Kurdistan provides an introduction to and a succinct history of the idea of Kurdistan, the imagined homeland of the Kurds. Christopher Houston examines the historiography, ethnography, and changing political status of the Kurdish regions vis-a-vis the Ottoman and British empires, and considers the responses of Kurds to the nation-building missions of modern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. These projects, driven by ambitious elites in the modernizing capitals of new nation-states, were accompanied by varying degrees of intolerance toward minority ethnic languages, political institutions, and regional autonomy.