6. Abdullah Kuprili, a son of Mustafa Fazil Kuprili, was appointed Kaimmakam or locum tenens of the grand vizier in 1703. He commanded the Persian expedition in 1723 and captured Tabriz in 1725, resigning his office in 1726. In 1735 he again commanded against the Persians, but fell at the disastrous battle of Bagaverd, thus emulating his father’s heroic death at Selankamen.
KURAKIN, BORIS IVANOVICH, Prince (1676–1727), Russian diplomatist, was the brother-in-law of Peter the Great, their wives being sisters. He was one of the earliest of Peter’s pupils. In 1697 he was sent to Italy to learn navigation. His long and honourable diplomatic career began in 1707, when he was sent to Rome to induce the pope not to recognize Charles XII.’s candidate, Stanislaus Leszczynski, as king of Poland. From 1708 to 1712 he represented Russia at London, Hanover, and the Hague successively, and, in 1713, was the principal Russian plenipotentiary at the peace congress of Utrecht. From 1716 to 1722 he held the post of ambassador at Paris, and when, in 1724, Peter set forth on his Persian campaign, Kurakin was appointed the supervisor of all the Russian ambassadors accredited to the various European courts. “The father of Russian diplomacy,” as he has justly been called, was remarkable throughout his career for infinite tact and insight, and a wonderfully correct appreciation of men and events. He was most useful to Russia perhaps when the Great Northern war (see Sweden, History) was drawing to a close. Notably he prevented Great Britain from declaring war against Peter’s close ally, Denmark, at the crisis of the struggle. Kurakin was one of the best-educated Russians of his day, and his autobiography, carried down to 1709, is an historical document of the first importance. He intended to write a history of his own times with Peter the Great as the central figure, but got no further than the summary, entitled History of Tsar Peter Aleksievich and the People Nearest to Him (1682–1694) (Rus.).
See Archives of Prince A. Th. Kurakin (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1890); A. Brückner, A Russian Tourist in Western Europe in the beginning of the XVIIIth Century (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1892). (R. N. B.)
KURBASH, or Kourbash (from the Arabic qurbash, a whip;
Turkish qirbach; and French courbache), a whip or strap about
a yard in length, made of the hide of the hippopotamus or
rhinoceros. It is an instrument of punishment and torture used
in various Mahommedan countries, especially in the Turkish
empire. “Government by kurbash” denotes the oppression
of a people by the constant abuse of the kurbash to maintain
authority, to collect taxes, or to pervert justice. The use of the
kurbash for such purposes, once common in Egypt, has been
abolished by the British authorities.
KŪRDISTĀN, in its wider sense, the “country of the Kūrds”
(Koords), including that part of Mount Taurus which buttresses
the Armenian table-land (see Armenia), and is intersected by the
Batman Su, the Bohtan Su, and other tributaries of the Tigris;
and the wild mountain district, watered by the Great and Little
Zab, which marks the western termination of the great Iranian
plateau.
Population.—The total Kūrd population probably exceeds two and a half millions, namely, Turkish Kūrds 1,650,000, Persian 800,000, Russian 50,000, but there are no trustworthy statistics. The great mass of the population has its home in Kūrdistān. But Kūrds are scattered irregularly over the country from the river Sakarīa on the west to Lake Urmia on the east, and from Kars on the north to Jebel Sinjar on the south. There is also an isolated settlement in Khorasan. The tribes, ashiret, into which the Kūrds are divided, resemble in some respects the Highland clans of Scotland. Very few of them number more than 10,000 souls, and the average is about 3000. The sedentary and pastoral Kūrds, Yerli, who live in villages in winter and encamp on their own pasture-grounds in summer, form an increasing majority of the population. The nomad Kūrds, Kocher, who always dwell in tents, are the wealthiest and most independent. They spend the summer on the mountains and high plateaus, which they enter in May and leave in October; and pass the winter on the banks of the Tigris and on the great plain north of Jebel Sinjar, where they purchase right of pasturage from the Shammar Arabs. Each tribe has its own pasture-grounds, and trespass by other tribes is a fertile source of quarrel. During the periodical migrations Moslem and Christian alike suffer from the predatory instincts of the Kūrd, and disturbances are frequent in the districts traversed. In Turkey the sedentary Kūrds pay taxes; but the nomads only pay the sheep tax, which is collected as they cross the Tigris on their way to their summer pastures.
