CHAPTER TWO

THE END OF THE WAR AND THE YEARS FOLLOWING

Rev. B. Allen who toured towards the end of the war nar- rated the following: The war laid the Kurdish cities, towns and homes waste, already in 1915. The people ed into the mountains where multitudes fell in battles or were massacred. After the armies had swayed back and forth eight times over our eld, we also had to leave the eld. Now the remnants of the are returning. But everything is ruined, and crops have failed. And worst of all, there is none to help them.1 The war devastated the urban population of Kurdistan. By the end of November 1919, Turkish of cials had left all the towns in the area, and the Turkish ags had been removed.2 The Ottoman Empire lost the war and the British reign began mainly in . The British (who conquered the area during the war) reorganized the country and did away with the three former provinces (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire: Baghdad, Mosul and . consisted of new 14 provinces (liw’s) headed by a mutaarrif (governor of a province) and the Kurds dwelled mainly in ve provinces: , Arbil, Sulai- maniya, Diyala and Mosul.3 The end of the war signaled the gradual return to the urban centers of Jewish soldiers who survived the war and of Jews who sought shelter in the rural area.4 The years following the war constituted a dif cult period for both the Jewish population as well as the Kurdish and Christian population as waves of migrants and refugees ed into Iraq.5 Among them were the Assyrians refugees of southeastern Turkey who had been settled in Iraq where they were given land in and around , Amadiya and Dohuk.6

1 KM 12, no. 12, December 1917: 5. 2 Iraq Administration Reports 1914–1932 4: 467. 3 Harris 1958: 28. 4 For instance, Shabbatai Piro, who escaped to a rural village during the war, returned to Zakho three years after the end of the war, in 1921, OHD, 56 (11). 5 See Kamal M. A4mad, 1994. 6 See K. Attar, The minorities of Iraq during the Period of the Mandate, 1920 –1932 (PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, 1977). On the relations between the Church of England and the Assyrians’ , see Coakley 1992. the end of the war and the years following 291

The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire caused a decline in the economic standing of the urban population. Zakho, for instance, suf- fered from a narrowing of opportunities and a change of borders as it was situated, after the war, a short distance from the new three-way border between Turkey, Iraq and Syria.7 These new borders impeded trade possibilities for the Jewish merchants who used to travel as far as Bashqala, Van and Damascus during the Ottoman period. The nar- rowing borders signaled an end to the previous commercial possibilities for the Jews of Zakho. Following the war, local Jews migrated in waves both to Baghdad and to the Holy Land, or Palestine, the results of which were a gradual decline of urban Jewish communities in Kurdis- tan. At the end of the war the majority of the Christians and the Jews in Kurdistan, who had previously been under Ottoman and Persian jurisdiction, found themselves under British rule. The establishment of the British mandate in both Palestine and Iraq made it easier for Jews in Iraq, who yearned for the return to Zion,8 to ‘travel’ to Palestine. Immigrants who had already established themselves in the Holy Land invited their relatives to join them. The horrors of the war and the state of decay in Kurdistan encouraged many young persons to immigrate. Consequently, in the years following the war, a growing number of Jewish immigrants moved to Palestine from Kurdistan. This wave of immigration ended only when the British sealed the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigrants. The arrival of the British in Kurdistan signaled hope. The economy improved slowly but gradually as the British took over the administration of Iraq and built up its infrastructure. The Jews of Kurdistan recalled, “Only after the British came, things began to improve.”9 Hrn Judo (I#16) from Zakho af rmed similarly: At the end of the Hebrew month of Ellul [the 12th month of the Jewish calendar, November 1918], the British entered Zakho in four cars. We were astonished, ‘What kind of object is this, walking iron, ying iron [i.e., airplanes]?’ Persons began to work for the British paving roads [in the Public Works Department]. Small boys, from the age of ten to twelve, would receive half a rupee. Older boys would receive one rupee

7 See Feroz A4mad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London, 1993). 8 The yearnings for the return to Zion, or the Holy Land, are deeply rooted in the Jewish heritage, and are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and in the daily prayers. 9 Sasson Na4um (I#31).