THE PEOPLES’ LEADER
The name Kurdistan goes back to the Sumerian word “kur,” which meant something like mountain more than 5,000 years ago. The suffix “ti” stood for affiliation. The word “kurti” then had the meaning of mountaintribe or mountainpeople. The Luwians, a people settling in western Anatolia about 3,000 years ago, called Kurdistan Gondwana, which meant landofthevillages in their language. In Kurdish, gond is still the word for village. During the reign of Assure the Kurds were called “Nairi”, which meant as much as people by the river. In the Middle Ages under the reign of the Arab sultanates the Kurdish areas were referred to as “beledekrad”. The Seljuk Sultans who spoke Persian were the first who used the word “Kurdistan,” or “land of the Kurds,” in their official communiqués. The Ottoman sultans also called the settlement area of the Kurds “Kurdistan”. Until the twenties of the last century this was a generally used name. After 1925 the existence of the Kurds was denied, particularly in Turkey. The Kurdish settlement area and Kurdish language.
They do exist, though. Kurdistan comprises an area of 450,000 square kilometers, which is surrounded by the settlement areas of the Persians, Azeris, Arabs, and Anatolian Turks. It is one of the most mountainous, forested and water-rich areas in the Middle East and is pervaded by numerous fertile plains. Agriculture has been at home here for thousands of years. It was here that the Neolithic revolution began when the hunter-gatherers settled down and began farming the fields. The region is also called the cradle of civilization. Thanks to its geographical position the Kurds have been able to protect their existence as an ethnic community until today.
On the other hand, it was the exposed position of the Kurdish settlement area which often wetted the appetite of external powers and invited them to raids and conquest.
The Kurdish language reflects the influence of the Neolithic revolution, which is believed to have begun in the region of the Zagros and Taurus mountains. Kurdish belongs to the Indo-European family of languages.
It is highly probable that Kurdish language and culture began to develop during the fourth ice age (20,000 – 15,000 BC). They are one of the oldest autochthon populations in the region. About 6,000 BC they formed more branches. Historiography first mentions the Kurds as an ethnic group in connection with the Hurrians (3,000–2,000 BC). So it is assumed that the predecessors of the Kurds, the Hurrians, lived in tribal confederations and kingdoms together with the Mitanni, descendants of the Hurrians, the Nairi, the Urarteans, and the Medes. These political structures had already rudimentary state-like features. At that time patriarchal social structures were not very distinct. Both in the Neolithic agricultural societies as in the Kurdish social structures women had a prominent position, which showed also in the Neolithic revolution.
It was Zoroastrianism which lastingly changed the Kurdish way of thinking in the time between 700 and 550 BC. Zoroastrianism cultivated a way of life that was marked by work in the fields, where men and women were on par with each other. Love of animals had an important position and freedom was a high moral good. Zoroastrian culture equally influenced eastern and western civilization, since both Persians and Hellenes adopted many of these cultural influences. The Persian civilization, however, was founded by the Medes, which are believed to belong to the predecessors of the Kurds. In Herodotus’ histories there is much evidence for a division of power among both ethnic groups in the Persian Empire. This is also true for the subsequent Sassanid Empire.
During classic antiquity, the Hellenic era left deep traces in the eastern hemisphere. The principalities Abgar in Urfa and Komagene, the center of which was near Adiyaman-Samsat, and the kingdom of Palmyra in Syria were deeply influenced by the Greeks. We may say that it is there that we can find the first synthesis of oriental and occidental cultural influences. This special cultural encounter lasted until Palmyra was conquered by the Roman Empire in 269 AD, which brought about long-term negative consequences for the development of the entire region.
The appearance of the Sassanid Empire also did not end the Kurdish influence. We may assume that during this time (216–652 AD) the feudal structures were formed in Kurdistan. With the rise of feudalism the ethnic cohesion began to decay. The Kurdish society developed increasingly feudal structured bonds. This course of development towards a feudal civilization contributed sustainably to the Islamic revolution. Islam was directed against the slaveholder structures and changed the ethnical relations during the time of urbanization. At the same time it revolutionized the feudal societies mentally and gave them an ideological basis.
The decline of the Sassanid Empire (650 AD) helped Islam create a feudal Kurdish aristocracy, which was strongly influenced by Arabization. It became one of the strongest social and political formations of its time. The Kurdish dynasty of the Ayyubids (1175 – 1250 AD) evolved into one of the most potent dynasties of the Middle East, exercising great influence on the Kurds.
On the other hand, the Kurds maintained close relations to the Seljuk Sultanate, which took over the rule from the Abbasids in 1055. Dynasties of Kurdish descent like the Sheddadis, Buyidis, and Marwanides (990–1090) developed into feudal petty states. Other principalities followed. The ruling class of the Kurds enjoyed a large autonomy in the Ottoman Empire.
The 19th century offered the Kurds deep incisions. In the course of deteriorating relations with the Ottomans several Kurdish uprisings occurred. English and French missionaries brought the idea of separatism into the Armenian and Aramaic churches and contributed so to a chaotic situation.
Furthermore, the relations between Armenians (Assyrians) and Kurds became notably worse. This fatal process ended in 1918 after World War II with the almost complete physical and cultural annihilation of the Armenians and Aramaeans, bearers of a culture several thousand years old.
Although the relations between Kurds and Turks had been seri-ously damaged, there was at the same time no breach in the relations between the Kurds on the one hand and the Armenians and Aramaeans on the other.
