'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎248v] (501/862)

■ BBn
3-72 distribution of population
western limit seems to be marked by the old route from Qizil Ribat
on the Diyala through Kirkuk to Altun Kopru on the Little Zab and
thence by the Jabal Qara Chauq bordering the Qaraj plain. North of
the Great Zab in the Mosul plain they reach west to the Khazir Su,
and north of Dohuk they cross the Tigris (figs. 23, 24, 70-71).
The total number of Kurds is not directly revealed by the census
estimates, which do not distinguish the inhabitants of Iraq by race,
but it may be approximated by subtracting the number of non-
Moslem inhabitants from the total population of Erbil, Sulaimaniya,
Kirkuk provinces, 1 and of Mosul province except Mosul city and
the districts of Mosul, Sinjar and Tel Afar. The Kurdish population
of the latter areas, which is not great, may be set against the Turkoman
and Arab elements of Erbil and Kirkuk provinces. The result gives
a total Kurdish population of 740,000, of whom 257,000 live in the
restive mountain districts from the Great Zab to the upper Diyala,
which have formed the core of autonomous movements in Kurdistan
(Aqra, Zibar, Ruwandiz, Rania districts, and Sulaimaniya province).
The rest live in the Assyrian plains and hills and in the Khabur basin.
Within the plains, and also in the broad valleys around Sulaimaniya,
the former Shahrizor district (p. 262), there are considerable areas
where the Kurds have abandoned their tribal organization. Elsewhere
the system persists with varying strength, but it differs greatly from
that of the Arab tribes both in its federal and its territorial aspects.
There are few Kurdish confederations and few large tribes in Iraq.
The authority of paramount chiefs is slight and tribal sections fight
freely together. The tribes themselves, except some of the shepherd
tribes, are generally small compared to Arab tribes, often numbering
their families by the hundred rather than the thousand. In the inac
cessible mountain region drained by the two Zabs fragmentation is
considerable, and there are many very small and mutually hostile
tribes living in isolated valleys, tribal sections having often become
separate tribes, a process which is still at work. Though all Kurds
have the habit of seasonal migration to some extent (p. 344), the
mountain tribes are generally agricultural and settled, the semi-
nomadic shepherd tribes being found in the wider spaces of the Assy
rian plains and foothills. Only two tribes, the Herki and the Jaf, are
fully nomadic and make considerable migrations between the Persian
mountains and Iraq, though sections of the Pizhder have considerable
range. Territorially, though each tribe has its own region, the notion
of the dir a (p. 361) is not well established because few Kurdish tribes
1 And also the Khanaqin district of Diyala province.