The Cyrtians or Kyrtians (, ) were an ancient tribe in historic Iran near the

Zagros Mountains The Zagros Mountains are a mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. The mountain range has a total length of . The Zagros range begins in northwestern Iran and roughly follows Iran's western border while covering much of s ...

. Based on their name, it has been suggested that they may be ancestors of the

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

or the source of the ethnonym ''Kurd''. According to Rüdiger Schmitt, they were a tribe dwelling mainly in the mountains of Atropatenian Media ( Northern Zagros Mountains) together with the Cadusii,

Amardi The Amardians, widely referred to as the Amardi (and sometimes Mardi), were an ancient Iranian tribe living along the mountainous region bordering the Caspian Sea to the north, to whom the Iron Age culture at Marlik is attributed. They are said ...

(or "Mardi"), Tapyri, and others (

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

11.13.3). Strabo characterized the Cyrtians living in Persia as migrants and predatory brigands. In the Hellenistic period, they seem to have been in demand as slingers, because they fought as such for the

Median The median of a set of numbers is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a Sample (statistics), data sample, a statistical population, population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as the “ ...

satrap A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median kingdom, Median and Achaemenid Empire, Persian (Achaemenid) Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic period, Hellenistic empi ...

Molon in his revolt against King

Antiochus III Antiochus III the Great (; , ; 3 July 187 BC) was the sixth ruler of the Seleucid Empire, reigning from 223 to 187 BC. He ruled over the region of Syria and large parts of the rest of West Asia towards the end of the 3rd century BC. Rising to th ...

in 220 BC.

Friedrich Carl Andreas Friedrich Carl Andreas (14 April 1846 in Batavia – 4 October 1930 in Göttingen) was an orientalist of German, Malay, and Armenian parentage (descendant of the Bagratuni royal family). He was the husband of psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Sa ...

was the first scholar to propose a connection between the names ''Cyrtian'' and ''Kurd''. He placed the ethnic territory of the Cyrtians in the area of the Armenian province of Korchayk, the name of which he derived from the hypothetical form *''korti-ayk‘'', with the first element developing from *''kurti'' to *''korti-'' to *''korč-''.

Origins

According to Garnik Asatrian, Cyrtians were a collection of indigenous, non-Iranian tribes who only shared a nomadic lifestyle. The Cyrtians were not connected to the

Carduchii The Carduchii or Karduchoi were a group of warlike tribes that inhabited an area stretching from the Botan River in the south to an area north of Cizre in present-day Turkey. Sometime after 401 BC, they expanded their authority into the northern ...

(Cordyaei, Gordyaei, Karduchoi) and the like, who lived further west.

References

Sources

* * * * Historical Iranian peoples {{Asia-ethno-group-stub