Al-Jazira Province

The French geographer Pierre Rondot describes the area by saying:[3] The mountain range of Armenia and Kurdistan falls rather sharply to the south, beyond Mardin, Nusaybin, and Jazirat ibn Umar, towards the steppes of Jazirah, domain of the Arab nomad.

It is the border of two worlds: while the Arabs, great nomads whose existence is linked to that of the camel, could not enter the rocky mountain, the Kurds envy the edge of the steppe, relatively well watered and more easy to cultivate than the mountain, where they could push their sheep and install some crops.During World War I and subsequent years, thousands of Assyrians fled their homes in Anatolia after massacres.

After the war, the construction of road networks and the railway extension to Nusaybin have intensified the Kurdish immigration from the Anatolian mountains to Syrian Jazirah.

One of the most important of these plans was carried out in Upper Jazira in northeastern Syria where the French built new towns and villages (such as Qamishli) with the intention of housing the refugees considered to be "friendly".

This has encouraged the non-Turkish minorities that were under Turkish pressure to leave their ancestral homes and property, they could find refuge and rebuild their lives in relative safety in neighboring Syria.

The French geographer Robert Montagne summarized the situation in 1932 as follows:[10] We are seeing an increase in village establishment that are either constructed by the Kurds descending from the Anatolian mountains (north of the border) to cultivate or as a sign of increasing settlement of Arab groups with the help of their Armenian and Yezidi farmers.In 1939, French mandate authorities reported the following population numbers for the different ethnic and religious groups in al-Hasakah governorate.

The Kurdish studies expert David McDowall states the following:[15] The government believed that 'At the beginning of 1945, the Kurds began to infiltrate into al-Hasakeh governorate.

From being lawless and virtually empty prior to 1914, the Jazira had proved to be astonishingly fertile once order was imposed by the French mandate and farming undertaken by the largely Kurdish population.... A strong suspicion that many migrants were entering Syria was inevitable.

[17] In February 1935, the Italian Consul Alberto Rossi wrote from Aleppo:[18] In 1936-1937 there was some autonomist agitation in the province among Assyrians and Kurds, supported by some Arab Bedouins.

They wanted the French troops to stay in the province in the hypothesis of a Syrian independence, as they feared the nationalist Damascus government would replace minority officials by Muslim Arabs from the capital.