Kurdish History

The Kurds 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.

Etymology

There are several theories regarding the origin of the name Kurd. According to one theory, it might be derived from "Cyrtii" (Kurti), a term first recorded in the 2nd century BCE to describe slingers who inhabited the Zagros Mountains. In the 13th century, an Italian monk and preacher who visited Kurdistan also used the term "Curti" to refer to the Kurds. Alternatively, it might be derived from "Guti." According to Safarastian, the "r" was assimilated after the "u" (Guti > Gurti), following a common linguistic rule in Indo-European languages, particularly those of the East, such as Kurdish, Greek, and Armenian.

According to ''The Cambridge History of the Kurds:''

By the time of the Islamic conquests in the 7th century, and possibly earlier, the term 'Kurd' was used with a socio-economic meaning to describe nomadic groups on the western edge of the Iranian plateau and, possibly, tribes aligned with Sassanian authority in Mesopotamia. During this period, Kurds were also already present in eastern Anatolia.

Early Islamic writings mention the Kurds across a wide geographical area. However, due to the ambiguity of these accounts, scholars have debated the meaning of the term "Kurds," considering whether it referred to a group defined by ethnicity and language, nomadic lifestyle, or a specific environment in which they lived. A recent study by Boris James, the first scholar to carefully analyze and interpret these writings, focusing on the 12th to 14th centuries, concluded that 12th-century sources show the Kurds had become a unified ethnic group, although divided into several tribes.

Antiquity

Medieval Period

Early Kurdish dynasties

From Islamic conquest up until 10th century, Kurdish groups played a marginal role in the regions politics, being mentioned from that era as mercenaries and rebels. the period of 950-1050s, has been called the Kurdish interlude by scholars. As various Kurdish tribes seized vast territories and formed their own states. The independent Kurdish principalities were:
* Hadhbani (900?-1144, in Erbil and eastern Adharbayjan)
*Shaddadids (951–1199, in parts of Armenia and Arran)
* Rawadids (900?–1071/1115) in Tabriz and Maragheh
* Hasanwayhids (959–1015)
* Annazids (990–1117, in western Jibal)
* Marwanids (983–1085) of Diyarbakır.

The Kurdish principalities relied on Kurdish tribesmen and nomadic kurds as backbone for their principality's army and military prowess. They never needed Turkic ghilman for mounted troops like the Buyids, because they provided mounted troops from their own ranks.

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 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.
* 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, named after Shuja' al-Din Uthman al-Kurdi, who died in 1239.
* In Hebron, Haret al-Akrad: associated with the Ayyubid conquests.
* In Jerusalem, Haret al-Akrad (later Haret esh-Sharaf, named after a certain Sharaf ad-Din Musa, who died in 1369). The city also had a madrasah-ribat by the name of Ribat al-Kurd, built in 1294 by Amir Kurd al-Mansuri (Kurt al-Manṣūrī).

Kurdish principalities from 13th century to 19th century

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.

Safavid period

For many centuries, starting in the early modern period with Ismail I, Shah of Safavid Persia, and Ottoman Sultan Selim I, the Kurds came under the suzerainty of the two most powerful empires of the Near East and staunch arch rivals, the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the various Shia Empires. It started off with the rule of Ismail I, who ruled over all regions that encompass native Kurdish living areas, and far beyond. During the years 1506–1510, Yazidis revolted against Ismail I (who had Kurdish ancestry himself). Their leader, Shir Sarim, was defeated and captured in a bloody battle wherein several important officers of Ismail lost their lives. The Kurdish prisoners were put to death "with torments worse than which there may not be".

In the mid-17th century the Kurds on the western borders disposed of firearms, According to Tavernier, the mountain people between Nineveh and Isfahan would not sell anything but for gunpowder and bullets. Even so, firearms were incorporated neither wholesale nor wholeheartedly among the Kurds, apparently for the same reasons that hindered their acceptance in iran proper. In a Persian statistical overview of tribes dating from the period of Shah sultan Husayn in the early 18th century, it is said that the Kurds of Zafaranlo tribe refused to carry the Tufang, because they considered it unmanly to do so, as a result of which most continued to fight with lance and sword, and some with arrow and bow.

Displacement of the Kurds

Removal of the population from along their borders with the Ottomans in Kurdistan and the Caucasus was of strategic importance to the Safavids. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were moved to other regions in the Safavid empire, only to defend the borders there. Hundreds of thousands of other ethnic groups living in the Safavid empire such as the Armenians, Assyrians, Georgians, Circassians, and Turkomans, were also removed from the border regions and resettled in the interior of Persia, but mainly for other reasons such as socio-economic, and bureaucratic ones. During several periods, as the borders moved progressively eastward, with the Ottomans pushing deeper into the Persian domains, entire Kurdish regions of Anatolia were at one point or another exposed to horrific acts of despoliation and deportation. These began under the reign of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I (ruled 1524–1576). Between 1534 and 1535, Tahmasp, using a policy of scorched earth against his Ottoman arch rivals, began the systematic destruction of the old Kurdish cities and the countryside. When retreating before the Ottoman army, Tahmasp ordered the destruction of crops and settlements of all sizes, driving the inhabitants before him into Azerbaijan, from where they were later transferred permanently, nearly 1,600 km (1,000 miles) east, into Khurasan.

