Ancient Origins of the Kurds

[max_b]

Moshe barazani





Wikipedia says some thing about how kurds and jews are " close ethnic relatives" , os this true?

[Shirko]

In Jewish tradition, the Jews came from Ur, southern Mesopotamia, relocated to northern Mesopotamia (S. Kurdistan) and eventually migrated to Canaan. This was confirmed by DNA tests that show that the Jews are most closely related genetically to the Kurds and after that, the Semites of Mesopotamia. With the sojourn in Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, the Assyrian conquest (the 10 lost tribes), the Persian invasion and the Diaspora; Jews fled, migrated or were taken captive in all directions, mixing with all of those nations. DNA test also confirm that the Palestinians are closely related genetically to the Jews, who would of guessed

[max_b]

Its not surprising, if, for arguments sake the story of noah is true, doesn't that mean everyone is related to mezapotamians?





Now what about this?
I saw this from young, on a map in a old bible, kurdistan is the garden of eden?

[Anthea]

In regards to to evidence. Well there are several documents and articles explaining the connection to our Median ancestors. Our language, culture and genetics.

Hello;

I am new here and for my first post wanted to reply to this:

Many Kurds try to take a simplistic view of the origin of the Kurds; views that are not supported by historical facts/research. The Kurdish culture and society were well-established before the arrival of the nomadic tribes (Aryans, Arabs, Mongols...). It is widely accepted among leading anthropologists that nomadic people do not really “contribute” to cultures they conquer. What they leave behind is some genetic and linguistic traces. It would be shortchanging the Kurds to ignore their long history by claiming that they are children of the newly-arrived Medes.

There is no genetic paper published about the Medes in any peer-reviewed journal. There has been no viable sample for genetic analysis. I would like the source; it may prove me wrong.

Furthermore there are only “very few' (some linguists say only “three”) Median words that have survived (such as aspa = horse, paridaiza = paradise, by the way paradise has an interesting history....) which makes it impossible to reconstruct any picture, clear or otherwise, of the language. The words that are assumed Median are basically names (geographical, religious...). Many of theses words are “assumed” to be of Median origin. Basically we do not know what Median language is/was except that it “could” be related to Old-Persian.

As for Kurdish language: there is an “agreement”, not proven, among contemporary linguists that Kurdish language is Parthian with Median substratum. Parthians are a very important part of Kurdish history, one that needs more time to go into.


G.

VERY interesting thank you

[Shere Medya]

Its not surprising, if, for arguments sake the story of noah is true, doesn't that mean everyone is related to mezapotamians?

Now what about this?
I saw this from young, on a map in a old bible, kurdistan is the garden of eden?

Many Near Easterners are related to each other in one way or another even if the story of Noah isn't true, whether they are Semetic, Iranian, Turkish, Kurdish or any other people. However, ALL Kurds are related to eachother

About the Garden of Eden, well there isn't any evidence that a Garden of Eden even exists, except from religious books which are not reliable sources when it comes to things like this.

[Zert]

Copy-pasting my post from another forum.

Ibn Wahshiyya and the Kurds

Resurrecting this topic for something I've found recently, that has been 'haunting' me the last few days.

The Kurdish ethnic identity is thought to have gradually formed in the Middle Ages; in the late 10th century, various Kurdish dynasties and principalities were founded, and in Arabic sources from the 11th and 12th century instances of ethnic awareness and solidarity can be found. In earlier centuries, the term 'Kurd' is also often found in sources, but it was deemed to have had purely a social meaning. I'm not sure why, for there are instances were it would seem that Kurds formed their own group, (next to obvious cases where the term was used in the social sense) but in academic articles, that's the general consensus. It must be noted that during the Middle Ages the term still had a social meaning too.

The Shaddadids

SHADDADIDS (Šaddādiya), Caucasian dynasty of Kurdish origin reigning from about 950 until 1200, first in Dvin and Ganja, later in Ani.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/shaddadids

The Annazids

ʿANNAZIDS (BANŪ ʿANNĀZ), a Kurdish dynasty (r. ca. 380-510/990-1117) whose territory on the Iran-Iraq frontier included Kermānšāh, Ḥolwān, Dīnavar (now in western Iran), Šahrazūr, Daqūqā (Daqūq), Daskara, Bandanīǰīn (Mandelī), and Noʿmānīya (now in northeast Iraq). According to Ebn al-Aṯīr, the name ʿAnnāz is derived from ʿanz (she-goat) and signifies the owner, merchant, or shepherd of goats. Mostawfī and Šaraf Khan give the name as Banū ʿAyyār; this reading is preferred by contemporary Kurdish historians on the grounds that the Arabic word ʿayyār (lit.: “shrewd, smart”) is common in both Persian and Kurdish and was formerly used as a nickname among Kurdish families, while ʿanz and ʿannāz are not mentioned in Kurdish dictionaries.

