History of the Kurds

The Kurds , also the Kurdish people , are an Iranian ethnic group in the Middle East. They have historically inhabited the mountainous areas to the south of Lake Van and Lake Urmia, a geographical area collectively referred to as Kurdistan. Most Kurds speak Northern Kurdish Kurmanji Kurdish (Kurmanji) and Central Kurdish (Sorani).

There are various hypotheses as to predecessor populations of the Kurds, such as the Carduchoi of Classical Antiquity. The earliest known Kurdish dynasties under Islamic rule (10th to 12th centuries) are the Hasanwayhids, the Marwanids, the Rawadids, the Shaddadids, followed by the Ayyubid dynasty founded by Saladin. The Battle of Chaldiran of 1514 is an important turning point in Kurdish history, marking the alliance of Kurds with the Ottomans. The ''Sharafnameh'' of 1597 is the first account of Kurdish history. Kurdish history in the 20th century is marked by a rising sense of Kurdish nationhood focused on the goal of an independent Kurdistan as scheduled by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. Partial autonomy was reached by Kurdistan Uyezd (1923–1926) and by Iraqi Kurdistan (since 1991), while notably in Turkish Kurdistan, an armed conflict between the Kurdish insurgent groups and Turkish Armed Forces was ongoing from 1984 to 1999, and the region continues to be unstable with renewed violence flaring up in the 2000s.

Name

There are different theories about the origin of the name ''Kurd''. According to one theory, it originates in Middle Persian as كورت ''kwrt-'', a term for "nomad; tent-dweller". After the Muslim conquest of Persia, this term was adopted into Arabic as ''kurd-'', and was used specifically for nomadic tribes.

The ethnonym ''Kurd'' may ultimately derive from an ancient toponym in the upper Tigris basin. According to the English Orientalist Godfrey Rolles Driver, the term ''Kurd'' is related to the Sumerian ''Karda'' which was found in Sumerian clay tablets of the third millennium B.C. He wrote in a paper published in 1923 that the term ''Kurd'' was not used differently by different nations and by examining the philological variations of Karda in different languages, such as ''Cordueni'', ''Gordyeni'', ''Kordyoui'', ''Karduchi'', ''Kardueni'', ''Qardu'', ''Kardaye'', ''Qardawaye'', he finds that the similarities undoubtedly refer to a common descent.

As for the Middle Persian noun ''kwrt-'' originating in an ancient toponym, it has been argued that it may ultimately reflect a Bronze Age toponym ''Qardu'', ''Kar-da'', which may also be reflected in the Arabic (Quranic) toponym
'' Ǧūdī'' (re-adopted in Kurdish as ''Cûdî'')

The name would be continued in classical antiquity as the first element in the toponym ''Corduene'', and its inhabitants, mentioned by Xenophon as the tribe of the '' Carduchoi'' who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains north of Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC. This view is supported by some recent academic sources which have considered Corduene as proto-Kurdish region.''Revue des études arméniennes'', vol. 21, 1988–1989, p. 281, By Société des études armeniennes, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Published by Imprimerie nationale, P. Geuthner, 1989. However, some modern scholars reject these connections. Alternatively, ''kwrt-'' may be a derivation from the name of the '' Cyrtii'' tribe instead.

According to some sources, by the 16th century, there seems to develop an ethnic identity designated by the term ''Kurd'' among various Northwestern Iranian groups, without reference to any specific Iranian language.

Sherefxan Bidlisi in the 16th century states that there are four divisions of "Kurds": ''Kurmanj'', ''Lur'', '' Kalhor'' and ''Guran'', each of which speak a different dialect or language variation. Paul (2008) notes that the 16th-century usage of the term ''Kurd'' as recorded by Bidlisi, regardless of linguistic grouping, might still reflect an incipient Northwestern Iranian "Kurdish" ethnic identity uniting the Kurmanj, Kalhor, and Guran.

Early history

Kurdish is a language of the Northwestern Iranian group which has likely separated from the other dialects of Central Iran during the early centuries AD (the Middle Iranian period). Kurdish has in turn emerged as a group within Northwest Iranian during the Medieval Period (roughly 10th to 16th centuries).

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous origins, both from Iranian-speaking and non-Iranian peoples.M. Van Bruinessen, ''Agha, Shaikh and State'', 373 pp., Zed Books, 1992. p. 122:, group=Note combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups including Lullubi,Thomas Bois, ''The Kurds'', 159 pp., 1966. (see p. 10) Guti, Cyrtians,''Encyclopedia Iranica'', "Carduchi" by M. Dandamayev Carduchi.Ilya Gershevitch, William Bayne Fisher, ''The Cambridge History of Iran: The Median and Achamenian Periods'', 964 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1985, , (see footnote of p. 257)

