File:The new Larned History for ready reference, reading and research; the actual words of the world's best historians biographers and specialists; a complete system of history for all uses, extending to (14781258044).jpg

Identifier: newlarnedhistor10larn (find matches)
Title: The new Larned History for ready reference, reading and research; the actual words of the world's best historians biographers and specialists; a complete system of history for all uses, extending to all countries and subjects and representing the better and newer literature of history
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Larned, Josephus Nelson, 1836-1913 Smith, Donald Eugene, 1878-
Subjects: History
Publisher: Springfield, Mass. C.A. Nichols publishing company
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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Christians of the Tor-Abdin, ■and the Nestorians of the Upper Zab, who once,under the Caliphs, were the industrious Christianpeasantry of Mesopotamia, but now are shep-herds and hillmen among the Kurds. The Kurdsthemselves are more scattered than any otherstock in Turkey, and divided tribe against tribe,but taken together they rank third in numericalstrength, after the Arabs and Turks. There aremountain Kurds and Kurds of the plain, husband-men and herdsmen. Kurds who have kept to theiroriginal homes along the eastern frontier, andKurds who, under Ottoman auspices, have spreadthemselves over the Armenian plateau, the NorthMesopotamian steppes, the Taurus valleys, and thehinterland of the Black Sea. The chief thing theKurds have in common is the Persian dialect theyspeak, but it is usual to class as Kurds any andevery community in the Kurdish area which isnot Turkish or Arab and can by courtesy becalled Moslem (the Kurds, for that matter, areonly Moslems skin-deep). Such communities
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TURKEY /ResourcesLanguages TURKEY abound: the Dersim highlands, in particular, arean ethnographical museum; Kizil-Bashi is ageneral name for their kind; only the Yezidis,though they speak good Kurdish, are distinguishedfrom the rest for their idiosyncrasy of worshippingSatan under the form of a peacock (Allah, theyargue, is good-natured and does not need to bepropitiated) and they are repudiated with oneaccord by Moslem and ChrLstian. But not allthe scattered races in Turkey are isolated orprimitive. The Greeks and Armenians, for in-stance, are, or were, the most energetic, intellectual,liberal elements in Turkey, the natural intermedi-aries between the other races and western civiliza-tion—were rather than are, because the Otto-man government has taken ruthless steps to elimi-nate just these two most valuable elements amongits subjects. The urban Greeks survive in cen-tres like Smyrna and Constantinople, but theGreek peasantry of Thrace and Anatolia hasmostly been driven over the f

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