
and competing aspirations,
and constant interferences
from the outside.
And this is a reality that has
been in place for thousands
of years, not dozens
or a few hundred years
but thousands of years.
Consider for a moment, for
example, Semite, Arab, Muslim,
Jew, Christian, Israeli,
Palestinian.
All of those terms are terms
that are complicated, complex,
and which typically when
we use them, we don't think
about with respect to
their complexities,
but are complicated
of definition.
Take just one of them,
Arab, for example.
When we use that term, do
we mean it, and we can,
to refer to an idea that
has a geographic beginning?
So I call myself an Arab because
my ancestors or I directly come
from the Arab, from the southern
part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Is it connect to my
sense of ethnic self?
And how can that be measured?
So I am called, let
us say, a Semite.
Why? Because I'm
speaking Arabic,
which is a Semitic language.
So actually, I'm defining
myself by way of language.
Or is it a matter of culture?
Is it something to do with
nomadic rather than stationery?
The first mentions that seem to
be of the Arabs, for example,
on a Syrian inscription from
Shalmaneser, the Assyrian king,
Shalmaneser the third from
1863 talks about [inaudible],
and there's an [inaudible]
Persian inscription from 570
that says Arabia, and both of
those refer to outside groups
that are nomadic and not
part of the urbanized reality
of the Assyrians and the
[inaudible] Persians.
Aeschylus, the Greek
playwright at the beginning
of the fifth pre-Christian
century,
in his play The Persians,
mentions a character
who is called Magos Arabos
as a commander in the army
of the Persian [inaudible],
Xerxes,
and he is clearly someone,
again, from the outside,
from the wilderness,
from the desert,
from somewhere away
from wherever we are.
So it's a term which has
a number of possibilities
for understanding
and for definition.
If I think of the word as
it was in use just prior
to when Mohammad hit the
scene in the late sixth,
early seventh century, the
word 'Arab' referred to a kind
of country bumpkin,
someone who was nomadic,
someone who did not
live in the city
and who was probably not
particularly well-educated.
After the prophet Mohammad,
because eventually the Quran,
which is the text of the new
faith that he is shaping,
Islam, is written in Arabis.
The understanding of what
the word means, the handling
of what the language is about
becomes significantly elevated,
and of course, if one turns to
the modern era and when things
of the Arab world of
political terms, we're talking
about a reality that extends
across North Africa from Morocco
to Egypt, and from
Egypt, of course,
all the way to the
gates of Iran.
I might mention in passing
that Abdul Gamar Nasser,
the head of Egypt at one point,
felt that Egypt was the center
of the Arab world, and his
successor, Anwar Sadat,
when he made peace with the
Israelis at the end of the '70s,
one of the comments he made
was we Egyptians shouldn't be
fighting all these wars
on behalf of those Arabs.
So two different Egyptian
leaders, one who saw Egypt
as essentially Arab, and one
who saw Egypt as not Arab.
So Arab is a complicated term.
So is Semite.
So is Muslim.
So is Christian.
So is Jew.
So is Israeli.
So is Palestinian.
And so are the terms Druze and
Kurd, which I've chosen to focus
on in my research at the
library and this afternoon
because they are
each so complicated
that they offer microcosms
of Middle Eastern complexity
and because both the Druze
and the Kurds are minorities
within a much different
majority,
and therefore offer potential
models at least to think
about how one finds
one's way in that region
as a minority among majorities.
The Druze, for example, to
begin with them, were thought
of by some of the nineteenth
century anthropological
investigators as having
derived from the Persians
or from the Galls up in France,
or even being a consequence
of the crusader's arrival, the
time they spent in the region,
and presumably the
intermarriage with natives
that they brought about, and
so on, and yet the Druze,
as far as we can tell from other
measures, clearly are indigenous
and would fall under that
umbrella that we call Arab,
that umbrella that we
call Semite, and umbrellas
that they do and don't fall
under will be very
interesting to consider.
There are all told
maybe 600,000 Druze.
We're not talking
about a lot of people,
and they for the most
part, inhabit the area
of northern Israel, the
galley, southern Lebanon,
and southwestern Syria,
so they're also found
within 3 different
countries according
to today's geopolitical
configuration of the region.
They originated in the eleventh
century as a new faith tradition
that is inspired by the Sixth
Fatimid Khalif, Al-Hakim,
and the Fatimids are
Ismaili Shia Muslims.
So they start out as a subset of
a subset of a subset of Islam.
They keep propagators of this
new faith or Hamza ibn 'Al?,
and initially, Muhammad
ibn Ismail al-Darazi.
The interesting thing is that
al-Darazi, in the long run,
comes [inaudible] by most
as heretical and therefore,
it's ironic for most of those
who we outsiders call Druze
that we call them Druze named
for Darazi, because in fact,
he's not regarded
as a proper Druze,
and so that's not the
term that Druze use.
They call themselves,
rather Matab al-Tawhid,
which is to say the sect of
Unitarianism of singularity,
or more simply, [inaudible],
which is another Arabic way
of saying they are [inaudible]
because the central issue
of their faith as they present
it to the world is the certainty
and absoluteness of
the singularity of God.