Character.—The Kūrd delights in the bracing air and unrestricted liberty of the mountains. He is rarely a muleteer or camel-man, and does not take kindly to handicrafts. The Kūrds generally bear a very indifferent reputation, a worse reputation perhaps, than they really deserve. Being aliens to the Turks in language and to the Persians in religion, they are everywhere treated with mistrust, and live as it were in a state of chronic warfare with the powers that be. Such a condition is not of course favourable to the development of the better qualities of human nature. The Kūrds are thus wild and lawless; they are much given to brigandage; they oppress and frequently maltreat the Christian populations with whom they are brought in contact,—these populations being the Armenians in Diarbekr, Erzerum and Van, the Jacobites and Syrians in the Jebel-Tūr, and the Nestorians and Chaldaeans in the Hakkāri country.
Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Kūrdish chief is pride of ancestry. This feeling is in many cases exaggerated, for in reality the present tribal organization does not date from any great antiquity. In the list indeed of eighteen principal tribes of the nation which was drawn up by the Arabian historian Masudi, in the 10th century, only two or three names are to be recognized at the present day. A 14th-century list, however, translated by Quatremère,[1] presents a great number of identical names, and there seems no reason to doubt that certain Kūrdish families can trace their descent from the Omayyad caliphs, while only in recent years the Babān chief of Suleimania, representing the old Sohrans, and the Ardelān chief of Sinna,[2] representing an elder branch of the Gurāns, each claimed an ancestry of at least five hundred years. There was up to a recent period no more picturesque or interesting scene to be witnessed in the east than the court of one of these great Kūrdish chiefs, where, like another Saladin, the bey ruled in patriarchal state, surrounded by an hereditary nobility, regarded by his clansmen with reverence and affection, and attended by a bodyguard of young Kūrdish warriors, clad in chain armour, with flaunting silken scarfs, and bearing javelin, lance and sword as in the time of the crusades.
Though ignorant and unsophisticated the Kūrd is not wanting in natural intelligence. In recent years educated Kūrds have held high office under the sultan, including that of grand vizier, have assisted in translating the Bible into Turkish, and in editing a newspaper. The men are lithe, active and strong, but rarely of unusual stature. The women do not veil, and are allowed
- ↑ See Notices et Extraits des MSS., xiii. 305. Of the tribes enumerated in this work of the 14th century who still retain a leading place among the Kūrds, the following names may be quoted: Guranieh of Dartang, modern Gurans; Zengeneh, in Hamadan hills, now in Kermānshāh; Hasnani of Kerkuk and Arbil, now in the Dersim mountains, having originally come from Khorāsān according to tradition; Sohrīeh of Shekelabad and Tel-Haftūn, modern Sohrān, from whom descend the Babān of Suleimanieh; Zerzari of Hinjarīn mountains, modern Zerzas of Ushnu (cuneiform pillars of Kel-i-shīn and Sidek noticed by author); Julamerkīeh, modern Julamerik, said to be descended from the caliph Merwān-ibn-Hakam; Hakkarīeh, Hakkāri inhabiting Zuzan of Arab geography; Bokhtieh, modern Bohtān. The Rowadi, to whom Saladin belonged, are probably modern Rawendi, as they held the fortress of Arbil (Arbela). Some twenty other names are mentioned, but the orthography is so doubtful that it is useless to try to identify them.
- ↑ The Sheref-nama, a history of the Kūrds dating from the 16th century, tells us that “towards the close of the reign of the Jenghizians, a man named Baba Ardilān, a descendant of the governors of Diarbekr, and related to the famous Ahmed-ibn-Merwān, after remaining for some time among the Gurāns, gained possession of the country of Shahrizor” and the Ardelān family history, with the gradual extension of their power over Persian Kūrdistān, is then traced down to the Saffavid period.
