Origin of the Kurds

Scholars have suggested different theories for the origin of the name Kurd. Recent scholarship suggests it comes from the Middle Persian word for "nomad" (𐭪𐭥𐭫𐭲 kwrt), or may ultimately be derived from a toponym or tribal name, such as the Cyrtii or from Corduene.

Name

There are different theories about the origin of the name Kurd. According to one theory, it originates in Middle Persian as 𐭪𐭥𐭫𐭲 kwrt-, a term for "nomad; tent-dweller".^{[Note 1]} According to the 19th century English Orientalist Godfrey Rolles Driver, the term Kurd is related to the Sumerian Karda which was found from Sumerian clay tablets of the third millennium B.C.^{[citation needed]} After the Muslim conquest of Persia, this term is adopted into Arabic as kurd, and was used specifically of nomadic tribes.^{[Note 2]}

It has been argued that the name may ultimately reflect a Bronze Age toponym Qardu, Kar-da,^[4] which may also be reflected in the Arabic (Quranic) toponym Ǧūdī (re-adopted in Kurdish as Cûdî).^[5][6] From the 7th century onwards, the name Kurd is better known, since the Arabs used it often (al Akrad).^[7]

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,^{[Note 3][Note 4][Note 5][Note 6]} without reference to any specific Iranian language.^{[3][Note 5]}

Sherefxan Bidlisi in the 16th century states that there are four division 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.^{[Note 7]}

Ethnogenesis

The term kurd is used in the 16th century by Sherefxan Bidlisi as encompassing four tribal groups, the Kurmanj, Lur, Kalhor and Guran, each of which speak a different dialect or language variation. Paul (2008) argues that this marks an incipient ethnogenesis of the Kurds as a coherent Northwestern Iranian group, as three out of these four groups can be identified as the ancestors of groups that at least partially identify as Kurdish today, while the Lurs are not a Kurdish group, and indeed do not belong to the Northwest Iranian but to the Southwestern Iranian linguistic phylum. Paul further notes that the first texts that identifiably are written in Kurdish appear during the same period.^[12]

Predecessor groups

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous origins^[13] combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups^[14] including possibly absorbing the remnants of earlier non Indo-European peoples such as the Lullubi,^[15] Guti,^[15] Cyrtians,^[16] Carduchi.^[17] However the Lullubi and Gutians predate the arrival of Indo-Iranian peoples into the region and appear to have disappeared some time prior to their arrival, and there is no evidence from what little is known of their languages that they were Indo-European speakers. The name Lullubi appears to be Hurrian and the known rulers of Lullubi have names that appear Hurrian, Sumerian and Semitic, similarly the Gutian language shows no sign of being Indo-European and like Lullubi is regarded as an unclassified language.

Some of them have also absorbed some elements from Semitic,^[14][18] and Armenian people.^[14][19][20]

Kurds are an Iranian people; the first known Indo-Iranians in the region were the Mitanni, who established a kingdom in northern Syria five centuries after the fall of Gutium, however the Mitanni spoke an Indo-Aryan language more akin to Sanskrit and Hindi than to an Iranic language.^[21] The Mitanni are believed to have spoken an Indo-Aryan language,^[22] or perhaps a pre-split Indo-Iranian language.^[23][24] Little is known of the origins, material culture or language of the Guti, as contemporary sources provide few details and no artifacts have been positively identified.^[25] As the Gutian language lacks a text corpus, apart from some proper names, its similarities to other languages are impossible to verify. The names of Gutian-Sumerian kings suggest that the language was not closely related to any languages of the region, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, and Elamite, nor was it closely related to Indo-European languages. In addition, the Gutians predate the estimated arrival of Indo-European speakers to Western Asia by many centuries.

 

Map showing kingdoms of Corduene and the Assyrian kingdom of Adiabene in the last centuries BC. The blue line shows the expedition and then retreat of the ten thousand through Corduene in 401 BC.

19th-century scholars, such as George Rawlinson, identified Corduene and Carduchi with the modern Kurds, considering that Carduchi was the ancient lexical equivalent of "Kurdistan".^[26][27][28] This view is supported by some recent academic sources which have considered Corduene as proto-Kurdish^[29] or as equivalent to modern-day Kurdistan.^[30] Some modern scholars, however, reject a Kurdish connection to the Carduchi.^[31][32][17]

There were numerous forms of this name, partly due to the difficulty of representing kh in Latin. The spelling Karduchoi is itself probably borrowed from Armenian, since the termination -choi represents the Armenian language plural suffix -kh.^[33] It is speculated that Carduchi spoke an Old Iranian language.^[34] They also seem to have had non Iranic Armenian elements.^[35]

A legend recorded by Judaic scholars claimed that the people of Corduene had supernatural origins, when King Solomon arranged the marriage of 500 Jewish women to jinns (genies).^{[36][37][38][39][40]} The same legend was also used by early Islamic authorities, in explaining the origins of the Kurds.

