Any modern history of the Kurds must examine two inter-related questions. The first is the struggle between the Kurdish people and the governments to which they are subjected for control of the lands they inhabit. Until the nineteenth century that struggle was largely between two contestants. There were states that wished to control the Kurdish territory they considered theirs but that had neither ideological nor practical ambitions to assimilate Kurds into some kind of homogeneous entity.
The second question concerns ...