An introduction to the blog

Welcome! My name is Rebaz. The primary purpose of this blog is to organize and share my writings and reflections on Kurdish history, philosophy, theology, literature, and a handful of other topics that interest me. From time to time, I may also write about more personal subjects, whether fragrances, books, or whatever else happens to capture my attention.

I do not have a fixed blueprint for everything that will be posted here. Rather, this blog serves as a repository for thoughts, observations and interests that have accumulated over years of reading and reflection. Some posts may take the form of researched essays, while others may simply be attempts to think through a particular question or topic. Many aspects of the subjects discussed here remain, in my view, poorly understood or insufficiently explored. By engaging directly with primary texts, I hope to contribute, however modestly, to a deeper understanding of some of these topics.

This blog also serves as a permanent archive of my work. Over the years, I have developed a number of arguments, interpretations, and observations that have occasionally circulated without attribution. By publishing them here in a dated and accessible format, I hope to provide readers with the original context of these ideas and a clear record of their development.

Among the arguments and themes I have explored with novel sources and commentaries are the quantification of Kurdish literati throughout Islamicate history, the significance of the Pahlavi label for understanding the Kurdish past, the existence of what I have called the "invisible communities" of Kurdish history, the underestimated proportion of settled Kurds in the premodern period, and the historically dominant role of religious syncretism in Kurdistan. Whether these arguments ultimately prove persuasive is for readers to decide, but this blog will serve as a record of the reasoning and sources upon which they are based.

The posts on this blog vary in their purpose and approach. In some cases, I simply provide links to relevant secondary literature. In others, I summarize existing scholarship, often accompanied by screenshots or excerpts from the sources in question. Most often, however, whether the subject is history, philosophy, theology, or something else entirely, I seek to build upon, refine, or challenge existing arguments and conclusions. I have tried to make these distinctions clear throughout my posts and hope that readers will find it easy to distinguish between the views of the sources I cite and my own interpretations and arguments.

With regard to translations, I rarely translate original texts myself, with the exception of mostly Kurdish and Persian material. Most translated quotations on this blog are taken from established published translations. As a general rule, I do not independently verify every translation against the original text unless I have a specific reason to question it. In such cases, I may alter certain words or phrases where I believe a different rendering is more accurate. When I do so, I will normally explain the reasoning behind my departure from the published translation.