Al-Hakim disappears in
1021, and there are those
within the Druze community,
within the [inaudible] community
who believe that
it's an occultation,
that he is withdrawn from the
world a kind of self-exile
from the world, until such
time as the world starts
to more effectively follow the
teachings that he laid out,
and becoming more ethical, and
moral, and more perfect place,
and he will reappear at a
certain point to complete
that process of perfection.
Well, it doesn't happen, doesn't
happen, and ultimately the sense
of occultation is one that
is reserved for the end
of time as we know it.
There are others, by
the way, that assume,
rather, that he was murdered.
Any number of candidates
to have been his murderer,
including his sister who was 16
years his senior because he was
so generous, so unusual,
so different as a Khalif,
there were those who just
thought this guy's a little bit
off, and perhaps members
of his own family.
So that's a possibility.
What is more important is in
the aftermath of his death,
his successor as a Fatimid
Khalif, Al Zahir started
within a few months to persecute
his followers, his continuers
of the shape that had him as a
centerpiece and was articulated
by Hansa and early on by Darazi
and others, and they were
out seeking converts to
the new form of faith.
But by 1043, that
had all stopped.
The gates, as the tradition
has it, were closed.
If you hadn't embraced the
faith by then, end of story.
You cannot become a
member of the faith.
You can only be born into it;
you cannot convert into it.
There was less to no
missionary activity after 1043,
and in fact, many
went into hiding,
no doubt because of the
persecutions being affected
by [inaudible].
And there are those who
practice what is called Taqiyya,
so they profess not to
be members of this faith
and only practice it behind
closed doors, or conversely,
they felt that we don't want to
talk about it because you know,
by 1043 you haven't
joined, you can't join
because you won't be prepared
for the spiritual course
that is being laid out.
Aside from Al-Hakim and
Hamza Ali, and Al-Darazi,
there are five other
major and minor figures
that give us a kind of founding
hierarchy of 8 individuals,
and the teachings that are
conveyed are found in a series
of 111 letters, epistles called
the Ras?'il al-?ikma epistles
of wisdom that were
organized into six books.
About 30 of those letters
are written by Hamza,
and most of them are written
by another of the eight,
a guy by the name
of [inaudible].
In any case, they're not
compiled together in a kind
of coherent text until the
fifteenth century when a fellow
by the name of Jamil
[inaudible] organized them
and also added the commentary
known as [inaudible].
So by then, we might say that
we have a kind of confirmed set
of teachings, which
however are accessible only
to members of the faith.
It's not just that one cannot
convert in, one is not going
to be instructed as to
what the faith is about.
We have by now a sense of that
faith, of those teachings.
We have access to
another of the epistles
and the commentaries
to get a sense.
The first principle as
I'll mention in a moment,
back absolutely the
singularity of God.
But the thing about
God's singularity is
that also God is beyond
our ability to comprehend.
God's very name is ineffable.
We cannot know, really,
anything about God
because God is sui generis
of itself and separate from
and different from us.
The word in Arabic that conveys
that is the word [inaudible].
And so what the tradition brings
forth is a kind of paradox
that because God cannot in any
way, shape, or form be grasped,
and therefore, how can I
effectively be a member
of the faith?
God therefore chooses, at
certain points in history
to manifest itself in human
form so that we have access
by way of that human form.
So the tradition
is that the last
of these manifestations
was Al-Hakim.
So put another way,
Hakim is God personified,
and yet understand this
paradox should not be confused,
let's say, with the
paradox within Christianity
of a triune God where Jesus
is both human and divine.
Jesus is of the same substance
of God, whereas Al-Hakim
and those who preceded him as
manifestations of God are not
of the same substance because
they're of human substance,
and God is beyond substance.
They're simply manifestations
of God.
There are eight messengers
- again, that word Rasul.
Prophetic figures from Adam to
Hamza who convey God's truth.
Again, culminating with Hamza as
the key propagator of the faith
of which Al-Hakim is
the center figure.
The beginning point to
repeat is within a subset
of a subset of a
subset of Islam.
Ashia subset, [inaudible]
subset, a Fatimid sub-sub-subset
of Islam and yet it diverges
significantly enough from Islam
that it becomes its own sect.
There is no obligation to
the five prayers daily,
which are obligatory
to every Muslim.
In fact, rituals and prayers
are considered less significant
than spiritual discipline
and deeds.
There is no fast during
the month of Ramadan.
There is no prescribed
pilgrimage to Mecca,
Medina, or anywhere else.
There is no Zakat, charity
as it is specifically prescribed
among the four pillars of Islam.
There are, however, seven
key principles of the faith.
The first is to hold
one's tongue,
meaning to keep one's promises,
to be sincere in what one says,
to admit one's errors, things
of that sort to keep secrets.
The second is to watch
over one's brethren,
so a sense of solidarity among
fellow unitarians [inaudible].
No idle worship, shirking
the devil, shirking evil.
So we have free choice
to go in the positive
or negative direction, and we
are enjoined by the tradition
to shirk the wrong direction.
The fifth key principle is
belief in - it's the central one
that I've already articulated
- in the uniqueness of God
and the presence of God in
our reality as Al-Hakim,
as the last of the
manifestations
or revelations of God.