Shah Abbas inherited a state threatened by the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the northeast. He bought off the former, in order to gain time to defeat the latter, after which he selectively depopulated the Zagros and Caucasus approaches, deporting Kurds, Armenians, Georgians, North Caucasians and others who might, willingly or not, supply, support or be any use in an Ottoman campaign in the region. Shah Abbas forcibly depopulated much of the Kurdish lands ahead of the Ottoman expansion. He made it lucrative and prestigious for Kurds to become military conscripts, and raised an army of tens of thousands of predominantly Kurdish soldiers. Abbas also razed villages to the ground and marched the people into the Persian heartland.

The magnitude of Safavid Scorched earth policy can be glimpsed through the works of the Safavid court historians. One of these, ''Iskandar Bayg Munshi'', describing just one episode, writes in the ''Alam-ara ye Abbasi'' that Shah Abbas, in furthering the scorched earth policy of his predecessors, ''set upon the country north of the Araxes and west of Urmia, and between Kars and Lake Van, which he commanded to be laid waste and the population of the countryside and the entire towns rounded up and led out of harm's way.'' Resistance was met "with massacres and mutilation; all immovable property, houses, churches, mosques, crops ... were destroyed, and the whole horde of prisoners was hurried southeast before the Ottomans should counterattack". Many of these Kurds ended up in Khurasan, but many others were scattered into the Alburz mountains, central Persia, and even Balochistan. They became the nucleus of several modern Kurdish enclaves outside Kurdistan proper, in Iran and Turkmenistan. On one occasion Abbas I is said to have intended to transplant 40,000 Kurds to northern Khorasan but to have succeeded in deporting only 15,000 before his troops were defeated.

Massacre of Ganja

According to the early 17th century Armenian historian Arak'el Davrizhetsi, the Sunni Kurdish tribe of Jekirlu inhabited the region of Ganja. In 1606, when Shah Abbas reconquered Ganja, he ordered a general massacre of the Jekirlu. Even infants were slaughtered with sharp swords.

Battle of Dimdim

There is a well documented historical account of a long battle in 1609–1610 between Kurds and the Safavid Empire. The battle took place around a fortress called "Dimdim" (DimDim) in Beradost region around Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran. In 1609, the ruined structure was rebuilt by " Emîr Xan Lepzêrîn" (Golden Hand Khan), ruler of Beradost, who sought to maintain the independence of his expanding principality in the face of both Ottoman and Safavid penetration into the region. Rebuilding Dimdim was considered a move toward independence that could threaten Safavid power in the northwest. Many Kurds, including the rulers of Mukriyan rallied around Amir Khan. After a long and bloody siege led by the Safavid grand vizier Hatem Beg, which lasted from November 1609 to the summer of 1610, Dimdim was captured. All the defenders were massacred. Shah Abbas ordered a general massacre in Beradost and Mukriyan (reported by Eskandar Beg Turkoman, Safavid Historian in the Book ''Alam Aray-e Abbasi'') and resettled the Turkish Afshar tribe in the region while deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan. Although Persian historians (like Eskandar Beg) depicted the first battle of Dimdim as a result of Kurdish mutiny or treason, in Kurdish oral traditions (Beytî dimdim), literary works (Dzhalilov, pp. 67–72), and histories, it was treated as a struggle of the Kurdish people against foreign domination. In fact, Beytî dimdim is considered a national epic second only to Mem û Zîn by Ahmad Khani. The first literary account of this battle is written by Faqi Tayran.

Ottoman period

When Sultan Selim I, after defeating Shah Ismail I in 1514, annexed Western Armenia and Kurdistan, he entrusted the organisation of the conquered territories to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitliss'' or districts, and, making no attempt to interfere with the principle of heredity, installed the local chiefs as governors. He also resettled the rich pastoral country between Erzerum and Yerevan, which had lain in waste since the passage of Timur, with Kurds from the Hakkari and Bohtan districts.

Janpulat Revolt

The Janpulat (Turkish: Canpulatoğlu, Arabic: Junblat) clan was ruled by local Kurdish feudal lords in the Jabal al-Akrad and Aleppo region for almost a century before the Ottoman conquest of Syria. Their leader, Hussein Janpulatoğlu, was appointed as governor of Aleppo in 1604, however he was executed by Çiğalzade Sinan Pasha allegedly for his late arrival at the Battle of Urmia. According to Abul Wafa Al-Urdi, Janpulat had been murdered because of his Kurdish origins. His nephew, Ali Janbulad, revolted in revenge and declared sovereignty in 1606 and was supported by the Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand I. He conquered a region stretching from Hama to Adana with 30,000 troops. Grand Vizier, Murad Pasha, marched against him with a large army in 1607. Ali Pasha managed to escape and was later pardoned and appointed governor of province of Temesvár in Hungary. He was eventually executed by Murad Pasha in Belgrade in 1610.

