With regard to the
origin of the Kurds, it was formerly
considered sufficient to describe them as the descendants of the Carduchi, who
opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains in the 4th
century BCE. But modern research traces them far beyond the period of the Greeks. At the dawn of history the mountains
overhanging Assyria were held by a
people named Gutii, a title which signified "a warrior", and which
was rendered in Assyrian by the synonym of Gardu or Kardu, the precise term
quoted by Strabo to explain the
name of the Cardaces. These Gutu were a Turanian tribe of such power as to be
placed in the early cuneiform records on an equality with the other nations of
western Asia, that is, with the Syrians and Hittites, the Susians, Elamites, and Akkadians of Babylonia; and during
the whole period of the Assyrian Empire they seem to have preserved a
more-or-less independent political position.
After the fall of Nineveh the Gutu
coalesced with the Medes, and, in common with all the nations inhabiting the
high plateaus of Asia Minor, Armenia and Persia, became gradually Aryanised, owing to the immigration at this
period of history of tribes in overwhelming numbers which, from whatever
quarter they may have sprung, belonged certainly to the Aryan family.
The Gutii or Kurdu were reduced to
subjection by Cyrus before he descended
upon Babylon, and furnished a
contingent of fighting men to his successors, being thus mentioned under the
names of "Saspirians" and "Alarodians" in the muster roll
of the army of Xerxes which Herodotus has preserved.
In later times they passed
successively under the sway of the Macedonians, the Parthians, and Sassanians, being
especially befriended, if we may judge from tradition as well as from the
remains still existing in the country, by the Arsacian monarchs, who were
probably of a cognate race. Gotarzes indeed, whose name may perhaps be
translated "chief of the Gutii", was traditionally believed to be the
founder of the Gurans, the principal tribe of southern Kurdistan, and his name
and titles are still preserved in a Greek inscription at Behistun near the
Kurdish capital of Kermanshah.
Under the caliphs of Baghdad the Kurds were always giving
trouble in one quarter or another. In A.D. 838, and again in 905, formidable
insurrections occurred in northern Kurdistan; the amir, Aqpd-addaula, was
obliged to lead tne forces of the caliphate against the southern Kurds,
capturing the famous fortress of Sermaj, of which the ruins are to be seen at
the present day near Behistun, and reducing the province of Shahrizor with its
capital city now marked by the great mound of Yassin Teppeh.
The most flourishing period of
Kurdish power was probably during the 12th century, when the great Saladin, who belonged to the Rawendi
branch of the Hadabani tribe, founded the Ayyubite dynasty of Syria, and
Kurdish chieftainhips were established, not only to the east and west of the
Kurdistan mountains, but as far as Khorasan upon one side and Egypt and Yemen on the other.
During the Mongol and Tatar domination of western Asia the Kurds in
the mountains remained for the most part passive, yielding a reluctant
obedience to the provincial governors of the plains. When Sultan Selim I, after defeating Shah Ismail
in 1514, annexed Armenia and Kurdistan, he entrusted the organisation of the
conquered territories to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitlis. Idris
found Kurdistan bristling with castles, held by hereditary tribal chiefs of
Kurd, Arab, and Armenian
descent, who were practically independent, and passed their time in tribal
warfare or in raiding the agricultural population. He divided the territory
into sanjaks 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 Erivan, which had lain
waste since the passage of Timur, with Kurds from the Hakkiari and Bohtan
districts.
The system of administration
introduced by Idris remained unchanged until the close of the Russo-Turkish War of
1828 - 1829. 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 Angora.
After the war the Kurds attempted to
free themselves from Turkish control, and in 1834 it became necessary to reduce
them to subjection. This was done by Reshid Pasha. 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. The Russo-Turkish War of
1877-78 was followed by the attempt of Sheikh Obaidullah in 1880 - 1881 to
found an independent Kurd principality under the protection of Turkey. The
attempt, at first encouraged by the Porte, as a reply to the projected creation of
an Armenian state under the suzerainty of Russia, collapsed after Obaidullah's
raid into Persia, when various circumstances led the central government to
reassert its supreme authority. Until the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29 there
had been little hostile feeling between the Kurds and the Armenians, and as
late as 1877 - 1878 the mountaineers of both races had co-existed fairly well
together. Both suffered from Turkey, both dreaded Russia. But the national
movement amongst the Armenians, and its encouragement by Russia after the latest
war, gradually aroused race hatred and fanaticism.
In 1891 the activity of the Armenian
Committees induced the Porte to strengthen the position of the Kurds by raising
a body of Kurdish irregular cavalry, which was well-armed and called Hamidieh
after the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II. The
opportunities thus offered for plunder and the gratification of race hatred
brought out the worst qualities of the Kurds. Minor disturbances constantly
occurred, and were soon followed by the massacre of Armenians at Sasun and
other places, 1894 - 1896, in which the Kurds took an active part.
Many Kurds died at Turkish hands
between 1915 and the end of World War I, but despite
the trend to self-determination and the championing in the Treaty of Sèvres of
Kurdish autonomy, Turkish resurgence under Kemal Atatürk prevented
the achievement of Kurdish national independence. Turkey suppressed Kurdish revolts in 1925 and
1930 and 1937 - 1938; Iran in the 1920s. A short-lived Soviet-sponsored Kurdish republic did not long
outlast World War II.
When Ba'athist administrators
thwarted Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Iraq, war broke out in the 1960s. In 1970 the
Kurds rejected limited teritorial self-rule within Iraq, demanding larger areas
including the oil-rich Kirkuk region. Iran
fought the Kurds from 1979 on.
For more recent Kurdish history see Kurds.
Some original text from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica