Origin of the Kurds

Scholars have suggested different theories for the origin of the name ''Kurd''. According to the 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, while according to other scholars, it predates the Islamic period, as a Middle Persian word for "nomad", and may ultimately be derived from an ancient toponym or tribal name, either that of the '' Cyrtii'' or of ''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".
After the Muslim conquest of Persia, this term is adopted into Arabic as ''kurd'', and was used specifically of nomadic tribes.

From the 7th century onwards, the name Kurd is better known, since the Arabs used it often (al Akrad).

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 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.

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.

Predecessor groups

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous originsM. 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 them have disappeared as ethnic or linguistic groups.", p.117: "It is certainly not true that all tribes in Kurdistan have a common origin." combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groupsExcerpt 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-Ḵh̲uwayt̲h̲iyyain the canton of Ḵh̲oyt of Sāsūn, the Orṭāyē al-Arṭānin 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)."
including Lullubi,Thomas Bois, ''The Kurds'', 159 pp., 1966. (see p.10) Guti, Cyrtians, 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)
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, , (see p.9)

Some of them have also absorbed some elements from Semitic, Turkic and Armenian people.

Kurds are an Iranian people, and 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. The Mitanni are believed to have spoken an Indo-Aryan language, or perhaps a pre-split Indo-Iranian language. 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. 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.

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". This view is supported by some recent academic sources which have considered Corduene as proto-KurdishRevue des études arméniennes, vol.21, 1988-1989, p.281, By Société des études armeniennes, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Published by Imprimerie nationale, P. Geuthner, 1989. or as equivalent to modern-day Kurdistan. Some modern scholars, however, reject a Kurdish connection to the Carduchi.

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''. It is speculated that Carduchi spoke an Old Iranian language. They also seem to have had Armenian elements.

Jewish sources trace origins of people of Corduene to marriage of Jinns of King Solomon with 500 beautiful Jewish women. The same legend was also used by the early Islamic authorities to explain origins of Kurds.

The Medes have often been believed to be a starting point for Kurdish ethnogesis. 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.

The Median hypothesis was advanced by Vladimir Minorsky.Hakan Özoğlu, ''Kurdish notables and the Ottoman state: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries'', SUNY Press, 2004
p. 25.
/ref> Minorsky's view was subsequently accepted by many Kurdish nationalists in the 20th century. I. Gershevitch provided "a piece of linguistic confirmation" of Minorsky's identification and then another "sociolinguistic" argument. Gernot Windfuhr (1975) identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum. The hypothesis of having Median ancestors is rejected by Martin van Bruinessen. 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. 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."

Origin legends

There are multiple legends that detail the origins of the Kurds. One of the 10th century by the Arab Al-Masudi details the Kurds as being the offspring of King Solomon’s concubines engendered by the demon Jasad. 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". Another that they are the descentents 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.

Additionally, 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.Özoglu, H. (2004). ''Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries''. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 30.

In the writings of the Ottoman Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, there's also a legend concerning the Kurds to be found. He states to have learned of this legend from a certain ''Mighdisî'', an Armenian historian:

See also

*History of the Kurds
*Medes
*Cyrtians
*Corduene
*Jinn

Notes

References

{{human genetics

Kurds
Origin