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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive description of Kurdish culture based primarily on published ethnographic studies. The second chapter introduces the Kurdish area, its topography and climate, and the Kurdish people and their history. Chapter III presents general cultural features, specifically Kurdish dress and the Kurdish language including dialect divisions and regional cultural differences. Chapter IV, Ecology and Economy, discusses the subsistence patterns of the village farmers and nomadic herdsmen in the context of the environment as well as the urban trade centers. It introduces the tribal-feudal dichotomy under a discussion of land tenure. Chapter V, Formal Political Organization, is largely a discussion of the Kurdish segmentary lineage organization (the tribe) as it is contrasted with feudal organization. This tribal-feudal dichotomy is associated with the co-variance of other institutional forms, i.e., the frequency of FaBrDa marriage and the degree of seclusion and/or veiling of the women. Chapter VI, Social Organization, deals with the formal hierarchies governing areas of activity other than the political field, i.e., the class status hierarchy of the economic field and the religious field, and the integration of a person\u27s part-statuses in these hierarchies (plus other factors) into his total status (or power) in the fluid village hierarchy. Also presented is the village scene, and the social structure of the town of Rowanduz. The final chapter covers marriage and the family, including the kinship system and male-female relationships
