The French government's settlement of Kurdish refugees in the Jazira made Kurdishness a political subject in Syria. By 1927, there were 47 villages in the Jazira whose population had a Kurdish majority. The population of Kurds and the number of Kurdish villages both increased in the 1918–1939 Interwar period ("between World War I and World War II"). The Kurds coming from outside Syrian Kurdistan meant that the Kurdish population in the Jazira increased even more.