The present state of knowledge about Kurdish allows, at least roughly, drawing the approximate borders of the areas where the main ethnic core of the speakers of the contemporary Kurdish dialects was formed. The most argued hypothesis on the localisation of the ethnic territory of the Kurds remains D.N. Mackenzie's theory, proposed in the early 1960s. Developing the ideas of P. Tedesco and regarding the common phonetic isoglosses shared by Kurdish, Persian, and Baluchi, D.N. Mackenzie concluded that the speakers of these three languages form a unity within Northwestern Iranian. He has tried to reconstruct such a Persian-Kurdish-Baluchi linguistic unity presumably in the central parts of Iran. According to his theory, the Persians (or Proto-Persians) occupied the province of Fars in the southwest (proceeding from the fact that the Achaemenids spoke Persian), the Balochs (Proto-Balochs) inhabited the central areas of Western Iran, and the Kurds (Proto-Kurds), in the wording of G. Windfuhr (1975: 459), lived either in northwestern Luristan or in the province of Isfahan.

Early Kurdish principalities

In the second half of the 10th century there were five Kurdish principalities: in the north the Shaddadid (951–1174) (in parts of Armenia and Arran) and Rawadid (955–1221) in Tabriz and Maragheh, in the East the Hasanwayhids (959–1015), the Annazid (990–1117) (in Kermanshah, '' Dinawar'' and Khanaqin) and in the West the Marwanid (990–1096) of Diyarbakır.

Later in the 12th century, the Kurdish Hazaraspid dynasty established its rule in southern Zagros and Luristan and conquered territories of Kuhgiluya, Khuzestan and Golpayegan in the 13th century and annexed Shushtar, Hoveizeh and Basra in the 14th century.

One of these dynasties may have been able, during the decades, to impose its supremacy on the others and build a state incorporating the whole Kurdish country if the course of history had not been disrupted by the massive invasions of tribes surging out of the steppes of Central Asia. Having conquered Iran and imposed their yoke on the caliph of Baghdad, the Seljuq Turks annexed the Kurdish principalities one by one. Around 1150, Ahmad Sanjar. The province of Kurdistan, formed by Sanjar, had as its capital the village Bahar (which means lake or sea), near ancient Ecbatana (Hamadan). It included the vilayets of Sinjar and Shahrazur to the west of the Zagros mountain range and those of Hamadan, Dinawar and Kermanshah to the east of this range. An autochthonous civilization developed around the town of Dinawar (today ruined), located 75 km North-East of Kermanshah, whose radiance was later only partially replaced by that of Senna, 90 km further North.

Marco Polo (1254–1324) met Kurds in Mosul on his way to China, and he wrote what he had learned about Kurdistan and the Kurds to enlighten his European contemporaries. The Italian Kurdologist Mirella Galetti, sorted these writings which were translated into Kurdish.

Ayyubid period

One of the periods where Kurds were at the peak of their power was during the 12th century, when Saladin, who belonged to the Rawadiya branch of the Hadabani tribe, founded the Ayyubid dynasty, under which several Kurdish chieftainships were established. The dynasty ruled areas extending from the Kurdish regions to as far as Egypt and Yemen.

Kurdish principalities after the Mongol period

After the Mongol period, Kurds established several independent states or principalities such as Ardalan, Badinan, Baban, Soran, Hakkari and Badlis. A comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the famous textbook of ''Sharafnama'' written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Biltisi in 1597. The most prominent among these was Ardalan which was established in the early 14th century. The state of Ardalan controlled the territories of Zardiawa (Karadagh), Khanaqin, Kirkuk, Kifri, and Hawraman, despite being vassals themselves of the various in Persia centred succeeding Turkic federations in the region, namely that of the Kara Koyunlu, and the Ak Koyunlu specifically. The capital city of this state of Ardalan was first in Sharazour in Iraqi Kurdistan, but was moved to Sinne (in Iran) later on. The Ardalan Dynasty was allowed to rule the region as vassals by many of the sovereign rulers over the wider territory, until the Qajar monarch Nasser-al-Din Shah (1848–1896) ended their rule in 1867.

Kurdish quarters

In the Middle Ages, in many cities outside of Kurdistan, Kurdish quarters were formed as a result of an influx of Kurdish tribal forces, as well as scholars. In these cities, Kurds often also had mosques, madrasahs and other edifices.

* In Aleppo, the Haret al-Akrad. The city of Aleppo also had Kurdish mosques like al-Zarzari, al-Mihrani, al-Bashnawayin.James, B. Saladin et les Kurdes: Perceptions d’un Groupe au Temps des Croisades. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. P. 52.
* In Baghdad, Darb al-Kurd, recorded since the 11th century.
* In Barda, Bab al-Akrad, recorded in the 10th century.
* In Cairo, Haret al-Akrad, at al-Maqs.
* In Damascus, Mount Qasyun at Rukn al-dîn and Suq al-Saruja. Kurdish notables had also built mosques and madrasahs by name of al-Mudjadiyya, Sab‘ al-Madjânîn, al-Mihrani. Some other notables who patronized buildings were Balâchû al-Kurdî, Musa al-Kurdi, Habib al-Kurdi. There also was a Kurdish cemetery.
* In Gaza, Shuja'iyya

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