Mehrdad Izady

Mehrdad Michael R.S.C. Izady (1963- ), is a Kurdish nationalist and a contemporary writer with controversial ideas. He was born to a Kurdish father and a Belgian mother, and spent much of his youth in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Korea, as his diplomat parents moved from one assignment to another. He received his BA degree in History, Political Science and Geography from Kansas University, and then attended Syracuse University where he received two masters degrees in Remote Sensing and cartography and in International Relations. He received his PhD at the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Columbia University in 1992. He taught for six years in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and History at the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. He has testified before two US Congressional Committees and has authored many books and articles on Middle East and Southeast European subjects. He has been teaching in the Department of History at Fordham University and Pace University since 2001. Since 1997, he has also been a Master Adj professor at the Joint Special Operations University, Florida.

Claims

Some of Izady's (often contentious) claims:

• Kurds are more precise and detail-oriented than their neighbours.

Response: Why is this statement contentious? South Indian are known for centuries as mathematics-savvy folks who have invented for the world the numerical system we commonly use now-a-days, around the world but misname as “Arabic numerals.” Microsoft and other software developing companies have recently tapped into this tradition of mathematics-oriented society of south India by outsourcing their work to Bangalore and other south Indian locales. The famed mathematical geniuses, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Subrahmanyan Chadrasakhar were both South Indians. Is it then a racist or ethno-centric remark to state that south Indians are more mathematically savvy than their neighbors? No, it is the statement of a fact born to cultural natural of south Indian societies that cherish and promote knowledge in mathematics. The same cultural phenomenon toward precision is observable among the Kurds. It is not genetic or racial, but cultural.

Kurds are religiously fanatical, romantic in love, and much eager to become non-Kurdish.

Response: There is no such an assertion of religious fanaticism on p. 189 mentioned by the claimer. However, much mythology and folk stories and songs are provided on p. 189 to establish Kurds as being romantic in love. How is a point of contention?

As to Kurds being “much eager to become non-Kurdish,” the following is the actual text from p. 189 that the claimer bases his accusations on:

“To become a good politician it has been necessary to leave mother-mountain and de¬scend to the cities of the plains, where politicking is a well-developed craft. When, and if, an expatriate returns to the mountains, he will no longer be trusted wholeheartedly by the common people; it is as if he has lost his virtue by leaving the apron of mother-mountain and living among the crafty plains people. These men always seem eager to tell the Kurds how quickly they can suc¬ceed once they become non-Kurdish in ev¬ery way. Indeed, Kurds living in the plains cities are seldom considered to be Kurds by those living in the highlands, and have not been trusted to be leaders. To know the secrets of the mountains, the passes, rivers, and caves; to know the clans’ customs; and to be brave, are essential characteristics of Kurdish leaders. Often the Kurds living on the plains are perceived as foreign agents, insiders trained to obliterate all that is held dear by the Kurds. Any common Kurd can name a few of these "mercenary, plains-stricken" Kurds, known as the jâsh, “the donkeys,” who mindlessly carry a load of alien agendas and embrace the sinister aims of outsiders wishing to annihilate the Kurdish homeland and people.”

• Proto-Elamite tablets were "Kurdistani" tablets.

No such claim has been made. The passage on page 28 of the Handbook simply states: “Writing underwent rapid develop¬ment in Mesopotamia, but in Kurdistan it was used only in conjunction with the tokens. Clay tablets bearing records written in a pic¬tographic script known, for the lack of a better term, as “proto-Elamite” made their first known appearance in southern Kurdistan at Godin, near modern Kangâwar, about 4500 years ago. …. The con¬tent of those written tablets excavated so far in southern and south-central Kurdistan and tenta¬tively la¬beled “proto-Elamite” has not been deci¬phered and translated. These primary sources for history of the southern Kurdish states and their culture, therefore, remain inacces¬sible at this time. Consequently, the history of these regions and period must be recon¬structed using the records of the neighboring civi¬liza¬tions insofar as they make reference to the inhabitants of the mountains of southern Kurdistan.” How exactly does this identify the proto-Elamite tablets as “Kurdistani”?

• History of Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Persia should be rewritten as a history of mainly the Kurds.

Response: Where exactly such a claim has been made? Footnote 9 cites the entire book, not any given page(s). This is more of an angry reviewer intent on smear than scholarly review.

• All the Kurds have one common worldview.

Response: There is no such a claim on page 183. However, even if there were such a thing, it is not an inaccurate statement: it is commonly known as the “national ethos:” a worldview shared commonly by a nation that distinguishes it from other nations. Kurds are not any different.

• The evidence that the term Kurd was used by ancient, classical and medieval sources not as en ethnic name but rather a general term meaning shepherd is just not true.

Response: This is a clear attack on the national identity of the Kurds with mal-intention. It has been a habit of the states that govern portions of Kurdistan and their academics to falsely claim that the term “Kurd”, whenever and wherever is encountered in the ancient and medieval texts, it stands for a shepherd and not an ethnic Kurd. Meanwhile, the same believe that every time the term Turk, Arab, Turcoman or Assyria is encountered, it mean an ethnic Turk, Arab, Turcoman or Assyrian. But not Kurd! The text challenges any researcher to come up with a single evidence of this in medieval and ancient texts to substantiate this. The only evidence so far has been one single phrase from a geographical book authored by a Persian, Hamzah of Isfahan, and none else. The mal-intended claimer here wishes to reduce the Kurds to a people with no history, even if they are found in the pages of history--ancient and medieval, by using the old canard that “Kurd” meant a shepherd--any shepherd, but not so the terms Turk, Arab, Assyrian, Turcoman, etc.

And finally, why all the criticism listed here are concentrated in the material contained in only 15 pages of an otherwise densely packed, 260 pages encyclopedic work?

Books

1. The Kurds: A Concise Handbook, 268 pp., Taylor & Francis Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0844817279
2. The Sharafnâma, Or, The History of the Kurdish Nation, 1597, By Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi, translated into English by Mehrdad Izady, 302 pp., Mazda Publishers, 2005. ISBN 1568590741

Book Chapters

1. Between Iraq and a Hard Place: The Kurdish Predicament, pp.71–99 in "Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War", Edited by Lawrence G. Potter, Gary G. Sick, 224 pp., Pekgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1403976090
2. Kurds, Encyclopedia of the Developing World, 1759 pp., Rouledge Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1579583881
3. Kurds and the Foundations of the State of Iraq, 1917-1932, pp.95–109, in "The Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921", Edited by Reeva S. Simon, Eleanor Harvey Tejirian, 181 pp., Columbia University Press, 2004. ISBN 0231132921
4. Gulf and Indian Ocean Basin Ethnic Diversity: An Evolutionary History in "Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles and the Search for Consensus", Edited by G. Sick and L. Potter, 284 pp., Palgrave Press, 2002. ISBN 0312239505.
5. The Geopolitical Realities of Kurdistan vs. Hopes for a New World Order in "Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order", Edited by Phyllis Bennis, Michel Moushabeck, 538 pp., Interlink Pub Group Inc, 1998. ISBN 1566561124
6. The Kurdish Demographic Revolution and Its Socio-Political Implications in "Contrasts and Solutions in the Middle East", Edited by Ole Høiris, Sefa Martin Yürükel, Aarhus University Press, 562 pp., 1997. ISBN 8772886919
7. E uno plurium?: A Projection on the Future of the National Minorities and their Identity in the 21st-Century in "The Transnationalization of Ethnicity and World Politics", Edited by J. Cole and E. Skinner, Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, Howard University, 1995.