The Greatest Kurdish Heroes PLEASE Add More Heroes

[Anthea]

Remember All These Brave Proud Kurdish Heroes

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[Piling]

Salah ad Din died on March 4th 1193, exactly 820 years ago.

[Anthea]

Salah ad Din died on March 4th 1193, exactly 820 years ago.

I did NOT know that

Do Kurds celebrate his memory

[Piling]

Kurds never need foreigners' help for dividing themselves. In that field they are good self made men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Gour ... my_officer)
It was General Gouraud. And in the same time other French Officers of 2nd Office (Foreign) worked with Hawar, Osman Sebrî and Bedir Xam brothers, and Xoybûn, to fight with Turks and elaborate Kurdish alphabet. That's the reason why there are so many ^ in the Kurmancî writing.

So I am sorry to learn you that IF YOU CAN WRITE KURMANCÎ, you are using a French Agent's invention. If you only write Turkish, good news for you : France was never involved in Kemalist Turkish.

@Anthea : In Diyarbakir, there is a place called Selahaddin Eyyûbî, not far from the mosque and the historical center.

[Anthea]

Kurds never need foreigners' help for dividing themselves. In that field they are good self made men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Gour ... my_officer)
It was General Gouraud. And in the same time other French Officers of 2nd Office (Foreign) worked with Hawar, Osman Sebrî and Bedir Xam brothers, and Xoybûn, to fight with Turks and elaborate Kurdish alphabet. That's the reason why there are so many ^ in the Kurmancî writing.

So I am sorry to learn you that IF YOU CAN WRITE KURMANCÎ, you are using a French Agent's invention. If you only write Turkish, good news for you : France was never involved in Kemalist Turkish.

@Anthea : In Diyarbakir, there is a place called Selahaddin Eyyûbî, not far from the mosque and the historical center.

@ Piling : Thank you for the information

Glad that you mentioned my own personal hero APO Osman Sebrî

APO Osman Sebrî was a FANTASTIC PROUD KURDISH GENTLEMAN who he did so much for Kurds. But sadly he has almost been forgotten

[Feyli_kord]

If the Brits and the French weren't even there, I am sure we would have recovered from all fronts we fought on. But you like to meddle in others affairs.

I thank the French people for the help with elaborating the Kurdish alphabet, but I'm sure Kurds could have worked something out. Still it doesn't make up for anything. You carved our lands into Syria etc with the Brits and causing us to shed bloods for more than 90 years and the years are still counting.

It's our fault to not having fought and killed ata-turk when we had the chance.And honestly if we had been smart, we would have united against the turks and fought them, like the arabs did during ww1. Instead we chose to do nothing. The Brits and French, as selfish as they were, gave us a chance to liberate ourselves from tight Ottoman rule. But instead of uniting and organizing, we did shit. And anyway Anthea&Piling are friends of kurds. If they weren't, they'd just support turkey, like jaded apologists French/British imperialists do when they hear about "irredentists and seperatists" . The chances of having a kurdistan forming under british/french rule is much higher than under turkish/ottoman rule.

[Shirko]

Salah ad Din died on March 4th 1193, exactly 820 years ago.

I did NOT know that

Do Kurds celebrate his memory

Dear Anthea, I am finding out that many Kurds (probably the un-Islamic ones) do not care to remember or even respect Salah Ad Din, its sad really and it causes divisions. To me, he is the greatest all time hero and leader.

[Piling]

Most of Kurds say the same historical non-sense : that Salah ad din fought for Islam and Arab nation and did nothing for Kurds, at a time when there was no 'nation' concept, only religion and dynasties. Moreover, under Ayyubids' rule, Kurds (not only Ayyubid but Hakkari's family also) had the power on all the Near East from Lybia until Yemen. It was not a bad time for Kurds.

But as Kurds reject him, then this heroic figure is stolen by Arab nationalists and the worst of them : Saddam Hussein, proud of being born at Tikrît like the Sultan.

For example : in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, Salah ad Din is portrayed as a pure Arab, his sister is dressed like a bedouin and speaks Arab !

