An uncommon grammar, devoted to the Kurdish (Kurmanji) and modern Syriac spoken in the regions between Mosul and the Black Sea. Agha Petros Ellow was Commander-in-Chief of the Assyro-Chaldean Forces, who were allied to Britain during the First World War.
In a short introduction, he states the grammar was printed “to meet the needs of those, who through the War are interested in the ancient Christians and Tribes of Central Asia” (p.[2]). However, it was much more likely used by officials attempting to navigate the fractured and fractious post-war landscape, in which new countries were forming and ancestral homelands were being split. By 1933, the homeland of the Yezidis was “divided by the borders of four separate states – Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria” (Açikyildiz, Birgül, The Yezidis, p.58), as was also the case for the Kurds.
A year before the publication of Ellow’s work, the Government Press issued another Kurdish grammar, by Major E.B. Soane. Soane’s grammar focused on the dialect spoken in Sulaymaniyah, where Mahmud Barzanji first revolted against (British-backed) Iraqi authority; further exemplifying how Government Press publications were almost always spurred by political events in British Mesopotamia (later Mandatory Iraq).
Rare in commerce, with no copies in auction records.
