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Some Kurdish proverbs are probably very ancient, others quite recent in origin. Like any other part of a living language, new proverbs may emerge over time and old ones may take on fresh meanings when uttered in new historical contexts. The present essay is also concerned with how Kurdish proverbs came to take on different meanings over time-the beginning of the twentieth century, to be specific. However, it is not the transformation in the interpretation of individual proverbs that is the focus of this paper; rather, this article attempts to illustrate how "proverbs" as a category acquired new significance in the hands of Kurdish nationalists-to account for the historical context in which proverbs as a linguistic category first became important for Kurdish intellectuals to collect, analyze, and reprint in their journals. Put differently, in the spirit of Hobsbawm's notion of 'invented tradition,' the present study examines how Kurdish proverbs and, by extension, Kurdish folklore and the Kurdish language, were "modified, ritualized and institutionalized for... new national purposes."1 This essay is, then, not a study of Kurdish proverbs per se, but (loosely) a study of the study of Kurdish proverbs. On November 7 1918 the first of a series of articles devoted to Kurdish proverbs appeared in Jîn, a Kurdish-Ottoman journal that began publication after the end of the First World War. One might wonder how the subject of proverbs found its way into print at a time when there were more seemingly pressing matters facing the Kurds and their neighbors. In 1918, after all, the fate of the Ottoman Empire was in question. The Great Powers were dividing up the Middle East, and the Kurds, like their neighbors, were busy trying to rebuild their society after the devastating war and pressing for a settlement they hoped would help their society prosper. Kurdish intellectuals were quick to perceive that political battles and power struggles were increasingly legitimized through the practically hegemonic discourses of the day, which were based on the key words "nationalism" and "modernity." The journals Kurdish intellectuals founded in the post-war period accordingly had as their main mission the promotion of the Kurdish element of the Kurds' multifaceted identity" and the encouragement of all "things modem." As I hope to illustrate in the pages that follow, pieces of everyday life were politicized and acquired new meaning in this process-the Kurdish language in general and proverbs in particular. I will turn to this phenomenon after a discussion of the Kurdish press and Kurdish nationalism in general, as the politicization of language, folklore, and proverbs was intimately tied to the expression of nationalism.