The Newroz Cycle: Kurdish history repeats itself

Newroz celebrations herald the arrival of spring and a new year. For Kurds of various religions and backgrounds, Newroz remains the most important celebration of the year. The legend behind the Kurdish Newroz describes a blacksmith named Kawa, who in ancient times overthrew a terrible tyrant to free his mountain people.

Important dates in a people’s calendar provide a kind of rhythm and cycle to life. Every year, people look forward to celebrations, mountain-top picnics, and fireworks as Newroz announces the end of winter. Kurds are proud to continue the tradition of so many generations, going back to antiquity, who have celebrated this holiday so emphatically.

Your humble columnist unfortunately could not be in Kurdistan this Newroz when everything turns green and full of beauty and promise for the future. This past week, however, I finished reading two new academic books on the Kurds which together made me think more about historical cycles longer than a year. The books were A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism by Michael Eppel and Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War by Michael M. Gunter. While Michael Eppel is an Israeli historian writing about Kurdistan from the dawn of Islam to the World War One era, Michael Gunter is an American political scientist whose book focuses on the most recent developments in Syria.

A strange feeling comes from reading two very different books by a historian and a political scientist – that of history repeating itself, just like Newroz repeats itself every year. If we allow ourselves to forget that Gunter is writing about contemporary events in Syria, his basic story about developments in Rojava looks remarkably similar to Eppel’s description of the pre-twentieth century history of Kurdistan.

In Eppel’s account, Kurdish principalities and emirates such as Botan, Hakkari, and Baban try to take advantage of periods of Ottoman or Persian central state weakness to free themselves from the rule of far-off and foreign dictators. The Kurdish regions also become the battleground of contests between the Ottoman Sunni world and the Persian-led Shiite world, with much blood spilt in the process. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russian and Anglo powers also intervene in Kurdistan to pursue agendas of their own. In each case, however, Kurdish bids for self-determination crumbled as their enemies took advantage of intra-Kurdish divisions to reassert control over Kurdistan. None of that sounds so different from what is or still risks happening today.

Now one might reasonably protest that your humble columnist is viewing pre-twentieth century Kurdish history through a nationalist lens – which makes little sense for an era in which religious, tribal, regional and other identities trumped a larger ethnic identity. I can think of at least one Kurdish poet who celebrated Newroz in spring and saw things much the same way, however, more than three hundred years ago. Many Rudaw readers are no doubt familiar with Ahmadi Khani’s Mam u Zin, written in 1695:

Look, from the Arabs to the Georgians

The Kurds have become like towers.

The Turks and Persians are surrounded by them.

The Kurds are on all four corners.

Both sides have made the Kurdish people,

Targets for the arrows of fate.

They are said to be keys to the borders,

Each clan forming a formidable bulwark.

Whenever the Ottoman Sea [the Ottomans] and the Tajik Sea [the Persians]

Flow out and agitate,

The Kurds get soaked in blood

Separating them like an isthmus….

If the Kurds had a king…

These Rumis [Ottomans/Turks] would not defeat us,

We would not become ruins in the hands of Owls,

We would not become doomed, homeless,

Defeated by the Turks and Tajiks [Iranians] and subjugated by them…

If we had a king and God befitted him a crown,

And success had been appointed for him,

A fortune would appear for us….

Although nowadays one might want to substitute “republic” or “state” for “king,” Khani’s yearning for the Kurds to become the authors of their own destiny rather than “targets for the arrows of fate” appears clear. To do that, they will have to set aside some of their differences and dance together around the Newroz fire.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.