of Yasin al-Hashimi.
cKurds have a long history in Kirkuk before the Baban family. The Baban family was a Kurdish family that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, dominated the political life of the province of Sharazor, in present-day Iraqi Kurdistan. The first member of the clan to gain control of the province and its capital, Kirkuk, was Sulayman Beg. Enjoying almost full autonomy, the Baban family established Kirkuk as their capital. It was from this time that Kurds in Iraq began to view Kirkuk as their capital. This persisted even after the Babans moved their administration to the new town of Sulaymaniya, named after the dynasty�s founder, in the late 18th century.
Turks migrated to Iraq during the Umayyads and Abbasid eras as military recruits. Considerable Turkmen settlement began during the Seljuq era when Toghrul entered Iraq in 1055 with his army composed mostly of Oghuz Turks. Kirkuk remained under the control of the Seljuq Empire for 63 years. The Turkmen settlement in Kirkuk was further expanded later during the Ottoman Era, when people were brought to the city from there. Tuzhurmati has been one of the historical Turkmen settlement in Iraq.
During the Ottoman period the Turkmen were the predominant population of Kirkuk city but Kurds constituted the majority of the rural population of Kirkuk.
At the end of World War I, the British occupied Kirkuk on May 7, 1918. Abandoning the city after about two weeks, the British returned to Kirkuk a few months later after the Armistice of Mudros. Kirkuk avoided the troubles caused by the British-backed Shaykh Mahmud, who quickly attempted to defy the British and establish his own fiefdom in Sulaymaniyah. The townspeople and tribesmen of Kirkuk, notably the Talabani shaykhs, demanded to be excluded from Shaykh Mahmud's area of authority before he was put in place.
As both Ottomans and Great Britain desperately wanted control of the Vilayet of Mosul (of which Kirkuk was a part), the
