Kurd

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Kurd (कुर्द) are an Iranian ethnic group in the Middle East.

Habitation

Kurds are mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which spans adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds are an Iranian people and speak the Kurdish languages, which form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian branch of Iranian languages.

Origin of name

The exact origins of the name Kurd are unclear;. The underlying toponym is recorded in Assyrian as Qardu and in Middle Bronze Age (Sumerian) as Kar-da.[1] Assyrian Qardu refers to an area in the upper Tigris basin, and it is presumably reflected in corrupted form in Arabic (Quranic) Ǧūdī, re-adopted in Kurdish as Cûdî.[2] The name would be continued as the first element in the toponym Corduene, mentioned by Xenophon as the tribe who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains north of Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC. There are, however, dissenting views, which do not derive the name of the Kurds from Qardu and Corduene but opt for derivation from Cyrtii (Cyrtaei) instead.[3]

History

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous origins[4][5] combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups [6] including Median,[7] [8] [9][10] Lullubi, [11]Guti,[12] Cyrtians,[13] Carduchi.[14]

They have also absorbed some elements from Semitic,[15] Turkic[16] and Armenian people.[17]

While various predecessor groups that may have contributed to Kurdish ethnogenesis are of intractable anqituity (the Gutians being a people of the Middle Bronze Age)[18] The emergence of the Kurds as speakers of an identifiably Northwestern Iranian language (viz. Kurdish) necessarily post-dates the unity of the Northwestern branch. This would correspond to the time following the breakup of the Median Empire in the 6th century 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".[19][20]

The Medes have often been taken as a starting point for Kurdish (as well as Baloch) 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. I. Gershevitch who provided first "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.[21]

Median descent of the Kurds has found favour as a historical narrative among Kurds in the 20th century, so that identification of Kurds as "Medes" is now common in Kurdish nationalist sentiment.

Jat History

Jat clans

External links

References

  1. 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)
  2. 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)
  3. G. Asatrian, Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol.13, pp. 1–58, 2009:
  4. Izady, Mehrdad R (1992). "The Kurds: A concise handbook". p. 74. ISBN 978-0-8448-1727-9.
  5. M. Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State, 373 pp., Zed Books, 1992. p.122:"
  6. 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
  7. M. Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State, 373 pp., Zed Books, 1992. p.122:
  8. 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
  9. Windfuhr, Gernot. "Isoglosses: A Sketch on Persians and Parthians, Kurds and Medes" in Hommages et Opera Minora, Monumentum H. S. Nyberg, Vol. 2., Acta Iranica 5. Tehran-Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, 457-472. pg 468.
  10. John Limbert, The Origins and Appearance of the Kurds in Pre-Islamic Iran, Iranian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1968
  11. Thomas Bois, The Kurds, 159 pp., 1966. (see p.10)
  12. Thomas Bois, The Kurds, 159 pp., 1966. (see p.10)
  13. Encyclopedia Iranica, "Carduchi" by M. Dandamayev
  14. 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)
  15. 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
  16. M. Van Bruinessen, The Ethnic Identity of the Kurds, pp. 613–621 in Ethnic groups in Republic of Turkey, ed. by P.A. Andrews and R. Benninghaus, 664 pp., Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1989. p.619
  17. 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
  18. According to J.P. Mallory, the original Gutians precede the arrival of Indo-Iranian peoples (of which the Kurds are one) by some 1500 years.Mallory, J.P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson.
  19. Rawlinson, George, The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7, 1871. (copy at Project Gutenberg)
  20. Kurds. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07
  21. Windfuhr, Gernot (1975), “Isoglosses: A Sketch on Persians and Parthians, Kurds and Medes”, Monumentum H.S. Nyberg II (Acta Iranica-5), Leiden: 457–471