But it is Kurds' fault…

[Feyli_kord]

Most of Kurds say the same historical non-sense : that Salah ad din fought for Islam and Arab nation and did nothing for Kurds, at a time when there was no 'nation' concept, only religion and dynasties. Moreover, under Ayyubids' rule, Kurds (not only Ayyubid but Hakkari's family also) had the power on all the Near East from Lybia until Yemen. It was not a bad time for Kurds.

But as Kurds reject him, then this heroic figure is stolen by Arab nationalists and the worst of them : Saddam Hussein, proud of being born at Tikrît like the Sultan.

For example : in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, Salah ad Din is portrayed as a pure Arab, his sister is dressed like a bedouin and speaks Arab !

But it is Kurds' fault…

I honestly don't care about salah al din. He was a highly arabized careerist Kurdish commander who competed with ruling caste of Turkics in the Arabic world at the time. He only acted selfishly for himself and his gains, he did nothing to further the cause of his people who had to serve as vassals for bigger nations. The moral of reading his stories is: Assimilating into Arab and Turkish societies leads to success for kurds. I don't care if he did it in the name of Islam, the Islamic world was Arabocentric at the time and still is. What he fought for wasn't a common vision of Islamic plurality, he fought to gain power and fight off crusaders. Unlike tribalist Mamelukes f.ex, he did not create a Kurdish upper-caste in Ayyubid empire. So to me, he might aswell have been Arab or from Madagascar, his contributions to history are useless for the Kurdish cause.

[Piling]

Since 10th the Islamic world was not dominated anymore by Arabs. Turks had the political and military power except during the Ayyupid period, when Kurds ruled.

And in Middle Ages, no sovereign ruled on the name of his 'ethnic' origin. At this time, 'Arabs' means only 'bedouin', 'Turk' means nomads of Turkestan or miltary mamluks (slaves) and Kurds means a robber in the mountain. Ethnic origin was not a thing that made people proud. They were 'civilized people' from cities, or barbarians (in desert and moutain. Peasants and farmers (fellah) counted for nothing.

People fought for a Fatimid caliph (shi'a), an Nizari Imam (Ismaelians), an Abbasid caliph, and for islam against christians, sometimes.

Ethnies and nations are a very recent view and perhaps not the better : before, you was killed because you did not believe in the right faith, now because you don't want to belong to the right nation.

What is eternal is human's stupidity.

[Feyli_kord]

Since 10th the Islamic world was not dominated anymore by Arabs. Turks had the political and military power except during the Ayyupid period, when Kurds ruled.

And in Middle Ages, no sovereign ruled on the name of his 'ethnic' origin. At this time, 'Arabs' means only 'bedouin', 'Turk' means nomads of Turkestan or miltary mamluks (slaves) and Kurds means a robber in the mountain. Ethnic origin was not a thing that made people proud. They were 'civilized people' from cities, or barbarians (in desert and mouton. Peasants and farmers (fellah) counted for nothing.

People fought for a Fatimid caliph (shi'a), an Nizari Imam (Ismaelians), an Abbasid caliph, and for islam against christians, sometimes.

Ethnies and nations are a very recent view and perhaps not the better : before, you was killed because you did not believe in the right faith, now because you don't want to belong to the right nation.

What is eternal is human's stupidity.

I just don't buy it. Arabs were conscious of their lineages and identity and deliberately ethnocentric long after they conquered west-Asia and north-Africa under the Islamic banner. To the point where arabs looked down on non-arabs. You should read on Arab attitudes in medieval times. And there is a difference between a dynasty being Kurdish and Kurds being the main patron group of the kingdom.

[Piling]

I read many books from Middle Ages authors : Ibn Shaddad (Saladin's biographer), Ibn Al-Athir (a Kurd), Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Khaldoun,Yaqut, Ibn Jubayr etc.for historians.

In fact this time is my speciality (with islamic philosophy and ma'refat). And I read and worked on studies about the self-perception of Kurds under Saladin.

People in 12the century were different from us as Martians could be. And 1000 years later, if humans are still on earth, they will look at our 'national state', flags and racial proudness as weird. Or perhaps they will reproach us to not have no fought for causes of which we have no idea.