It's interesting,
the terminology incarnation
is not used.
It is manifestation
or revelation.
The sixth is to accept
God's deeds regardless,
so in epistle nine, for
example, there is a hypothetical
if God were to request
that you kill your child,
you do so without
even questioning.
And some of you may recognize
that as an echo of what we get
in Genesis 22, which underscores
and reminds us that the new sect
that is being shaped while
it draws in large part,
in large measure from Islam.
Also, as I will repeat, it draws
from Judaism, from Christianity,
from Zoroastrianism, and
as I will say again later,
Neoplatonism and
by Neoplatonism,
the platonic mode of thinking.
It is very diverse
in its accumulation
of traditions that influence it.
The seventh of the key
principles is coming to terms
with both the concealed and
apparent divine decrees.
In other words, I take whatever
comes to me and I understand
that it is part of
God's divine plant.
The division of Druze society
is roughly into two groups.
There is what's called
the uqqal.
These are the wise ones, the
ones who know esoteric things,
the ones who are - understand
what is called batan,
the inner meaning of text.
And the uqqal, by the way,
can include men and women,
so there is no gender
distinction with respect
to this kind of hierarchy.
And the jahal are the simple
people, everybody else.
But if I'm a jahal - if I'm
part of the jahal and I want
to become part of the uqqal,
it's accessible to me.
I can seek that,
and I can probably,
if I behave myself
properly, become that.
So there is no inherent
religious, spiritual hierarchy.
It's no I inherit
it from my father
and if I didn't,
I can't become it.
That sort of feature of
society is not present for this.
What one must do, what one
is called upon to do is
to visit what is a very
simply appointed prayer room -
it's called a [inaudible] -
every evening if I'm interested
in becoming part of the uqqal.
And even if I'm not, I should
probably visit it certainly
on Thursday evenings, which is
the main evening of gathering,
and probably on Sunday
evenings, as well.
And violations of religious
and cultural norms will lead
to the uqqal pronouncing
kind of an anthem upon me
where I'm excluded
from the gatherings.
So we see a diversity
of influence is
into what becomes its own
sect, it's own form of faith,
it's own religion, and we see
socio-politically over time
to distinguish that from
religious lead a succession
of leading families.
In 11 through 15 century,
it's the [inaudible] family,
from which [inaudible]
who organized the epistles
into their definitive form and
out of the commentary derives.
By the sixteenth,
seventeenth century,
the [inaudible] tribe
has become predominant
within the community.
By the late seventeenth
century, it's the Jihab family,
and the whole thing,
which had begun in Egypt
because Cairo was the capital
of the Fatimid dynasty,
that's where Al-Hakim operated
from, that's where Al-Hamza
and Al-Darazi, all of them
operated from that area.
Although they may not have
originated in that area,
that's where they operated from.
As the faith began to spread
while Al-Hakim was still alive,
it made its way up to
and established itself
around Mount Lebanon in
what is today Lebanon.
There is a tradition, as well,
but they were missionaries going
south into Yemen, east to Iraq,
and as far as India that there
were communities established
there in India, as well.
In any case, by the
eighteenth century,
there was the beginnings
of a migration
from Mount Lebanon toward the
Hauran Mountains in Syria,
a function in large part
of internal Druze conflict,
and issue I'll come
back to in a few moments
because during this whole time,
the sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, nineteenth
centuries as we come
into the middle periods, you
might say, of Druze history,
the community is dealing not
only internally with itself,
but externally with the
succession of powers.
And by the sixteenth century,
it's the Ottomans who have come
to dominate the entire area,
and it's with - in that context
that we being to see the
internal Druze conflicts taking
shape as the [inaudible]
and the Arsalan clans
against the [inaudible] clans,
and those internal conflicts
continue to the present day.
But at the same time,
there are conflicts
within the larger Ottoman world.
So for example, there was
a vicious struggle in 1841
between the Druze
community in Lebanon
and the Maronite
Christian community
that again, underscores force.
If the Jews are not Muslim,
they're not Christian either.
They're their own group.
And meanwhile, they are trying
to figure out how to work
as a minority within
the Ottoman regime,
which for the most part tend
to be benign with respect
to autonomy of its
minority, religious,
and ethnic groups provided,
you know, they paid their taxes
and were good citizens.
But occasionally, you
would have Sultans
who were a much more
aggressive about wanting
to control everything, whether
it was religious or political.
Meanwhile, of course, the
Ottomans are gone in the course
of World War one, and in
their stead, there's another -
we might say outside
power, for sure, the French,
who dominate in this area.
The aftermath of World
War one divides most of it
between the victorious British
and the victorious French,
and while the British
take command of the area
that today encompasses Israel,
Palestine, Gaza, Jordan,
and Iraq, the area that
today encompasses Syria
and Lebanon is taken
control of by the French.
And in 1921, the
French - in the process
of reorganizing greater
Syria as Syria and Lebanon,
establish a Druze council
so the Druze have official
representation as a community
within the overall
administration by the French.
In 1923, that starts
to become problematic
because there's a French
leader, there, a guy by the name
of Captain [inaudible]
who becomes more
and more an interferer in
internal Druze affairs,
and all of that leads
ultimately to an armed conflict
against the French by the
Druze between 1925 and 1927.
