As the Kurdish question becomes more prominent in Middle Eastern politics, it is attracting attention from the media, the academic community, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. Swamped with questions from the press and academic departments, students of Kurdish topics have needed a comprehensive bibliography on the Kurds. This book meets that need. An introductory essay provides users with general background information on the Kurds and Kurdistan. With over 800 entries, the annotated bibliography provides information on the most important works about the Kurds and Kurdistan published from World War II through 1996.
Emphasizing recent titles, the book focuses on English-language scholarly works. Arranged in topical chapters, the book opens with a section on general works, then covers travel works, history and archaeology, politics, minorities and religion in Kurdistan, society, economy, language and education, literature and folklore, and culture and arts.
"A 24-page introduction to this bibliography presents general information on the Kurds and their nonexistent state of Kurdistan. This introductory essay describes the geography, language, religion, and tribal culture of the 30 million Kurds who are scattered among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Azerbaijan (with the largest number in Turkey). This information is followed by a brief history of the Kurds since 1918 in each of the five neighboring nations.
The bibliography begins with the usual general works and then proceeds with expected subdivisions ranging from "Description and Travel" to "Culture and Arts." Almost all of the 814 entries carry an annotation varying from 50 to 250 words in length. The material is in English except for an infrequent French entry where there is no English equivalent. The focus is on recent titles. A comprehensive system of cross-references and helpful indexes of authors, titles, and subjects are available.
This volume is number 46 in the World History series of Greenwood Press, which includes such titles as Contemporary Italy (1996); Wartime Poland, 1939?1945 (see entry 480); and The Russian Revolution 1905?1921 (see ARBA 96, entry 548). The audience for the review volume is media, the academic community, and Middle East researchers. The compiler of this bibliography is an adjunct lecturer at North Carolina Central University with on-the-ground experience in the Middle East."
"Timely and welcome, this is the most comprehensive bibliography of the Kurds to appear since International Society Kurdistan's ISK's Kurdish Bibliography, ed. by Silvio van Rooy and Kees Tamboer (2v., 1968), which was multilingual and had 9,350 entries. Meho's compilation consists of 814 entries published since 1945 largely in English language journals. Ninety percent of the entries have annotations of 50 to 200 words: The bibliography has ten chapters dealing with all aspects of Kurdish history and culture. The entries for history and archaeology (231) and for politics (327) are more numerous than for culture and the arts (23) or minorities and religion (79). Use of pertinent electronic databases and computer-assisted publication has allowed the compiler to include entries up to 1996. Readers who began to realize the significance of the Kurds in Middle East politics with their explosion onto the world scene during the Gulf war in 1991 will find this compilation extremely useful. All university, college, public, and most private libraries should acquire it. Future updates should be expanded to include books and articles in French, German, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Russian."
"Lokman I. Meho has compiled a valuable, annotated bibliography of over 800 entries--published mostly in English and since World War II--which will serve a very useful function for those needing to know what has been published on the Kurds . He begins his work with a useful introductory essay that provides the reader with general background information on the Kurds and Kurdistan. Here he concludes that although "all Kurds realize that they belong to a common entity...division by personal, tribal, regional, and sect has been the rule rather than the exception. The geopolitical situation moreover has made the Kurds vulnerable to manipulation by outside powers." (p. 18)
He then divides his actual bibliography into separate sections on general works, description and travel, history and archaeology, politics, minorities and religion, society, economy, language and education, literature and folklore, and culture and arts. Extensive cross-references will help the reader track down entries from one section to the other. The bibliography concludes with three separate indexes on authors, titles, and subjects.
Meho 's bibliography succeeds at least three earlier ones compiled in the 1960s and 1970s: (1) Silvio van Rooy and Kees Tamboer, compilers, ISK's Kurdish Bibliography, 2 vols., (Amsterdam: International Society for Kurdistan, 1968), containing 9,350 entries; (2) Wolfgang Behn, compiler, The Kurds In Iran: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography (2nd ed.; London: Mansell, 1977), containing 275 entries; and (3) Elizabeth E. Lytle, compiler, A Bibliography of the Kurds , Kurdistan, and the Kurdish Question (Monticello, IL: Council of Planning Librarians, 1977) containing 216 entries.
