Both uprising were led by Sheikh Ubeydullah, the leader of the Semdinan Naqshbandi family who claimed descendance from Mohammed through his daughter Fatima.

[2] Thus the family had a considerable influence, disposed over large amounts of donations,[3] owned several villages in the region[2] and many Kurdish tribal leaders were devout followers of him.

[4] The initial cause for the uprisings were the outcome of the Russo-Turkish war in 1877-78 and the Treaty of Berlin[5] which provided the Christian Armenians and the Nestorian Assyrians with considerable rights and autonomy, to which he did not agree to.

[6] Sheikh Ubeydullah sent out messengers to several Kurdish chieftains in order to gain their support and troops for an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.

Despite his rebellion against them in 1879, the Ottomans didn't want to lose the possibility of assistance from Sheikh Ubeydullah's troops in an eventual war against the Qajars in the future.

[9] In August 1882, Sheikh Ubeydullah lost hopes for negotiating his peoples’ independence, and left Istanbul to return to his hometown Nehri.

In the words of Kurdologist and Iranologist Garnik Asatrian:[16] In the recent period of Kurdish history, a crucial point is defining the nature of the rebellions from the end of the 19th and up to the 20th century―from Sheikh Ubaydullah’s revolt to Simko’s (Simitko) mutiny.

The chimerical idea of this imagined unity has become further the fundament of Kurdish identity-making, resulting in the creation of fantastic ethnic and cultural prehistory, perversion of historical facts, falsification of linguistic data, etc.