So it is not the case that the
Druze are never militaristic
if they need to be in order
to protect their spiritual
and cultural prerogatives.
Conversely, if we jump
to another decade,
the period between 1936 and
1939 when not as much in Lebanon
as what is now Israel,
Palestine, and Syria,
there is an uprising against
British control on the part
of primarily the Muslim,
Palestinian, Arab population
against the British, against
the Jewish settlement.
The Druze, for the most part,
are not involved in that at all.
So clearly, depending
on where they are,
they may view differently
where they fit as part
of which culture, among
the groups of cultures
that are operating
at any given place.
So we see in the midst of World
War one and World War in 19 -
sorry, the midst of World War
two in 1941, where Vichy France
and the Vichy French under Nazi
control are up in opposition
against the British
and the free French,
we find that there are
Druze on both sides.
In the aftermath of
World War two, by 1947,
there is a civil war going on,
which in part is a function
of the larger picture of
the desire on the part
of different parties
to remove the British
and the French colonial
presence from the region.
So before the British leave,
there are two Druze factions
with respect to the
Jews and the Muslims
who are the primary groups at
odds with each other and at odds
with the British
until they leave
and after the British have
left in the period between 1947
and 1949, which is
the period that begins
with the Israeli Declaration of
Independence, follows with a war
that involves Israel and half
a dozen of her Arab neighbors,
and culminates with the
roads arms disagreements
between those neighbors
in Israel in 1949.
In the midst of that
1.5, 2-year period,
the Druze find themselves
asking should we tie our fate
to Arab nationalism
and therefore,
with these various newborn Arab
countries oppose the coming
into existence of Israel?
Or should we tie our
fate to the [inaudible],
to the Jewish establishment
there?
And for the most part,
those in what eventuated
as Israel chose Israel.
And those who were in Lebanon
and Syria chose Lebanon
and Syria.
So after 1949, to be concise
about it, you find the Druze
as loyal parts of
Syria, Lebanon,
and Israel, loyal populations.
In fact, you find in
Israel the government trying
to define whether Druze,
how should they be treated?
Should they be regarded
simply as quote Arabs?
And you already understand
from what I said at the outset
that that term is impossibly
difficult to define,
and probably a poor one to
use and yet it was used,
and we still use it all the
time in an overly simple manner.
Do they just fit into that?
Can we see them as a
community that will become part
of the larger Israeli
community and entitled
to all the citizenship
rights that Israelis want?
Or do we see - have
to isolate them?
And ultimately, they
proved themselves loyal.
They become in Israel
Israeli citizens.
They serve in the
Israel Defense Forces,
the Israeli Army
significantly in 1967,
again in 1982 in Lebanon.
And of course, that would
provide some complications
for them because Druze
on the Israeli side
of the fence have
cousins on the Syrian
or the Lebanese side
of the fence.
And so they're kind of,
to a certain extent,
caught between the
fire and the pot.
They want to serve the Israelis.
They are loyal Israelis.
They consider themselves
loyal Israelis,
and yet they don't want to
find themselves fighting
against their own cousins
who are on the other side
of the fence who are as
loyal to Syria and Lebanon
as the Israeli Druze
are to Israel.
One of the more interesting
developments in this comes
about at the end of the '70s and
just before that 1982 conflict
where in December of '81,
Israelis pass a law that those
up on the Golan Heights, which
Israel had won from the Syrians
in 1967, have the right to
get Israeli identity cards.
They won't become
Israeli citizens
because the Israelis have
not taken over the Golan
and made it part of Israel,
but clearly in their minds,
the Israeli's minds, there's a
kind of step in that direction
by offering Israel identity
cards, in particular
to the Druze living up
on the Golan Heights.
And the interesting thing
is in what has been referred
to as an example of effective
non-violent resistance,
for the most part,
the Druze refused.
They're not interested
because they are loyal Syrians,
because the leadership
of the Druze
on the Golan Heights
are loyal Syrians
and they threaten
excommunication,
religious excommunication
for those who turn
to the Israeli choice
of identity cards.
And as a practical matter,
because the Druze
are very practical,
what if Golan Heights are
eventually returned to Syria,
which of course, remains
a possibility and back
in the '80s was even more
of a possibility in hope
for eventual negotiations for
peace between Israel and Syria.
If we take on Israeli identity
cards, will we be disadvantaged
when the Golan Heights
goes back to Syria?
If we fast forward in the
interest of time to 2011 and '12
in the Arab spring, there we
find the Druze, of course,
most significant for the purpose
of this discussion with respect
to their presence in Syria as
opposed to Israel or Lebanon,
and one might have expected
a kind of knee-jerk support
of the regime because Assad's
regime tends - tended and tends
to be relatively lenient with
minorities because Assad,
President Assad and his
father, they all come
from a minority religious
group the Alawite.
So they are interested in
cobbling together on a kind
of reliance of religious
minorities against the danger
to them, ever present,
of a majority.
But when everything broke
apart with the Arab spring
and the civil war in Syria,
the Druze did not necessarily
support that regime.