For example : a Kurd in 1193 found normal to bribe peasants if he belonged to a tribe, a peasant found 'normal' to be oppressed by state or aghas, slavery were considered as a 'normal' thing, and a black man was normally considered as an inferior.

As all the Middle Eastern people, Kurds claimed for a national Statehood at the end of 19th century- beginning of 20th. Why would you ask to a Kurd in 1193 to have an ideology that even Kurds in 19th had not ?

[Feyli_kord]

I read many books from Middle Ages authors : Ibn Shaddad (Saladin's biographer), Ibn Al-Athir (a Kurd), Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Khaldoun,Yaqut, Ibn Jubayr etc.for historians.

In fact this time is my speciality (with islamic philosophy and ma'refat). And I read and worked on studies about the self-perception of Kurds under Saladin.

People in 12the century were different from us as Martians could be. And 1000 years later, if humans are still on earth, they will look at our 'national state', flags and racial proudness as weird. Or perhaps they will reproach us to not have no fought for causes of which we have no idea.

For example : a Kurd in 1193 found normal to bribe peasants if he belonged to a tribe, a peasant found 'normal' to be oppressed by state or aghas, slavery were considered as a 'normal' thing, and a black man was normally considered as an inferior.

As all the Middle Eastern people, Kurds claimed for a national Statehood at the end of 19th century- beginning of 20th. Why would you ask to a Kurd in 1193 to have an ideology that even Kurds in 19th had not ?

I don't buy this historical narrative that everything within history is chronological, and that ideas just progressed to be relinquished and replaced. Certain structures are cyclical. They begin to exist when structures are reintroduced in human societies through conditions. This includes race and ethnicity. Hence why Greeks of antiquity in Anatolian and east-Mediterranean colonies were proud of their racial purity and lineages, why crusaders kept themselves segregated from their subjects, even from eastern Christians, and the countless other examples you can find, or the term "Saracen" was a collective racial term for all Muslims based on west-Asians. It's all a rewriting of similar narratives through-out history, whether the term race/ethnicity was used or not. The only difference is the conceptual refinement. For you to say that it didn't exist, is ridicules. Arab tribes who immigrated into Berber territory and fought with Berbers, considered Berbers of inferior character(another way of saying race) and their language and customs stupid and incoherent. You mistake conceptual incoherency with non-existence. Even the qu'ran empathized the "distinctions of nations".

[Shirko]

Piling, that is a good history lesson for FeyliKord, what you are saying makes good sense and is true, hopefully he will can get over it, and show some respect towards our great ancestors. And maybe if the feudal Kurdish tribes during that time did not squabble so much, while the Trukic tribes coming from central Asia were rising in the military ranks, the Ottomam Empire would have never exsited and it would of just been the Kurdish Ayyubid Empire.

[Piling]

There is a special fact concerning Ayyubid Kurds and their various rivalries : they did not kill them each others, like Turks and Mongols did.

I explain : for Turks and Mongols, when a king died his sons should fight until death until one triumphed and became the Khan. Then all other male parents should die. They considered that a Khan should be more cruel and fastest to kill, it means that Heaven God supported him.

The rule last under Ottoman, when a heir became Sultan all his brothers were executed, or later blinded (better than being eunuch) for a sultan should have no physical deficiency.

But Ayyubids were different and they were single in that case : Saladin's sons fought each others many and many times ( they were not like their father, only stupid and without charism, except Al Malik Al Zahir, prince of Aleppo). Saladin's brother Al Malik Al Adil was a great sultan but his sons were also brainless and then also fought each others.

But the remarkable thing is that they never murdered a brother or a cousin. When they made war, the loser was imprisoned and lost his title but not his life. It was very uncommon in Middle Ages and it is a special behavior of Ayyubids : they were not bloody sovereigns and in general refused to murder their relatives.

It could be a special Ayyubid lesson for today : fighting each others but not murder.

I have only a personal reproach concerning Salah ad Din : he ordered the execution of Sohrawardi, one of the greatest philosopher and mystic of his time, a- Sheikh al-Ishraq (and he is my Sheikh also )