The Medes have often been believed to be a starting point for Kurdish ethnogesis. However this would leave about a millennium of separate development between the collapse of the Median Empire and the first historical mention of the Kurds as an identifiable ethnic group, and the Medes are generally accepted to have been wholly absorbed by the Persians long before the emergence of the Kurds.

The Median hypothesis was advanced by Vladimir Minorsky.^[41] Minorsky's view was subsequently accepted by many Kurdish nationalists in the 20th century.^[41] I. Gershevitch provided "a piece of linguistic confirmation" of Minorsky's identification and then another "sociolinguistic" argument. Gernot Windfuhr (1975) identified Kurdish dialects as closer to Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum.^[42] The hypothesis of having Median ancestors is rejected by Martin van Bruinessen.^[41] Bruinessen states: "Though some Kurdish intellectuals claim that their people are descended from the Medes, there is not enough evidence to permit such connection across the considerable gap in time between the political dominance of the Medes, and the first attestation of the Kurds.^[41] Garnik Asatrian (2009) stated that "The Central Iranian dialects, and primarily those of the Kashan area in the first place, as well as the Azari dialects (otherwise called Southern Tati) are probably the only Iranian dialects, which can pretend to be the direct offshoots of Median ... In general, the relationship between Kurdish and Median are not closer than the affinities between the latter and other North Western dialects — Baluchi, Talishi, South Caspian, Zaza, Gurani, etc."^[43]

Origin legends

There are multiple legends that detail the origins of the Kurds. In the legend of Newroz, an evil king named Zahak, who had two snakes growing out of his shoulders, had conquered Iran, and terrorized its subjects; demanding daily sacrifices in the form of young men's brains. Unknowingly to Zahak, the cooks of the palace saved one of the men, and mixed the brains of the other with those of a sheep. The men that were saved were told to flee to the mountains. Hereafter, Kaveh the Blacksmith, who had already lost several of his children to Zahak, trained the men in the mountains, and stormed Zahak's palace, severing the heads of the snakes and killing the tyrannical king. Kaveh was instilled as the new king, and his followers formed the beginning of the Kurdish people.^[44][45]

In the writings of the 10th-century Arab historian Al-Masudi, the Kurds are described as the offspring of King Solomon’s concubines engendered by the demon Jasad.^[46] On learning who they were, Solomon shall have exclaimed "Drive them (ukrudūhunna) in the mountains and valleys" which then suggests a negative connotation such as the "thrown away".^[46] Another that they are the descendants of King Solomons's concubines and his angelical servants. These were sent to Europe to bring him five-hundred beautiful maidens, for the king's harem. However, when these had done so and returned to Israel the king had already died. As such, the Djinn settled in the mountains, married the women themselves, and their offspring came to be known as the Kurds.^[47][48]

The Mount Judi (Guti) which is located in North Kurdistan is mentioned in the Quran:

And it was said, “O earth! Swallow up your water. And O sky! Withhold ˹your rain˺.” The floodwater receded and the decree was carried out. The Ark rested on Mount Judi, and it was said, “Away with the wrongdoing people!”

— Surah Hud (44)^{[full citation needed]}

 

Depiction of Noah's ark landing on the mountain top, from the North French Hebrew Miscellany (13th century)

The writings of the Ottoman Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi detail a further legend learned from an Armenian historian labelled only as Mighdisî that ties the story of the Kurds in with their historic proximity to Mount Ararat, which is identified by some religious groups as the resting place of Noah's Ark in the Genesis flood narrative:

According to the chronicler Mighdisî, the first town to be built after Noah's Flood was the town of Judi, followed by the fortresses of Sinjar and Mifariqin. The town of Judi was ruled by Melik Kürdim of the Prophet Noah's community, a man who lived no less than 600 years and who travelled the length and width of Kurdistan. Coming to Mifariqin he liked its climate and settled there, begetting many children and descendants. He invented a language of his own, independent of Hebrew. It is neither Hebrew nor Arabic, Persian, Dari or Pahlavi; they still call it the language of Kürdim. So the Kurdish language, which was invented in Mifariqin and is now used throughout Kurdistan, owes its name to Melik Kürdim of the community of the Prophet Noah. Because Kurdistan is an endless stony stretch of mountains, there are no less than twelve varieties of Kurdish, differing from one another in pronunciation and vocabulary, so that they often have to use interpreters to understand one another's words.^[49]

