New Britain herald., 1925-04-06
kURDS HOLDERS ! OF FIGHT RECORD
Have Been at War Since History f.. Began

n bulletin from the NashllSloh' D. C., headquarters of the National Geographic society. Have Fought Since History Started
 "The kurds would probably bo awarded the fighting endurance record of the world by almost any jury after a little delying into hls- tory" says the bulletin. 'The days of Assyrian power in Mesopotamla seem pretty far back toward the beginnings of history. Records Of that empire show that time and | again It's soldiers were sent into the rough country around the head waters of the great rivers to subdue the mouutaineers-ance Of the | kurds-who harried Assyria's out lying settlements. These same mountalneers fought the Armenans when the latter came itno the region between 6nO and 1000 B. c.
 When Xenophon retreated from | Asia Minor in 4o1 E. C. the Kurds (then called the CarduchD attacked | his 10000 Greeks, rolling great stones down on them from cliffs and | mountains. They fought contnu- ally against the Bagdad Caliphs. Since the Turks rose to power in AAa Minor the Kurds have fought | them repeatedly: in fact, the Turks have never established any con- siderable measure of control over these fierce, freedom loving high | landers. Since the great wur the Euro- pean territory of Turkey has been negligible. The country has con- sisted almost solely Of the big, fat peninsula lying between the Black Sea on the north and the eastern arm of the Mediterranean on the south, and an extension to the east about as bread as the Asia Minor peninsula. reaching roughly half way from the Black Sea 10 the Caspian. The southern half of this eastern. extension--the southeastern corner of postwar Turkey-is Kur- distan. The other half of the east ern extension, immediately north of Kurdistan, was once Turkish Ar menia. Now that tens of thousands of the Armenian residents have been driven across the Russian border, while other tens of thousands have perished, the region hardly deserves the old name. The Kurdish popu~ Iatlon was always high in Turkish Armenia; now 1t Is proportionately much greater. The whole eastern end of present Turkey, constituting almost B third of the territory of the country, therefore, may roughly be considered the Kurdish sphere of influence.
 Geographic and political and economic complications aplenty are found in this region. On the east Kurdistan touches Persia, and the people for a considerable distance into that country are Kurds too. Indeed, Kurdish people inhabtt the entire Zagros mountain range which extend sfrom Turkey for 500 miles to the southeast, forming the bound- ary between Persia and Iraq, The may as drawn by the European peace treaties shows the southern border of Kurdistan about 100 miles north of Mosul, which city is shown 10 be in Iraq. But this Is not the boundary in the eyes of the Kurds. They claim the territory extending gone miles south of MosuL Except in Mosul city, the population of this region is almost solidly Kurdish. The French mandate of Syria wedges in near Mosul and still further com plicates the political situation.
 Petroleum the Villain of the Piece.
 Tt Is the odor and power of pe- tnoleum that in some. ways domi' mates all else in the region, however What promises to become one of the major oil fields of the world esnters about Mosul, and 1t is be. cause of British interest in this fact the Turks assert, that the northern boundary of the British protectoratt of Iraq was pushed 50 far north The Turks insist--and the Kurd' agree with them as to this-that thiS is only a paper boundary and tha tho actual frontier must be f1xeC finally farther to the south.
 '"The Kurds belong to the IraniaI branch of the white race. Becaus' Of the open-air lives which they live most of them have harsh features The great majority are nominall, Mohammedans but they do no practice polygamy Some few 0 them near MosUl are Yezidis 0 Devil Worshippers. Those who ar Mohammedans take their religIo' rather less seriously than the Arab and even the Turks. They folloI the Shiah sect, whose members ar looked upon as heretics by the or thodox Moslems.
 Environment Has Nodded Kurds
 The plateau region lying partl h old Armenia, partly tn kurdis tan, where many of the most wal like Kurds live, presents goo example of the effects on man of
 mixture of rugged uplands and fel tile valleys. Limestone mountain and recently extinct volcanoC occupy the upper levels. Lower ar magnificent canyons cut by th Tigris and Euphrates headstream and numerous broad, basin-shape valleys whose floors are fertiI plains. The ancestors of the Kurd were pushed from many of thes desirable lowlands by the Armenia invasion and from others by th later arriving Turks. Since the
 dispoSsession. these highlanders hay been the enemies of both Armenian and Turks, though they have bee content at times 10 be the instrl ment of the latter in prosecuting n
 former.
 'Diarbekr, one of the cities r, ported to be in the hands of tf
 revolting Kurds, is old Amida