Rozhiki Revolt

In 1655, ''Abdal Khan'' the Kurdish ''Rozhiki'' ruler of Bidlis, formed a private army and fought a full scale war against the Ottoman troops. Evliya Çelebi noted the presence of many Yazidis in his army. The main reason for this armed insurrection was the discord between Abdal Khan and Melek Ahmad Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Diyarbakır and Abdal Khan. The Ottoman troops marched onto Bidlis and committed atrocities against civilians as they passed through ''Rozhiki'' territory. Abdal Khan had built great stone redoubts around Bitlis, and also old city walls were defended by a large army of Kurdish infantry armed with muskets. Ottomans attacked the outer defensive perimeter and defeated Rozhiki soldiers, then they rushed to loot Bidlis and attacked the civilians. Once the Ottoman force established its camp in Bidlis, in an act of revenge, Abdal Khan made a failed attempt to assassinate Melek Ahmad Pasha. A unit of twenty Kurdish soldiers rode into the tent of Yusuf Kethuda, the second-in-command and fought a ferocious battle with his guards. After the fall of Bidlis, 1,400 Kurds continued to resist from the city's old citadel. While most of these surrendered and were given amnesty, 300 of them were massacred by Melek Ahmad with 70 of them dismembered by sword and cut into pieces.

Bedr Khan of Botan

Except for the short Iranian recapture under Nader Shah in the first half of the 18th century, the system of administration introduced by Idris remained unchanged until the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. But the Kurds, owing to the remoteness of their country from the capital and the decline of Turkey, had greatly increased in influence and power, and had spread westwards over the country as far as Ankara.

After the war with Russia, the Kurds attempted to free themselves from Ottoman control which resulted in the Bedr Khan clan uprising in 1834. The Ottoman Porte made the decision to then end the autonomous regions of the Eastern portion of the Empire. This was done by Rashid Pasha, also a Kurd. The principal towns were strongly garrisoned, and many of the Kurd beys were replaced by Turkish governors. A rising under Bedr Khan Bey in 1843 was firmly repressed, and after the Crimean War the Turks strengthened their hold on the country. In the 1830's, Bedr Khan was defeated by the united Assyrians of Hakkari.

The modernizing and centralizing efforts of Sultan Mahmud II antagonized Kurdish feudal chiefs. As a result two powerful Kurdish families rebelled against the Ottomans in 1830. ''Bedr Khan'' of Botan rose up in the west of Kurdistan, around Diyarbakır, and ''Muhammad Pasha'' of Rawanduz rebelled in the east and established his authority in Mosul and Erbil. At this time, Turkish troops were preoccupied with invading Egyptian troops in Syria and were unable to suppress the revolt. As a result, ''Bedr Khan'' extended his authority to ''Diyarbakır'', ''Siverik'' (Siverek), ''Veransher'' (Viranşehir), ''Sairt'' ( Siirt), ''Sulaimania'' (Sulaymaniyah) and ''Sauj Bulaq'' (Mahabad). He established a Kurdish principality in these regions until 1845. He struck his own coins, and his name was included in Friday sermons. In 1847, the Turkish forces turned their attention toward this area, and defeated Bedr Khan and exiled him to Crete. He was later allowed to return to Damascus, where he lived until his death in 1868. Bedr Khan Beg made two campaigns in 1843 and 1846 against the Assyrian Christians (Nestorians) of Hakkari and massacred up to 4,000 Assyrians in an attempt to Islamize the region; those Assyrians who met their fate were the mother and the two brothers of the yet to be spiritual Assyrian leader Mar Shimun.

Bedr Khan became king when his brother died. His brother's son became very upset over this, which the Turks exploited in tricking him into fighting his uncle. They told him that they would make him king if he killed Bedr Khan. Bedr Khan's nephew brought many Kurdish warriors with to attack his uncle's forces. After defeating Bedr Khan, Bedr Khan's nephew was executed instead of becoming king as the Turks had promised. There are two famous Kurdish songs about this battle, called "Ezdin Shêr" and "Ez Xelef im". After this, there were further revolts in 1850 and 1852.

Kurdistan as an administrative entity had a brief and shaky existence of 17 years between 13 December 1847 (following Bedirhan Bey's revolt) and 1864, under the initiative of Koca Mustafa Reşit Pasha during the Tanzimat period (1839–1876) of the Ottoman Empire. The capital of the province was, at first, Ahlat

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases