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In the course of the nineteenth century the Ottomans gradually attempted to assert their authority over the more remote parts of their empire. In the Kurdish areas, their efforts in this direction caused major risings in 1837–52 and 1880–81, but even as late as the outbreak of the First World War their authority was still not entirely accepted in a good deal of what is now eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Like the Arabs during the same period, although to a lesser extent, the Kurds were affected by the currents of 24 Iraq Since 1958 nationalism in Europe and Asia in the second part of the century, and began to found political associations demanding either some form of decentralised administration or, more rarely, complete independence from Ottoman control.

34 The eighteen months between October 1918 and April 1920 were to be crucial for the future of Iraq. During that period, many former members of al-‘Ahd were running the Arab kingdom of Syria, under Faysal ibn Husayn, with whom they had served in the Arab Revolt in the Hijaz, while Iraq was still being ruled by British officials. Thus it appeared that the British judged the Arabs competent to run their own affairs on one side of the Fertile Crescent but not on the other, a situation that was particularly paradoxical since so many members of the Syrian administration were Iraqis.

During the First World War, the Turks and the Russians were on opposite sides, confronting each other within and across the Kurdish areas in eastern Turkey and western Iran. After Russia withdrew from the war in December 1917 there was a power vacuum in eastern Turkey until well into 1919, and in western Iran until Reza Khan’s seizure of power in 1921. 70 Further south, Mosul town was occupied some days after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918), and British occupation was soon afterwards extended over the whole of the Mosul wilayet.