Since Meho 's compilation consists mainly of English-language material plus a few items in French, it omits important new works in Kurdish, Arabic, Russian, and German, among others. Meho explains that works in these other languages "will be neither readily available nor accessible to the majority of readers" (p. xv). Scholars in the Middle East and Europe, however, may think otherwise.
In addition, even though Meho 's collection includes such newly published works as David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 1996, already even newer ones such as Susan Meiselas, Kurdistan in the Shadow of History, 1997, are omitted. For some reason Sheri Laizer, Into Kurdistan: Frontiers Under Fire, 1991, is also missing, but such occasional oversights are inevitable in a work of this scope and do not diminish its overall achievement. Scholars, as well as concerned generalists, will be well served by Meho 's excellent present effort."
"The introduction to Lokman I. Meho's The Kurds and Kurdistan: A Selective and Annotated Bibliography illustrates the traditional (and much-debated) Kurdologist perspective on Kurdish history: according to Meho, Kurds "are one of the oldest nations in the Middle East," with a (seemingly) unbroken lineage dating to 3000 BC. From the beginning of the thirteenth century, Meho argues, they "experienced a steady decline in almost every aspect of Kurdish national life" (p. 8), and he worries that today political disunity, linguistic and religious diversity, and external persecution are continuing to undermine this national identity. The contents of this volume, with its heavy emphasis on politics, human rights, and history, reflect the priorities Meho outlines, for better and for worse.
Meho's bibliography contains 814 entries, including books, articles, unpublished dissertations, chapters in edited collections, and reports dating from World War B through 1996. The majority are English-language citations and are accompanied by lengthy, descriptive annotations either written by Meho or taken from reviews originally published elsewhere. These are extremely valuable encapsulations; Meho is less interested in passing judgment than in giving readers detailed summaries of the arguments and information the works contain. Thus, on Kanan Makiya's Cruelty and Silence, Meho relates both the book's colorful history and its controversial arguments. In his section on ancient archaeology he offers succinct descriptions of studies from the Shemshara clay tablets discovered in 1957 in northern Iraq to the histories of Zoroastrianism. The volume is clear and well organized, with 10 main sections including politics, religion, and travel, and with three indexes organized by author, title, and subject.
As Meho points out, the lack of reference materials concerning Kurds often forces scholars to spend "hundreds of dollars and hours" on the Internet and other computer databases in search of sources. This book will make their job easier, giving them a good starting point from which to begin their research. It can be no substitute, though, for the kind of time-intensive labor Meho bemoans. By restricting himself to English (and a few French) sources, Meho has left out a sizable portion of important literature, particularly that in German, Arabic, and Turkish. While he argues in his introduction that this is because non-English language materials will not be readily accessible or available to the majority of readers (French items are only included, he writes, when there are no better English-language sources), he perhaps underestimates the increasing linguistic versatility of today's researchers and the growing academic expectation that even native English-speakers will draw on non-English sources.
Perhaps not unrelated, his bibliography is seriously deficient in some areas (as Meho himself admits). His section on the economy, for instance, contains only 12 items, in contrast to his politics section, which has more than 300--an odd imbalance, considering the importance economic factors play in Kurdish affairs. Again, once outside of politics, his index is also not complete. Readers who look up "health conditions" in the subject index will find only two citations (neither of which seem to have much to do with health, judging from the annotated descriptions). Yet a quick scan of the bibliography reveals a number of other citations dealing with health-specific issues such as post-traumatic stress syndrome among displaced Kurdish children in Iraq, psychotherapy, and fertility rates--none of which are listed under "health" in the subject index. All this notwithstanding, this book is a very welcome addition to reference works on the Kurds."
"Kurdistan is not a sovereign nation but an area that crosses over several national borders in the Middle East. Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan all have Kurdish populations, estimated to total over 30,000,000 individuals. In light of recent political events, this bibliography was created by a librarian of Kurdish descent originally from Lebanon. Richly annotated, it presents 814 scholarly citations for items about the Kurds and Kurdistan published after World War II. Books, articles, chapters, dissertations and reports are represented, with an emphasis on more recent materials, including some from 1996. Most of the items are in English for ease of access. Each of the ten chapters centers around a broad topic subdivided by specific aspects of the topic. Cross references to other citations conclude each section. There are comprehensive author and title indexes, and a subject index that is cross-referenced. An excellent introduction provides pertinent background information. Academic and research libraries will find this volume most useful."
Cynthia Krolikowski. Reference and User Services Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 308.