Some did, some didn't.
In Lebanon, the Druze
leaders were very cautious
about even saying things
about Assad because who knew
where things might go with
respect to the relationship
between Syria and Lebanon.
In both cases, it was
more common to see a kind
of neutral perspective
and a diverse perspective
of where we should go.
There is a book written
by Abu Izzedin -
Nejla Abu Izzedin
called The Druze:
A New Study of Their
History, Faith, and Society,
and it quotes a discussion from
1899, the book dates from 1984,
but it quotes a discussion
in 1899
by German Archaeologist
[inaudible] who related
and now I'm quoting the story
of their origins as he heard it
from a Druze authority,
namely, but they are a sort
of Arab stock with a small
add mixture of Kurdish blood.
It remains to be stressed that
the Druze are Arabite culture,
they pronounce correctly
[inaudible] and [inaudible] -
Arabic letters - and in
particular, [inaudible]
and [inaudible] correctly.
So this question and this
discussion from 1899 to 1984
of exactly what they are
remains a very vital one,
and obviously has a broad
and deep range of directions
in which one might
take it in looking
for an answer to the question.
But the suggestion
that they might be
in part Kurdish brings me to
the whole question of the Kurds,
and my starting point
with that question
because the last comment
that I quoted had to do
with the Druze pronunciation
of Arabic that confirms
that they are Arabs,
my starting point
with the Kurds is
Kurdish languages.
The Kurdish languages are
understood to be a branch
of Iraniq, which is part of
endo-Iranian, which is part
of endo-European, which means
they're related linguistically
to Persian, but there is more
than one Kurdish language.
There are two main dialects,
which are really sufficiently
mutually unintelligible
that we can call them two-name
languages, [inaudible].
Most of the Kurds in Turkey,
Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
a few Kurds in Northern Iraq
and Iran in the northwest
and the northeast, about 15 to
17 million speakers [inaudible].
Syrani, on the other hand,
6 to 7 million speakers
and Syrani developed its own
alphabet from the Arabic script,
whereas [inaudible] uses most
of the texts that are written
in [inaudible] use the
[inaudible] which is derived
from the Latin alphabet that we
use for English, and actually
in Iraq, [inaudible] became
an official language together
with Arabic under
Saddam, of all things.
Thinks of the Austro-Hungarian
empire in the nineteenth century
where eventually by 1861,
German and Hungarian are
the two official languages
of the empire, so like
[inaudible] the lesser --
in terms of numbers
- language to German,
[inaudible] the lesser
to Arabic within Iraq.
But then there is a
whole third branch with -
that are sometimes is sometimes
considered to be peripheral.
The [inaudible] branch
that includes [inaudible]
and includes [inaudible]
and includes [inaudible]
and includes [inaudible]
and so on and so forth.
Some of these are non-Kurdish
northwestern Iranian language
spoken by several
million ethnic Kurds.
So if I'm a Kurd, that doesn't
necessarily mean I'm a Kurd
because I speak a
Kurdish language.
I could be a Kurd who doesn't
speak a Kurdish language.
And one might suppose that
there could be non-Kurds who end
up speaking Kurdish languages.
In the caucuses, there
is a population of Kurds
that were once part of the USSR
in Azerbaijan and in Georgia,
and there were Kurdish
speakers there,
and there were Kurdish speakers
as far a field as Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan, but
there are also cases -
there was also a case
where there were Armenians
who embraced the Islamic
tradition carried by the Kurds,
so they become Muslims and they
become affiliated and involved
with the Kurdish community,
but ethnically they're
Armenians; they're not Kurdish.
Ten to twenty million
throughout Turkey.
Two to three and a
half million in Syria.
In Iraq, 5.5 to 8.5 million.
In Iran, oh 8.5 to 12 million.
And scattered some in Georgia,
some in Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, further
field of course, Finland,
the United States, Australia.
The Kurdish community is a much
more substantial one in terms
of its population than the
Druze community we have
been discussing.
But like the Druze, the
Kurds end up in a number
of different countries.
The Druze repeat,
essentially, in Lebanon,
Syria, and northern Israel.
The Kurds, essentially in
Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
And within the Kurdish
community, there is a kind
of social hierarchy for classes.
There are the offenders,
among whom there were
educated individuals.
There's a religious hierarchy,
[inaudible] and the like.
There are tribal leaders, that's
not the same as the other two,
and there's the mass of
tribesman, otherwise,
and the emphasis on that
word tribe I will come back
to in a few moments.
In the sixteenth century,
Sherefxan Bidlisi,
who is the first kind
of historiographer
of the Kurds talks about there
being four groups, the Kurmanjs,
the Lurs, the Kalhors,
and the Gurans each
with its own language.
And if we look, once again,
to historical references,
there are those who are certain
they're derived from the Mede's
who united with the Persians
to create the Achaemenid Persian
Empire, but earlier than that,
the Assyrians mention the
[inaudible], which are presumed
by many to be the
ancestors of the Kurds.
Xenophon, another Greek writer
at the end of the fifth,
early part of the fourth century
talks about the [inaudible]
and there are others who talk
about the Kurds, most commonly
to repeat their assumed
to derive from the Medes,
who dominated what is now
Iran in the mid-seventh
to the mid-sixth
pre-Christian century.
