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Copyright by Mardin Ahmad Aminpour 2018 The Dissertation Committee for Mardin Ahmad Aminpour Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: KURDISH-CHRISTIAN INTERCOMMUNAL RELATIONS: THE SECTARIANIZATION OF NORTHERN OTTOMAN-IRANIAN BORDERLANDS, 1830-1914 Committee: Kamran Aghaie, Supervisor Wm. Roger Louis Sabri Ateş Yoav Di-Capua KURDISH-CHRISTIAN INTERCOMMUNAL RELATIONS: THE SECTARIANIZATION OF NORTHERN OTTOMAN-IRANIAN BORDERLANDS, 1830-1914 by Mardin Ahmad Aminpour Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication To my mother Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, the History Department, and the British Studies Program. Also, I would also like to acknowledge the support I received from the American Research Institute in Turkey for helping me improve my Turkish language proficiency. At The University of Texas at Austin many people have helped over the years to acclimate to life in the Unites States and work in an academic environment. Professor M.R. Ghanoonparvar certainly deserves the most credit in this respect. Without his trust in me and his confidence in my abilities, I would not have been able to continue with my graduate studies when I faced numerous challenges. Professor Ghanoonparvar was my gateway to the academic world in the US and the numerous classes I took with him enabled me to think critically and to discover my own perspective. My adviser, Dr. Kamran Aghaie, was crucial in helping me to find the right academic field I meant to pursue for the rest of my life. His insights and assistance with organizing my research projects proved immensely valuable. Dr. Yoav Di-Capua always pushed me to think beyond the texts and the evidence I used to improve my conceptual framework. Professor Roger Louis’ unwavering support and confidence in me deserve special reference. I enjoyed being part of the Churchill Scholars’ community in the British Studies Program and had my fondest memories in the Friday seminars. Dr. Sabri Ateş’s detailed critique of my work and his immense knowledge about my subject area were conducive to my efforts to move beyond conventional scholarship on the Kurds and Armenians. Professor Michael Craig Hillmann’s candid appraisal of my work also pushed me beyond my v comfort zone early on when I had just arrived from Iran. Professors Miriam Bodian, Catherine Arens, and Cezar Salgado also made great contributions to my graduate work in their own special ways. My friends and colleagues, with whom I shared many hours conversing about the fascinating world of the 19th century and the medieval Iran, Persian poetry and fiction, Blake Atwood, Anousha Shahsavari, Omer Ozcan, Shaherzad Ahmadi, Dena Afrasiabi, Javad Abedi, Claire Cooley, Kelley Houck, Sina Nazarinia, Cate Malek, Seerwan Hariry, Niaz Muhsin, Nour and Citrine Ghraowi all helped me in one way or another to stay engaged and keep up with work and life in the US. My very dear friends Mehdi Torabian and Hooman Hedayati deserve special thanks for always being there for me. Without their loving support and friendship, the completion of this project would have not been an easy task. Ahmad Agbaria also deserves my special thanks for his friendship and engaging conversations with me about the Middle East. While writing my dissertation in Lebanon, Reem Harb and her father, Hussein Harb, gave me unconditional love and support. Reem and her family provided me with a home where I could stay focused on work during the last phase of my graduate studies when at times progress looked like a grueling climb. My special thanks to Jana Harb for sending me documents from the National Archives in the UK. My conversations and night vigils with Muhammad Eido and Khalil Sawan in Beirut were happy moments away from constant grappling with the historical characters and themes in my dissertation. Finally, I owe a lot to my family and friends in Iran including my mother and my good friends Kawan, Mohammad, Sleman, Shaho, Rizagar, Idris and Hemin Amini who kept in touch with me when I was physically and emotionally distant. I thank everyone who has been in some way contributed to my life and my academic development. vi Abstract KURDISH-CHRISTIAN INTERCOMMUNAL RELATIONS: THE SECTARIANIZATION OF NORTHERN OTTOMAN-IRANIAN BORDERLANDS, 1830-1914 Mardin Ahmad Aminpour, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisor: Kamran Aghaie The catastrophic Armenian genocide of 1915 has long set the trend for the study of intercommunal relations between Kurdish and Christian groups of Ottoman East Anatolia and northwest Iran. In the process, Russian and the Ottoman Empires have been identified as key players in exploiting ethnoreligious distinctions to the advantage of imperial centers and at the expense of the inhabitants of Ottoman East Anatolia. However, the crucial impact that the process of Ottoman-Iranian boundary-making left on intercommunal relations has been understudied. This dissertation traces the impact of the frontier delimitation process on intercommunal relations among ethnoreligious groups straddling the northwest stretch of the Ottoman-Iranian borders. This study proposes that the process of making the Ottoman-Iranian boundaries, which involved redefinitions of sovereignty and subjecthood as preambles to the emergence of the modern states of Iran and Turkey, led to an intense imperial rivalry over the religious vii identity of imperial subjects of the frontier. Interest and investment in the religious identities of overlapping borderland populations sprang from rival empires’ desire to rejuvenate their compromised sovereignty among their frontiers through strengthening their loyalty and allegiance. The presence of foreign missions and consuls and native subjects with extralegal statuses complicated such imperial efforts, and ultimately worked as contributing factor to the sectarianization of the borderland populations’ communal visions and boundaries. The missions, foreign consuls, and travelers helped to construct a sectarian narrative of intercommunal conflict as they too stressed the religious distinctions of different communities through disproportionate attention to the welfare and education of the Christian minorities. Over time, imperial and missionary rivalry and discriminatory policies of prioritizing the wishes of one group over another’s, led to the emergence of sectarian communities with distinctive communal boundaries and aspirations that could hardly be reconciled. When wartime conditions were imposed on the borderland populations in 1915, sectarianized communities brutalized each other, sending untold number of people to their deaths in the process. viii Table of Contents Introduction: .....................................................................................................................1 Historiography and Fields of Intervention: .......................................................................................... 15 The scope of research and arguments: ................................................................................................ 21 Outline of Chapters: ............................................................................................................................. 32 Chapter 1: Imperial Reforms, Foreign Missionaries, and the First Kurdish-Nestorian Conflict ........................................................................................................................................ 36 The Initiatives to Make the Boundary: ................................................................................................. 41 Ottoman Centralization Campaigns and Kurdish Resistance in the Frontier Zone: ............................ 44 Bedir Khan Bey and the Massacre of the Nestorians of Hakkari: ........................................................ 56 Chapter 2: Sheikh Ubeydullah’s Movement (1879-1881): Igniting sectarian strife .............. 75 The Geography and the People: ........................................................................................................... 80 The Naqshbandi Sufi tariqa in Kurdistan and the Rise of Sheikh Ubeydullah to Prominence: ........... 87 Sheikh Ubeydullah’s Movement and the Armenian Question: ........................................................... 98 Ubeydullah, Naqshbandi Revivalism and the Project of Kurdish Unity: ............................................ 108 The Kurdish Invasion of Persia: .......................................................................................................... 115 Chapter 3: Imperial Frontier Anxieties: Armenian Revolutionaries, Hamidiye Regiments, and the Iranian Kurds ........................................................................................................... 135 Imperial Rivalry over Frontier Shi’i, Sunni, Nestorian, and Armenian Communities:........................ 146 Iranian Azerbaijan: Protests, Revolutionaries, the Hamidiye Cavalry Corps, and the Iranian Kurds: 167 Between the Sultan and the Tsar: Armenian Revolutionaries and the Hamidiye Militia: ................. 172 The Shikak Tribes and the Armenian Revolutionaries: ...................................................................... 188 Chapter 4: “Between Two Storms”: The Communities of Northwest Iran and the American