Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Hafeed and the Establishment of the Kurdish State During the British Occupation of Mosul

Abstract

This study aims to shed more light on a significant period in Kurdistan history after the 1^st World War, during which the region suffered from a political and administrative vacuum, which was filled with the emergence of a leader known as Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Hafeed and the armed Kurdish resistance. The British supported the efforts to establish a Kurdish State in an attempt to weaken the influence of the Ottoman authority in the region. But Sheikh Mahmoud clashed with the British authorities later. Sheikh Al-Mahmoud led an armed resistance in Sulaymaniyah on May 28, 1919, by which 300 fighters controlled the city and arrested the political ruling agent. Sheikh Mahmoud declared himself the ruler-general of Iraqi Kurdistan, after that British sent a military force to Sulaymaniyah on June 18, 1919, they succeeded in arresting Sheikh Mahmoud and deported him to India. Other revolutions ruled by the Kurdish tribes as a consequence of the violence policy by British in areas such as Amadiyah and Bamerni in Dohuk, Al-Barzan and Al-Zibari in Al-Aqrah district, as well as in the Zakho district, Al-Kali, Al-Slayfani and Al-Sindi in Fishkhabour, and the Koyan tribes, in which these tribes run by more than one Kurdish leader, resisted against British, and the Koyan tribes attempt to assassinate the assistant of the political ruler. In Zakho stood against the British autho.