Their first mention of the
[inaudible] language [inaudible]
in the period between 224 and
651 CE, and the popular usage
of the word seems to have
arrived with the arrival
into the Persian world of
Islam in the seventh century.
Arab and Persian authors
tend to use the term to refer
to all Iranian nomads
from western Persia,
and we also find the
- this disagreement
as to whether the term Kurd
even refers to an ethnicity
or whether it's altogether
a socioeconomic term.
The root [inaudible] in English
spelling, KWRT that comes
from middle Persian tends
to mean shepherd, nomad,
tent-dweller, any group
with that sort of lifestyle.
So again, it could be a matter
of socioeconomics and culture,
and it may or may not be
a matter of ethnicity.
Religiously speaking, most
Kurds are Suni Muslims.
So the Druze, remember,
derived from a subset
of a subset of Shia Islam.
Most Kurds are Suni.
They follow within Suni in
the majority the [inaudible]
or the school of Sharia
that is called [inaudible]
and a significant minority
follow [inaudible].
So there are four major schools
of Sharia within the Suni form
of Islam, and the Kurds are
primarily found to be part
of two of them, but they're
also members of the [inaudible]
who became Sufis and who
follow either the [inaudible]
or the [inaudible], those
movements within Sufi Islam.
There are also [inaudible],
there are also [inaudible],
there are also [inaudible]
who have their own distinct
literature following a
fourteenth century [inaudible].
There are also [inaudible]
with their roots
in pre-Zoroastrian
thinking about one God
with seven angelic beings
that guide the world,
and there are also Zoroastrians.
So Kurds, while they are for
the most part Suni Muslims,
are in fact rather diverse
in the different directions
that their spiritual traditions
have taken them, and it is fair
to say that their tribal
identity is for the most part,
until relatively recently,
stronger than the Kurdish
identity, more about which,
in a few moments, in fact.
Because if we think, first of
all, of the cultural identity
of the Kurds, what is it
that we have to examine?
And the obvious thing is,
well, is there literature?
And as we've said and seen,
Kurdish languages used
different writing systems,
and historically,
there isn't, per say,
for this writing system.
So there isn't a
simple way to say oh,
there's a Kurdish literature.
So we have, for example, poets
in the tenth century already,
oral poets like [inaudible] in
the Lur dialect, which is also,
by the way, considered
a Persian dialect.
But then coming into a
significant development poetry
and language in the fifteenth
or eighteenth century
in what we would call
the Kurdish area,
we might call it Kurdistan,
there is Ali Hariri
in the late fifteenth century,
there was [inaudible],
there is [inaudible].
There's a whole group of
important individuals,
some of whom, for example,
Ismael [inaudible] wrote poetry
in Kurdish and wrote a Kurdish
Persian Arabic dictionary.
Or [inaudible] from the
very end of the seventeenth
into the early eighteenth
century who wrote in both Arabic
and Persian, and they were
merged in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries
two major literary works.
One is the [inaudible],
which is, in brief,
the history of Kurdis
states and the development
of the emirates written,
however, in Persian.
There is also [inaudible], which
is the poetic epic in Kurdish.
There are a number of maybe 2
or 3 really important epics.
The Persian Language is written
in Persian, historical work
on British dynasties to
repeat is what is called the
[inaudible], and it was
composed between 1596 and 1599
by Sharafkhan Bidlisi who
was a prince of Bidlisi
in northern Kurdistan,
which today would be
southeastern Turkey.
His book consists of a preface,
an introduction on the Kurds.
Four books that are devoted
to various Kurdish dynasties
and the work of Ottoman history
annals as a kind of conclusion,
and it touches on the three main
subgenres of Islamic history -
historical writing,
rather, historiography,
dynastic history, annalistic
history, and local history.
But its's of - doing that by way
of a description of the Kurds.
There is then the Kurdish
[inaudible], the Book of Kings.
In Kurdish, it would be called
[inaudible], and this refers
to a group of poetic works that
mainly tell the mythical history
of Iran in a larger sense.
The world from the first king
until the end of the reign
of [inaudible], the last
legendary [inaudible] king.
The Kurdish [inaudible]
particularly focuses on tales
of Rustam, who is the unique
superhero and patron of Iran.
And scholars believe that
the Kurdish epic narratives
significantly differ
from others.
For example, the most
famous [inaudible]
which is the Persian work by
Ferdowsi in form, language,
and narrative structure,
and it gets written
down for the first time at the
end of the sixteenth century.
I mentioned the story of Mem and
Zin, which is a kind of Romeo
and Juliet-like adaptation,
which is considered the Kurdish
national epic that was written
by Ahmad Khani in 1692 and
is written in [inaudible],
in classical Kurdish with many
Persian and Arabic inclusions
and references because
Khani wanted to prove
that the Kurds were
not uncivilized,
blood thirsty tribes, but
have a literary tradition
that produces high
standard works.
I'm quoting from the
beginning of his beginning
so that people will not say
that the Kurds have no knowledge
and have no history,
that all sorts
of peoples have their books and
only the Kurds are negligible.
