Kurdistan (1898): The Kurdish Press Born in Exile

At a Glance

The first Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistan, was published in Cairo on 22 April 1898. That date is now marked as Kurdish Journalism Day.
The man who made it was Mikdad Midhat Bedirxan, a member of the Bedirxan family (also written Bedirkhan), the exiled ruling house of Botan, a Kurdish principality in the mountains of the upper Tigris.
The paper was born in Cairo, not Istanbul. Under the censorship of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II, a publication like this could not have survived inside the empire.
Kurdistan was four pages of Kurmancî (the northern dialect of Kurdish) set in Arabic script, with some sections in Ottoman Turkish. Its first issue announced its purpose: so the people would read, and learn what was happening in the world.
From its earliest issues the paper serialized Ehmedê Xanî's Mem û Zîn, the great Kurdish verse romance of the seventeenth century. The first Kurdish newspaper carried the first great Kurdish classic.
Its life was an exile's itinerary. It moved from Cairo to Geneva, then to London and the English coastal town of Folkestone. Between 1898 and 1902 it managed thirty-one issues.
Reaching readers inside the Kurdish homeland was a struggle in itself. Copies were smuggled across borders and passed from hand to hand.
Kurdistan was a beginning. In 1908 came the Kürt Teavün ve Terakki newspaper in Istanbul, in 1913 Rojî Kurd, in 1918 Jîn.
This is the story of how a people whose press was forbidden built that press in exile.

April 1898. In a print room in Cairo, the air smells of ink. Fresh sheets are laid out to dry. The letters on them are Arabic characters, but their arrangement is neither Arabic nor Ottoman. These letters spell a language that had never before been set side by side in any newspaper.

A man in his forties stands at the table. His name is Mikdad Midhat Bedirxan. On the top sheet in his hand there is a single word, the name of the paper: KURDISTAN.

He knows better than anyone what it means to see that word printed as the title of a newspaper. His surname is Bedirxan. He is the son of the last great mîr of Botan, and a mîr is a Kurdish ruler or prince. Half a century before, his family was torn from its homeland and scattered into exile: a ruling house dispersed across Istanbul, Crete, Damascus. Now a son of that house, on the bank of the Nile, is making his people's name a masthead.

The date is 22 April 1898. The Kurdish press was born in that room. Far away that same winter, in Paris, Émile Zola had just published his open letter over the Dreyfus affair. This was the age when a printed page could be an act.

Who Set That Masthead? The Bedirxan Family

Why did this particular man print this particular word? The answer is in his name.

The Kurds are one of the largest stateless peoples in the Middle East, between 30 and 45 million people who speak an Iranic language, the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. For centuries their homeland was governed not from one throne but through many local ruling houses. Botan was one of the strongest of these, a principality in the mountains where the Tigris runs. The Bedirxan family ruled it.

Here one sentence of context is enough. In 1847 the principality of Botan fell to Ottoman centralization, and the whole family was sent into exile. The children of that displaced house turned from the sword to the pen: they went looking with ink for what steel had lost. Kurdistan is the first great fruit of that turn.

So the masthead was not a slogan. It was a family's whole history, pressed into eight letters.

Why Cairo, Not Istanbul?

The first question anyone asks is the obvious one. Millions of Kurds lived inside the Ottoman lands. Why did their first newspaper appear in Egypt?

The answer is one word: censorship. The government of Sultan Abdülhamid II had turned the press into the most tightly watched field in the empire. Newspapers passed through inspection before printing. "Objectionable" words were listed. Opposition writers either fell silent or left the country. In that system a Kurdish newspaper, and one titled Kurdistan, had no chance of surviving in Istanbul.

Cairo was another matter. In those years Egypt was under effective British control and had become a refuge for Ottoman dissidents. Many opposition papers, including those of the Young Turks, were printed there. Mikdad Midhat Bedirxan used that open door.

Was this a retreat? Read it the other way. The censor could close the capital to a Kurdish paper. He could not close the world.

The Paper Itself: Four Pages, One Cause

Kurdistan looked modest: four pages, Kurmancî set in Arabic letters. From time to time it carried sections in Ottoman Turkish, because its intended readers included Ottoman intellectuals who could not read Kurdish but cared about the cause.

In the first column of the first issue, Mikdad Midhat set out his aim. Its heart was this: the Kurds have been left ignorant of what happens in the world; this paper will bring them both news and knowledge; let them read, let them learn. The call to education runs through the whole run as its main theme: reading and writing for children, schools for the people, respect for the language.

The paper's most graceful work is on its literary page. Kurdistan serialized parts of Ehmedê Xanî's Mem û Zîn. Serializing means publishing a single work in installments, issue by issue. Consider what that means. The first Kurdish newspaper was carrying, in its pages, the first great Kurdish classic, a poem written two hundred years earlier. Xanî's legacy was a line that no one should be able to say the Kurds have no book. Mikdad Midhat brought that legacy to the newsprint. Two ages of the same pen shook hands on four pages.

There is one more telling detail. Selling was not the point. Issues were often distributed for free, so long as they were read. This was not a business. It was a cause with a printing press.

Exile Within Exile: The Paper's Route

The life of Kurdistan came to resemble the lives of the men who made it: always on the road.

The paper was born in Cairo but could not stay there. By the end of its first year it was coming out of Geneva. The masthead of the seventh issue, dated 5 November 1898, gives Geneva as its place of printing. Mikdad Midhat's brother, Abdurrahman Bedirxan, then took over the running of it. The route only lengthened: from Geneva back to Cairo, then to London, then to the coastal town of Folkestone in England, then to Geneva again. Behind every move stood the same two forces: the diplomatic pressure of the Ottoman palace, and the shortage of money.

