During the 19th century, farmers started to grow new crops that had greater profits. Farmers started to grow "Nicotiana tabacum" (tobacco), and farming became more common. At the middle of the 19th century, about a third of the population of Iranian Kurdistan were nomadic people. Many of the crops from Iranian Kurdistan (grains, fruits, and nuts) went out of the Qajar Empire as exports along the trade route between Tabriz and the Black Sea at Trabzon. Carriage of the exports from Kurdistan to the sea was by draught animals. The peasant farmers grew the crops, and the nomads of the tribes supplied the domestic animals for the crops' transport. (The peasant farmers also had to pay taxes and extortion to the tribes.) In 1870, 40% of Iran's international trade went through Iranian Kurdistan on the Tabriz–Trabzon trade route. However, from that time the trade route became less important. The Russian Empire completed a new railway from Baku (on the Caspian Sea) to Tbilisi and then to Poti (on the Black Sea). The British and French empires completed the Suez Canal in 1869, and because of this, many exports started to go to the Persian Gulf at Bushehr or through Baghdad at Basra. These two new trade routes meant that Kurds did not profit from the exports and the Kurdish tribes became more weak.
Bedir Khan Bey was the emir of Cizre (the emirate of Bohtan). Bedir Khan Bey, the emir of Hakkari, and the emir of Mûkûs all took part in a rebellion against the Ottoman government. Bedir Khan Bey started the rebellion in 1842, but in 1846 the Ottomans took him prisoner and he went into exile. In 1849, the government took away the authority of Hakkari's emir, Nurullah Bey. The Ottoman government also took away the power of the Baban emirate, and they took control of Sulaymaniyah themselves. In the towns and cities, the Ottoman and Qajar governments of Kurdistan started new schools, newspapers, law courts, and government councils. In the countryside however, where most Kurds lived, modernization brought new taxes and conscription into the army. Sufi religious leaders – sheikhs – started to have more power in Kurdistan. Some Kurdish sheikhs helped the Ottoman army fight the army of the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). However, Kurdish sheikhs also worked against the government. One sheikh who had fought for the Ottoman side in the war, Sheikh Ubeydullah, started a rebellion against the Ottoman government.
During the Russo-Turkish War, the government in both parts of Kurdistan (Ottoman Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan) lost control of the land. After the war there was a famine. There was also a rumour that the Ottoman Empire was going to recognize a new state for the Armenians. Armenians were the largest minority in parts of Kurdistan. At that time, Sheikh Ubeydullah started his rebellion. He hoped to start new Kurdish state whose lands would be both Ottoman Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan. The rebellion ended without having this success. The Shi'ite Qajar government punished the Sunni Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan when they took control again. In Ottoman Kurdistan, Sultan Abdul Hamid II started to get support from Muslims by using Islamism, going against the secularization of the modernization reforms. The sultan's government tried to get friends among the Kurdish tribes. In 1891, the sultan started a new Ottoman military unit in the cavalry: the "Hamidiye." Many Kurdish men from the tribes started to work for the government in the "Hamidiye". Abdul Hamid II gave the "Hamidiye" his own name.
The Ottoman government gave the "Hamidiye" and the Kurdish tribes' rulers power because the government feared the growth of Armenian nationalism. The "Hamidiye" became famous across the world when they took part in pogroms, attacking the Armenian people in the east of Anatolia between 1894 and 1896. The government gave many tribes' rulers good treatment. Sheikh Said Berzinci became the ruler of Sulaymaniyah, and had a good relationship with the Ottoman government in Mosul. Said Berzinci became the most important of the government's friends in the Mosul Vilayet. Milli Ibrahim Pasha was ruler from the tribes; he was an important military officer in the "Hamidiye" and a friend of the sultan. The power, tyranny, and violence of the "Hamidiye" and some of the Kurdish tribes' rulers made some other Kurds unhappy. Many of the Kurdish professionals and intellectuals were part of the constitutionalist political groups. They were against the Islamism of Sultan Abdul Hamid and the autocracy of his government.
Two Kurds, Abdullah Cevdet and İshak Sükuti were part of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) from its start. The CUP was the most important organization in the Ottoman Empire to want a revolution. The first Kurdish newspaper was "Kurdistan" which started in 1898. The writings in the newspaper supported constitutionalism and the CUP, and the CUP gave money and other help to the newspaper's publishers. However, writings in the newspaper also spoke of Kurdish culture and Kurdish politics for the Kurdish intelligentsia. The publishers of "Kurdistan" were two sons of the old emir of Cizre, Bedir Khan Bey. His sons were Mikdad Midhat Bedir Khan and Abdurrahman Bedir Khan, and both had worked in the Ottoman government. Their newspaper made the argument that constitutionalism was the answer to the Kurds' problems.
In Iranian Kurdistan, chiefs and men from the tribes started to become farmers and landlords. By 1900, most of the men of the tribes had become peasants on lands a landlord owned. Some of the tribes' chiefs went to live in cities: some worked with the local government. In the second half of the 19th century, the Tabriz–Trabzon trade route through Iranian Kurdistan became less important because of the Suez Canal and the new railways in the Russian Empire. In 1900, the Tabriz–Trabzon trade route was responsible for only 10% of Iran's international trade.
During the second half of the 20th century's first decade, the political power of constitutionalism in Qajar Iran and Ottoman Turkey became very strong. In Ottoman Kurdistan, some Kurds took part in tax resistance revolts that did not have success. In Iran, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah made a constitution in December 1906 after there were many protests in the country during 1905. However, Mohammad Ali Shah became Iran's ruler when Mozaffar ad-Din Shah died, and the new shah ended the constitution and the new parliament in 1908. The Russian Empire and the British Empire helped Mohammad Ali Shah take power. By that time, the Qajar government's power was weak, and it had lost control in Iranian Kurdistan. Many Kurdish rebels came there from Ottoman Kurdistan, where the control of the government was more complete. In June 1908, a constitutionalist rebellion in the Ottoman military started. There were connections between this rebellion and the CUP. The rebellion forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to set up a parliament and a constitutionalist government. The end of Abdul Hamid's autocracy was important for many Kurds living in the capital city, Constantinople. Many of them supported the CUP and the new constitution. A number of Kurdish organizations then started in Constantinople. The Society for Kurdish Mutual-Aid and Progress (SKMP) was in existence from September 1908 until 1909. The Society for the Propagation of Kurdish Education (SPKE) was in existence from 1910 to 1911. The Kurdish Students' Hope Society, however, was in existence from 1912 until the start of World War I.