So there develops this
rather wonderful literature
with its different components
in the course of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries,
and a sense of Kurdish cultural
identity is accordingly trying
to take shape gradually in that
period and as we move forward
into the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries,
although a real Kurdish
nationalist movement won't
really take place in development
until the late nineteenth,
early twentieth century.
If we look very briefly at
what was happening to the Kurds
within the larger world
during this time period,
the [inaudible] are the first
to establish what
they call Kurdistan,
it's an administrative
district under Sultan Sanjar
in the early half of
the twelfth century.
I remind you that Saladin,
Saladin is the great
Kurdish warrior who fought
against the crusaders and
defeated them significantly
at the Battle of the
Horns of Hattin in 1187
and who put aside the
Fatimid dynasty in Egypt,
creating his capital, there,
of a new [inaudible] dynasty,
but in the process became
very Arab-ised in his culture
and even in the language
that he used.
The Ottoman's, of course,
who overrun the whole region
over the course of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries
established Kurdistan
under [inaudible]
at the beginning
of the sixteenth
century as a province,
and that province was officially
reestablished because it kind
of disappeared in the middle of
the nineteenth century in 1846
as part of reforms
in the Ottoman empire
going on at that time.
Over in Iran, what emerged
in the post-Safavid era
as the Qajar dynasty, which was
founded in 1746 with the help
of the Kurds, specifically
the [inaudible] Kurds
and there was a marriage
between a Qajar son
and an [inaudible] daughter
that helped affect this.
Yet the Qajars ultimately
eliminated the autonomy
of the Kurds in 1867, and
of course, the Safavids
that preceded the Qajars and the
Ottomans that were contemporary
with both the Safavids and
the Qajars who were at odds
with each other all the time,
found the Kurds sometimes
on one side, sometimes
on the other side,
and of course the
British entered the scene
by the late nineteenth century,
as do the Germans,
as do the Russians.
And in a series of conflicts,
the first Russia-Turkish
or Ottoman-Turkish war
between 1828 and 1829,
the Kurds were on
the Russian side.
They didn't like [inaudible]
the second centralizing policies
that would limit
Kurdish autonomy.
They cooperated with
the Russians
in the Crimean War in the 1850s.
They began to develop
their own complex -
emirates with complex
relations with a larger power.
In the 1870s, they were part
of a revolt against the Qajars.
They had struggles with the
Armenians, and the process
of all of this, -- and
I am close to wrapping
up my presentation -
comes with the development
of modern Kurdish nationalism
in the late nineteenth century.
The newspaper [inaudible],
which was published
in both [inaudible] and Turkish,
it was pro-Ottoman, by the way.
[inaudible], another
publication in Kurdistan.
There were Kurds who were
part of the young Turks group
that overthrew [inaudible]
the second,
the Ottoman Sultan in 1908.
And after World War one, the
Kurds expected that they, too,
would receive estates.
It was discussed at Versailles.
It was discussed in
1920 at [inaudible].
It was discussed at [inaudible]
in 1923, even [inaudible] sought
to attract the Kurds
into his new state,
but the British ultimately
provided them with nothing.
And in the period between
World War one and our own time,
the same principles, the same
issues, the same ideas seem
to play out again and
again within the region,
and that is that we find the
Kurds subdivided among different
polities, themselves
having gained no polity,
finding themselves caught
between the Iraqis and the Turks
at one point, assisting
the Turks under pressure
from the Americans against
Kurdish - Kurds from Turkey,
finding themselves
assaulted by Saddam's army
and his chemical
warfare at the same time.
And with the destruction of Iraq
after the second
Persian Gulf War of 2003,
for the first time de facto,
the Kurds established their
own state, which didn't
and doesn't mean that there were
not still and don't continue
to be internal conflicts
coming the different groups
that we call Kurds.
At one point, Assad grants
autonomy to a Kurdish state
in Syria, hoping that that will
further their assist of him
against those who he's fighting
to salvage his reign, and Iran,
of course, is a complicated
and difficult story
in and of itself.
The United States
always supports the Kurds
when we need them, and
if we don't need them,
it's interesting how easily
our support of them has tended,
historically, to evaporate.
In the most recent
debacle involving ISIS
where the Kurds were
getting slaughtered
because they had very
little weaponry over
and against what ISIS had
found, when we provided them
with weapons, it is they who
turned the tide against ISIS
and played an important role
in the ongoing reshaping
of the region.
Both they and the
Druze are complicated,
complicated stories, microcosms
of the larger, complicated story
of the region of the
Middle East and each
with its own subset
ways of dealing
with the majority
world around them.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Dr. Soltes,
thank you very much
for taking the time.
I did want to stop you
because I wanted you to wrap
up both the Druze,
as well as the Kurds.
Of course, this situation
isn't unique to the Kurds.
I have on question for you.
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Sure.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Since we
don't have that much time,
and essentially, you know, the
Jews and the Kurds are there,
but there are a number
of other groups
which you're familiar with.
Among the Kurds, you
have the [inaudible],
Assyrian Christians, who
actually a number of them,
a good chunk of them
live among the Kurds
and are minorities, themselves.
