Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Pe ...

This time, Persia emerged under Nadir Shah, who invaded the territory of ancient Assyria in 1743 with the full backing and support of the Kurds, whom he organised as a political entity forming what become known as the emirates. This was a further step to strengthening both the older Kurdish settlements, including those made after Chaldiran, and the newer ones that followed Nadir Shah’s invasion. Hence the Assyrians living around the country of the independent tribes lost both land and numbers due to a continual series of invasions, wars, and deportations that were inflicted upon them during those turbulent times. After Nadir Shah’s invasion, the independent tribes also faced further tightening of the Kurdish circle around their country, which cut them off from other Assyrian settlements in the region to the north and northwest of Nineveh, as well as those Ra’aya living in Persian Azerbaijan.

Once the weakness of the Ottoman authority was widely exposed again after Nadir Shah’s invasion, a certain indifference to Ottoman rule took root throughout Mesopotamia and Assyria, particularly among the non-Turkish population. Consequently various ethnic and religious centres emerged and acquired varying degrees of internal self-government. These centres had no significant relations with the Ottoman central authority.

Hence from 1747 until 1831, many ethnic and religious centres joined the independent Assyrian tribes in acquiring a status of autonomy. Meanwhile the Ottomans, shaken by their defeats in Europe, took no military or even financial interest in their Asiatic ‘backyard’. This state of affairs, however, lasted only until reign of the reformer, Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839), which witnessed the loss of much of the Ottomans’ remaining possessions in Europe and Africa. Thereafter the sultan seems to have thought he had no alternative but to reconquer the Asiatic territories that his ancestors had annexed to their empire in the sixteenth century. In 1826 he began to implement reforms aimed at securing his grip on power and improving the effectiveness of his armed forces, and then in 1831 he was able to embark on his policy of centralisation. The Tanzimat reforms promulgated by Mahmud II and his successor Abdulmecid had little or no direct impact on the peoples of northern Mesopotamia as long as they maintained their autonomy; however, by strengthening both the Ottoman administration and the army, they enabled the sultans at last to impose their effective authority on that part of their empire.