@Mariusz Iwaniuk 

Wayyyyyyyyyyy!  Thank you  oooph a thing of beauty !

@Christopher2222 Hah yes I think my mind may have had the rug pulled ! Thnx

@acer Ahhh brilliant, that is the solution I expected to obtain. but I for sure did not explicitly declare all those assumptions, even though those assumptions you have presumed correctly and are what I had in mind.   Thank you.  I wonder if I had somehow set some default assumptions or something ?  Gawd, or did I really just lose 20 years...

but either way, that has given me the solution, so thank you very much !

@tomleslie Now I am doubting my sanity!  Was is actually last year, 20 years ago?

restart;
kernelopts(version);
       Maple 8.00, IBM INTEL NT, Apr 22 2002 Build ID 110847

eq2:=x^(-2)/((z)-x^(a));
H:=Int(eq2,x=1..x1)=int(eq2,x=1..x1);