Father Thomas Bois was born in Dunkirk in 1900 and entered the Dominican Order in 1919. In 1927 he was sent to the Middle East where he studied Arabic, Sureth and Kurdish. From the beginning he took a special interest in the Kurdish people and published articles on the language, literature, history, customs and religion of this little known people. He has contributed to several Orientalist reviews including «Les Cahiers de l’Est» and «Al- Machriq» of Beirut, the «Proche-Orient Chretien» of Jerusalem, the «Bibliotheca Orientalis» of Leyden, and «L’Afrique et l’Asie et Orient» of Paris. «The Kurds» is the synthesis of all these publications.