Dotting the I’S & Crossing the T’S

Ain Al Arab is not Kobani

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The city which revolves inside or outside it, the fight between the Kurdish groups and the militants of ISIL, on the Turkish – Syrian borders has summarized in its name the related meanings of the war against the region.

The official name in the records of the Syrian country is saturated with the Arab identity, it transcended the fact of being a mere Arab name like any nomination for any town or city, to the extent of its prominence as a title for the Arab identity (( Ain Al Arab)), and the circulation with it, becomes a confirmation for this identity.

For the first time, it seems that the ignorance of the Arabic nomination, and the adoption of the name of Kobani in all the international media, is an attempt to confirm a social, political, and cultural Kurdish identity that is unrelated to the motherland Syria. The listener will think that the name Kobani is of Kurdish origin, and it has changed to a nomination that reveals its callers as Arabism extremists, who assaulted the Kurdish identity and changed the name of the city.

Surely, the city is newly formed, its age is two hundreds odd years, carries the name of Ain Al Arab since the date of its emersion, has Assyrian and Aramaic ruins and historical ancient caves, the Kurdish people are immigrants, but they are not their original inhabitants, they gathered in and around it like the Armenians emigrants who escaped from the Turkish massacres in the beginning of the last century, and when the Syrian-Turkish borders were demarcated between the Britain colonialism and its French partner. The circulated name by the Kurdish is Kani which is Ain (spring) in Arabic, as a denotation to the numbers of prevailed water springs in it, while the other biggest Kurdish gatherings were as camps for the workers who participated in building the crossed railways, especially the line of Urfa Baghdad and Hejaz line between 1910 and 1911, where the British company which is responsible of Hejaz line and the German company which carried out Baghdad line have centralized,

Kobani name is the derived nomination from the word (company) in the foreign languages French, English, and Germany. Thus Kobani is the ((company)) the workers is going to the company or coming back from the company, working in a company, meeting in a company. So the place becomes the name according to the circulation and the reduction of the letter ( M ) to become automatically Kobani.

The global media and most of the Arab media are insisting on Kobani nomination, although everyone knows as we know, because the insistence on this nominating donates to the adoption of the Kurdish identity against the original historical real Arabic nomination, and an accurate reflection of the identity, so this reveals a teachable example of the West media policies, and how the politics and the media in the West deal with the issues and the affairs of the region, arousing strifes through illusions, waging in direct wars  to blow the wars of identities, but at the end the promotional identity is neither Kurdish, nor Arab, nor Turkish. In Turkey Ain Al Arab means ( guided by fire ) and it means also ( springs) but the identity which they want to promote is the company only.

All the Arab countries have one name, but Kobani is the abbreviation to all of the countries, their identities are the company, it does not matter whether the company is in Lebanon and its name Solidaire or in Saudi Arabia and its name Aramco, in Egypt the Suez Canal Company before the nationalization, the most important is that the identity is Kobani.

2014-10-24 | عدد القراءات 1530