Of course, Assyrians live in
many parts of the Middle East,
Turkey, and Arab countries,
as well, Syria, Lebanon.
Also, the Mandeans
between Iran and Iraq,
very ancient population.
So for all of these groups,
and of course, there is lots
of politics involved in
all of it, and of course,
religious and ethnicity.
How can these groups,
each of them
in some way be an instrument
for understanding the complexity
of religion and a religious
perspective in this region?
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Yes.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Or
ethnicity, for that reason
because as you know,
even the ethnicity side
of it is fairly complex.
Just among the Kurds, you
have several subgroups,
and not to mention dialects.
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Yes.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Go ahead.
>> Ori Z. Soltes: So this
comes to the very reason why
when I was given this
opportunity to research
at the library in this
area in the Middle East,
having something to do with
religion, I thought you know,
it would be very interesting
to do the Druze and the Kurds
because if one of my [inaudible]
is that we have on the outside
so little understanding
of how incredibly
complicated the region is.
So if I were to be able
to provide a study of each
of these two groups that are
so different from each other
with certain overlapping
principles,
one primarily we think
of in religious terms
and it turns out, well,
it's not that simple.
The other we think of in ethnic
terms, it turns out it's not
that simple to offer these
as models of complexity
that someone who reads about the
Kurds and reads about the Druze,
even just concisely with respect
to these complexities would not
only realize oh my goodness,
there's so much I don't
understand about these people
that I didn't even know that I
didn't know what I didn't know,
that you would be - one could
be inclined to then step back,
widen the lens, and
realize oh my goodness,
what is it that I don't
know about, you know,
the Palestinians,
the [inaudible],
about the Turks,
about the Iranians?
Any of these groups that
succumb to so much complexity,
all of which is so
interwoven in a region
of unbelievable complexity.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely.
And I also want to quickly add
that the Kurds also have a
Jewish community that's quite
interesting, as well, who
speak Aramaic, not Kurdish.
So that's the - the language
and religion doesn't always -
as you've said, many
of the Kurdish dialects
that you've noticed yourself
are technically not Kurdish.
Like [inaudible] and Gorani,
some of the earliest Kurdish
poetry is Gorani which today,
Gorani is considered
its own Iranic language.
However, it's very,
very fascinating.
On the Druze, also going to
wrap up with this quick comment.
What specifically with
the current situation
of the Druze drew you to focus
on them as it relates, now,
to the whole Syria,
Lebanon, Israel situation?
And where do you see the
future for the Druze?
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Yeah.
I mean, I see them as ideally,
you know, a potential buffer
that could help be an instrument
for bringing these
three polities together,
but what I was mainly first
focused on was pointing
out that typically when one
hears about the Druze I think
in the United States, you hear
about them in the Israel context
and everyone says, "oh, yes.
They serve in the
Israel defense forces".
End of story.
But it turns out not
only are they elsewhere,
but when the Israelis
were really trying
to force the Golan
formerly Syrian Druze
to become quasi-Israelis,
they said no
because that's not what we are.
So clearly, there is much
more nuance to their sense
of identity politically,
nationally, and otherwise.
But that could be a plus
in a better world, anyway,
where because they've
got cousins on all sides
of all these fences, they could
be part of the implementation
of trying to have these larger
entities, Israel, Lebanon,
Syria get to each other
in a more positive way.
That's a little bit, perhaps,
overly idealistic on my part,
but I'll settle for having
people understand more
about what they're about, even
if it doesn't lead to the kind
of outcome that I wish it could.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely.
Again, I thank you very much
and I just want to say also
with the Kurds that with the
situation that they're in now,
maybe they can be that bridge
that you just mentioned
because they're in
Iran, they're in Turkey,
they're in Iraq and Syria.
Culturally, they are closer
to the Persian speaking,
but they are definitely
historically have close ties
to the Ottoman and
Arab world, as well.
So maybe, like the Druze, these
communities that are smaller
that sort of go between
territories,
[inaudible] is another one I'm
thinking of the way they're -
three different countries, yeah.
These communities could be
the future, in some ways,
of bringing people together
and superseding nationalism.
Long and short, what do
you hope that a study
like this will give the audience
so that people leave with some,
you know, anecdotes or
some lessons from all
of these situations
and communities.
>> Ori Z. Soltes:
I guess for me;
the name of the game
is always the same.
I want my audience whether
it's in a classroom,
whether it's a book that
I've written, or whether it's
in this kind of a context to go
away thinking and because I have
as a concern that most of us -
including within
our government -
don't spend enough time
thinking about and trying
to understand these things so
that we are more inclined to go
in like the bull
in the China shop
because we don't understand
what the value of what's going
on in the China shop,
or how complex it is.
My wish would be that someone
who hears this or someone
who reads this says,
"wow, really complicated.
Maybe I'll have to rethink
what I thought I knew
about the region".
That's it.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you
very much for taking the time.
Your presentation
on both the Druze
and the Kurds was
very fascinating.
I frankly learned a lot.
I appreciate it very much
and hope to see you visit us
at the library and
continue your research.
>> Ori Z. Soltes: Thank
you, I want that too.
>> Hirad Dinavari: My pleasure.
Thank you, thank you, everyone.
Bye.