From the editor.(Editorial)

This 15th anniversary issue features the writings of men whose travels and observations would leave their mark on Kurds in the 20th century. They traversed remote regions of Turkey and Persia in the 19th and early 20th centuries and left us vivid accounts of landscape, peoples and places. Equally significant, they left us their judgments.

These men were no ordinary travelers. They were men with missions. The British authors were military officers in the service of the Crown. Rev. Laurence Sterne, an Englishman, might well have been alluding to such men when a century earlier he wrote in the preface to the Desobligeante, "An Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen." Captain Bertram Dickson, author of one chronicle included in this issue, was then Military Consul in Asia Minor, having formerly served in South Africa, Somaliland, British East Africa and under Sir Thomas Holdich on the Argentine-Chile Boundary Commission. While the observations of these professionals are clear, their official missions are less so. Doubtless they were serving British …