See also

• History of the Kurds
• Medes
• Cyrtians
• Corduene

Notes

1. Books from the early Islamic era, including those containing legends like the Shahnameh and the Middle Persian Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan and other early Islamic sources provide early attestation of the term kurd in the sense of "Iranian nomads". A. The term Kurd in the Middle Persian documents simply means nomad and tent-dweller and could be attributed to any Iranian ethnic group having similar characteristics.^[1] G. "It is clear that kurt in all the contexts has a distinct social sense, "nomad, tent-dweller"."The Pahlavi materials clearly show that kurd in pre-Islamic Iran was a social label, still a long way off from becoming an ethnonym or a term denoting a distinct group of people"^[2]
2. "The ethnic label "Kurd" is first encountered in Arabic sources from the first centuries of the Islamic era; it seemed to refer to a specific variety of pastoral nomadism, and possibly to a set of political units, rather than to a linguistic group: once or twice, "Arabic Kurds" are mentioned. By the 10th century, the term appears to denote nomadic and/or transhumant groups speaking an Iranian language and mainly inhabiting the mountainous areas to the South of Lake Van and Lake Urmia, with some offshoots in the Caucasus...If there was a Kurdish-speaking subjected peasantry at that time, the term was not yet used to include them."^[3]
3. The development of the Kurdish language as a separate dialect group within Northwest Iranian seems to follow a similar time-frame; linguistic innovations characteristic of the Kurdish group date to the New Iranian period (10th century onward). Texts that are identifiably Kurdish first appear in the 16th century. See Paul (2008): "Any attempt to study or describe the history of the Kurdish (Kd.) language(s) faces the problem that, from Old and Middle Iranian times, no predecessors of the Kurdish language are yet known; the extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE. [...] The following sound changes do not—from the available evidence—occur before the NIr. period. The change of postvocalic *-m > -v/-w (N-/C-Kd.) is one of the most characteristic features of Kurdish (e.g., in Kd. nāv/nāw “name”). It occurs also in a small number of other WIr. idioms like Vafsī and in certain N- Balōči dialects"^[8]
4. "The term Kurd in the middle ages was applied to all nomads of Iranian origin"^[9]
5. "If we take a leap forward to the Arab conquest we find that the name Kurd has taken a new meaning becoming practically synonymous with 'nomad', if nothing more pejorative"^[10]
6. "We thus find that about the period of the Arab conquest a single ethnic term Kurd (plur. Akrād ) was beginning to be applied to an amalgamation of Iranian or iranicised tribes."^[11]
7. Paul (2008) writes about the problem of attaining a coherent definition of "Kurdish language" within the Northwestern Iranian dialect continuum.^[8] "There is no unambiguous evolution of Kurdish from Middle Iranian, as "from Old and Middle Iranian times, no predecessors of the Kurdish language are yet known; the extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE." Paul further states: "Linguistics itself, or dialectology, does not provide any general or straightforward definition of at which point a language becomes a dialect (or vice versa). To attain a fuller understanding of the difficulties and questions that are raised by the issue of the “Kurdish language,” it is therefore necessary to consider also non-linguistic factors."^[8]