Abdülhamid's government used every tool it had to silence the paper: pressure on the countries where it was printed, the squeeze of exile and cut allowances on the family, seizure at the borders. Even so, the paper produced thirty-one issues between 1898 and 1902. Thirty-one may sound like a small number. Weigh it against the conditions, and each issue counts as a victory.

And how did those issues reach their readers? Getting a newspaper into the Kurdish homeland by post was mostly impossible. Copies traveled hidden in the bundles of pilgrims, in the loads of merchants, along the paths that border villages knew. The letters printed in the paper's own pages are living witnesses to this struggle of delivery. Picture a newspaper that reaches its readers like contraband. And it was read. The letters that came back are the proof of that too.

After Kurdistan: Links in the Chain

Kurdistan fell silent in 1902, but the road it opened stayed open. From then on the Kurdish press grew by swinging between exile and homeland, between prohibition and possibility.

When the constitution was restored in 1908 and censorship loosened, Kurdish intellectuals ran this time to the presses of Istanbul. The Kürt Teavün ve Terakki newspaper appeared, and after it came associations, schools, journals. In 1913 a Kurdish students' association published Rojî Kurd; the name means "Kurdish Sun." In the aftermath of the First World War, in 1918 and 1919, the journal Jîn came out in Istanbul; its name means "Life," and its pages are today one of the richest archives of Kurdish thought from that period.

Every one of these publications was later shut down or died on its own. The history of the Kurdish press is a history of interruptions. But one chain never broke: each generation, knowing the paper of the one before, founded a new one. That 22 April is now marked as Kurdish Journalism Day is the memory of that chain. History salutes that print room in Cairo.

That we can still read this inheritance we owe to laborers as well. The researcher Malmîsanij and his colleagues documented the history of the Kurdish press. Mehmet Emin Bozarslan republished the Kurdistan and Jîn collections in facsimile, that is, faithful reproductions of the original editions. Yellowed pages live on in libraries because of them.

What Four Pages Taught

What lesson does the story of Kurdistan leave for today? Give three answers.

First: for a people without a state, the press is not a luxury but a lifeline. The newspaper of a people with a state reports the news. The newspaper of a stateless people also declares that the people exist. The very name Kurdistan was such a declaration.

Second: exile sometimes writes not an ending but a beginning. The family torn from Botan kept the name of its lost homeland alive in a newspaper masthead on the bank of the Nile. It showed that what the sword cannot take, the pen can keep.

Third: no page reaches its reader on its own. The pilgrims who carried those four pages across the border, the villagers who hid them, the curious who read them and read them aloud to others, are not the nameless heroes of this history but its nameless laborers. The paper was theirs too.

A people's press history is a mirror of that people's confidence in itself. That mirror first shone on 22 April 1898, in Cairo. What came after, interrupted as it was, is all the continuation of that light.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the first Kurdish newspaper, and when did it appear? It is the newspaper Kurdistan; its first issue was published in Cairo on 22 April 1898. Its founder was Mikdad Midhat Bedirxan, and later issues were produced by his brother Abdurrahman Bedirxan.

Why was Kurdistan published in Cairo? The censorship of Sultan Abdülhamid II's era left no room for such a paper to be published inside Ottoman borders. In those years Cairo, under effective British control, was one of the centers of the Ottoman opposition press.

How many issues did the paper produce, and in what language? Thirty-one issues appeared between 1898 and 1902. Its language was mainly Kurmancî Kurdish in Arabic script, with some sections in Ottoman Turkish. The paper also serialized Ehmedê Xanî's Mem û Zîn.

Why is 22 April Kurdish Journalism Day? Because the first issue of the newspaper Kurdistan was dated 22 April 1898. The Kurdish press marks that day as its founding.

What publications followed Kurdistan? The Kürt Teavün ve Terakki newspaper in Istanbul in 1908, Rojî Kurd in 1913, and the journal Jîn in 1918 and 1919. The Kurdish press reached the present as a chain that was interrupted but never wholly broken.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources (from the Bedel Boseli Collection):

Seîd Veroj, "Osmanlı Son Döneminde Kürd Basınında Kürdistan ve Ermenistan Meselesi"; the masthead details in this article (the seventh issue, 5 November 1898, Geneva) come from here.
M. Emîn Bozarslan (ed.), Kurdistan: Rojnama Kurdî ya Pêşîn / İlk Kürt Gazetesi 1898-1902 (facsimile volumes).
Hamit Bozarslan et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Kurds (2021), the chapters on press and awakening.
Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook (4th edition).

Social Media Summaries

The following summaries are ready to share; copy and use them.

22 April 1898, Cairo. An exiled mîr's son made his people's name a masthead: KURDISTAN. The Kurdish press was born in a print room, far from home. Read the story: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdistan-newspaper-1898
The first Kurdish newspaper carried the first great Kurdish classic. Kurdistan serialized Ehmedê Xanî's Mem û Zîn. Two pens, two centuries apart, shook hands on four pages: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdistan-newspaper-1898
The paper reached its readers like contraband: in pilgrims' packs, in merchants' loads, along border paths only villagers knew. And it was read. The letters that came back are the proof: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdistan-newspaper-1898
Cairo, Geneva, London, Folkestone. Not an address list, an exile route. The palace pressed, the money ran out, and each of the 31 issues became its own small victory: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdistan-newspaper-1898
A people with a state has a newspaper that reports the news. A stateless people has a newspaper that also announces it exists. The name Kurdistan was itself a declaration: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdistan-newspaper-1898