Nestorians, Kurds, and the state: The struggle to survive in the frontier in the late Ottoman period, 1839-1908

Abstract

This thesis examines the effects of the Ottoman Empire’s modern state-making practices on the lives of the Hakkari’s Christian Nestorian tribes, and on the Nestorian tribes’ relations with the neighboring Kurdish tribes. Starting from 1840s, the lives of the Nestorian tribes underwent significant changes. First, they were attacked in 1843 and 1846 by the Kurdish tribes, who were under the command of Bedirhan Bey. Second, throughout the period between 1850 and early 1870s, the central state tried to extend its authority over their settlements, and turn these “savage” tribes into loyal Ottoman subjects. From the 1850s onwards, the state’s agents’ attempts to secure regular tax collection from the Nestorian tribes, in line with the afore-mentioned objectives, led to the emergence of a continual tax problem between the two parties. The main reasons behind this problem were the irregularities that occurred during the collection of taxes such as repeated tax collection, and over-taxation, and also the coercive means employed by the tax collectors and the local government agents. During the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, significant problems emerged between the Nestorian and the Kurdish tribes. From the 1880s onwards, the conflicts and power struggles between them were among the leading problems in Hakkari. Based mainly on Ottoman archival documents, the taxation problem and the conflicts between the Nestorian and the Kurdish tribes, together with the state agents’ attitudes towards these problems, are analyzed in this study.