References

1. Safrastian, Kurds and Kurdistan, The Harvill Press, 1948, p. 16 and p. 31.
2. Asatrian, Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol.13, pp. 1–58, 2009.
3. Martin van Bruinessen, "The ethnic identity of the Kurds", in: Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey, compiled and edited by Peter Alford Andrews with Rüdiger Benninghaus [=Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe B, Nr.60]. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwich Reichert, 1989, pp. 613–21. [1]
4. Hakan Ozoglu, Kurdish notables and the Ottoman State, 2004, SUNY Press, 186 pp., ISBN 0-7914-5993-4 (See p. 23)
5. G. S. Reynolds, A Reflection on Two Qurʾānic Words (Iblīs and Jūdī), with Attention to the Theories of A. Mingana, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 4 (October –December, 2004), pp. 675–689. (see p.683, 684 & 687)
6. Ilya Gershevitch, William Bayne Fisher, The Cambridge History of Iran: The Median and Achamenian Periods, 964 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-521-20091-1, ISBN 978-0-521-20091-2, (see footnote of p.257)
7. Özoğlu, Hakan (2004). Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries. SUNY Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5.
8. Ludwig Paul "HISTORY OF THE KURDISH LANGUAGE", Encyclopedia Iranica (2008)
9. Wladimir Ivanon, "The Gabrdi dialect spoken by the Zoroastrians of Persia", Published by G. Bardim 1940. pg 42)
10. David N. Mackenzie, "The Origin of Kurdish", Transactions of Philological Society, 1961, pp 68–86.
11. "Kurds" in Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. accessed 2007.
12. Ludwig Paul "HISTORY OF THE KURDISH LANGUAGE", Encyclopedia Iranica (2008) writes about the problem of attaining a coherent definition of "Kurdish language" within the Northwestern Iranian dialect continuum. There is no unambiguous evolution of Kurdish from Middle Iranian, as "from Old and Middle Iranian times, no predecessors of the Kurdish language are yet known; the extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE." Ludwig further states: "Linguistics itself, or dialectology, does not provide any general or straightforward definition of at which point a language becomes a dialect (or vice versa). To attain a fuller understanding of the difficulties and questions that are raised by the issue of the “Kurdish language,” it is therefore necessary to consider also non-linguistic factors."
13. M. Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State, 373 pp., Zed Books, 1992. p.122:"The Kurds are undoubtedly of heterogeneous origins. Many people lived in what is now Kurdistan during the past millennia and almost all of the [sic?] them have disappeared as ethnic or linguistic groups.", p.117: "It is certainly not true that all tribes in Kurdistan have a common origin."
14. Excerpt 1: Bois, Th.; Minorsky, V.; Bois, Th.; Bois, Th.; MacKenzie, D. N.; Bois, Th. "Kurds, Kurdistan." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online "The Kurds, an Iranian people of the Near East, live at the junction of more or less laicised Turkey"..Excerpt 2: "The classification of the Kurds among the Iranian nations is based mainly on linguistic and historical data and does not prejudice the fact there is a complexity of ethnical elements incorporated in them" Excerpt 3: "We thus find that about the period of the Arab conquest a single ethnic term Kurd (plur. Akrād ) was beginning to be applied to an amalgamation of Iranian or iranicised tribes. Among the latter, some were autochthonous (the Ḳardū; the Tmorik̲h̲/Ṭamurāyē in the district of which Alḳī = Elk was the capital; the Χοθα̑ίται [= al-Ḵh̲uwayt̲h̲iyya] in the canton of Ḵh̲oyt of Sāsūn, the Orṭāyē [= al-Arṭān] in the bend of the Euphrates); some were Semites (cf. the popular genealogies of the Kurd tribes) and some probably Armenian (it is said that the Mamakān tribe is of Mamikonian origin)." Excerpt 4: "In the 20th century, the existence of an Iranian non-Kurdish element among the Kurds has been definitely established (the Gūrān-Zāzā group)."
15. Thomas Bois, The Kurds, 159 pp., 1966. (see p.10)
16. Encyclopedia Iranica, "Carduchi" by M. Dandamayev
17. Ilya Gershevitch, William Bayne Fisher, The Cambridge History of Iran: The Median and Achamenian Periods, 964 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-521-20091-1, ISBN 978-0-521-20091-2, (see footnote of p.257). Dandamaev considers Carduchi (who were from the upper Tigris near the Assyrian and Median borders) less likely than Cyrtians as ancestors of modern Kurds. Encyclopedia Iranica, "Carduchi" by M. Dandamayev Excerpt: "It has repeatedly been argued that the Carduchi were the ancestors of the Kurds, but the Cyrtii (Kurtioi) mentioned by Polybius, Livy, and Strabo (see MacKenzie, pp. 68–69) are more likely candidates." However according to McDowall, the term Cyrtii was first applied to Seleucid or Parthian mercenary slingers from Zagros, and it is not clear if it denoted a coherent linguistic or ethnic group. David McDowall, A modern history of the Kurds, 515 pp., I.B.Tauris, 2004, ISBN 1-85043-416-6, ISBN 978-1-85043-416-0 (see p.9)
18. D. McDowall, A modern history of the Kurds, 504 pp., I.B. Taris Publishers, 2004. p.9: "The Arab Rawadid tribe, which moved into Kurdistan at the beginning of the Abbasid era (750 CE) was considered to be Kurdish within 200 years, although its Arab origin was well known."
19. D. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, I.B. Tauris & Co., 2004. p. 12 "In the 1940s, a shrinking Armenian but Kurdish-speaking tribe with a tenuous grasp of Christian doctrine was noticed in central Kurdistan, where it was progressively merging with a Kurdish tribe."
20. Martin Van Bruinessen, Genocide in Kurdistan?: The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion In Turkey (1937–38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988) in Genocide: conceptual and historical dimensions, by George J. Andreopoulos, Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. p. 166 "Many of the Dersim Kurds are partly of Armenian descent- Dersim used to have a large Armenian population. Even well before the Armenian massacres(1915), many local Armenians voluntarily assimilated, becoming Alevi Kurds".
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22. M. Mayrhofer, Die Arier im Vorderen Orient – ein Mythos? Sitzungsberichte der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 294,3, Vienna 1974; M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, Heidelberg 1986–2000, vol. IV
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