And several others.

The best article I've read about this is Boris James' Uses and Values of the Term Kurd in Arabic Medieval Literary Sources.
http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/35/01/19/PDF/Kurd_paper_version_internet.pdf

From this article:

Other examples show that the life-style of the kurdish group (ethnographic
criterium) is not the only criterium that determines the imputation of kurdish
identity.

Ibn Shaddâd (Bahâ’ al-dîn), Al-nawâdir al-sultaniya in Recueil des Historiens des
Croisades (RHC), or. vol. 3, 1884, Paris, p. 313.

A Kurdish amir, Abû ’l-Haydjâ’ al-Hadhbânî sent a letter to Saladin after the latter
left Jerusalem at the end of 588/ 1193 leaving all the military troups in this threatened
city : “If you want us to stay in the Holy City you will have to stay with us or leave a
member of your family, because the Kurds will never obey the Turks and no more the
Turks will obey the Kurds”.

It is quite clear here that the opposition between the two groups is not an
opposition between two life-styles. The author knows what he is refering to by Kurds
or Turks. This imputation of identity is probably the result of a common selfattribution/ self-representation.

Another one:

The most interesting occurence is the following.

Al-Isfahanî, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, Paris, 1977, trad. Henry
Massé éd. Geuhtner, p. 375-6.

“When al-Mashtûb went out from jail, [in rabî’ II 588] he was welcomed by his son
happy and in good shape. Yet he found him with a turkish hair-style – that is to say
with braids – he showed his displeasure, he took on a serious tone and said : “The
Kurds don’t have those manners with their hair” ; Then he cut the braids and
trimmed the hair. People thought this was a bad omen for the father : “This
announces a misfortune that will strike him”.

Here is the clearest manifestation of Kurdish ethnicity. What is important here is
not the hair style but the fact that the character considers it peculiar to his group. He
sets boundaries between his group and the rest of the world. This statement leads us
to consider Frederik Barth’s work (Ethnic groups and boundaries). The cultural
content is not the most relevant element in envisaging ethnicity. The individual
inserted in the group establishes boundaries and for that calls on cultural and ethnic
tools (language, race, life-style, hair-style).

Yet also:

Ibn al-Athîr. al-Kâmil fî l-ta’rîkh, Dâr al-Kutub al-‘ilmiya, Beirut, 1998, vol. 10, p. 207.

In 587/1193, after the negotiation between al-Mashtûb and the Franks for the
surrender of the citadel of Acre, the latter promised to free immediately some amirs
against a ransom. They finally broke their word and kept all the inhabitants locked in.
After some negotiations, Saladin made a first payment. However the Franks claimed
the right to free whoever they wanted : “They would free the military slaves (ghilmân
al-‘askar) the poor (al-fuqarâ’) the Kurds (al-akrâd) and the people without importance.
They would keep in captivity the amirs, the owners (arbâb al-amwâl) and would ask a
ransom for them”.

Ibn al-Athîr who makes this use of the word knows that al-Mashtûb, the chief
of the garrison, is amir kabîr and a Kurdish tribal leader immensely rich. We know as
well that al-Mashtûb, a Hakkârî Kurd, was released a year after that. Here the term
Kurd gets into the frame of social categorisation. The term ‘Kurd’ is used in
opposition to the words ‘amir’ and ‘owners’. This use of the term ‘Kurd’ is confusing
because we would expect an ethnical categorisation. The Kurds as we know, are not
the poorest group at that period but the word is used to designate a poor group. We
will come back to that later on.

I'm not going to bother discussing sources from earlier centuries that mention Kurds, and whether or not I think they can be regarded as ethnic Kurds or not, except for one crucial one, the one that lead to me making this post, and one which I haven't seen discussed in an academic article. It's from a text by an Arab scholar (Ibn Wahshiyya) from the 9th century, translated by an Englishman (Joseph Hammer) in 1806. In it, he does not only make mention of the Kurds, but he also states their rivalry with the Chaldeans.

http://archive.org/stream/ancientalphabet00conggoog#page/n85/mode/2up

This is interesting, for, just like in the source above, the author compares them with an ethnicity, which would almost certainly render the Kurds he mentions as being one too.

That sentiment is undoubtedly right, for just a few lines later he makes mention of the 'Kurdish language' (note: in oldern Western sources 'Kurd' was often spelled as 'Curd', but the term that's used in Arabic is the same as now, i.e. 'Akrad').

Most amazingly, he makes mention of an alphabet, a script in which the Kurds seemed to have written their texts, seen in the bottom half of page 134 here:
http://archive.org/stream/ancientalphabet00conggoog#page/n93/mode/2up

(pic was found, not made myself)

This is the most puzzling thing in the article, and leads us from one question to another.
-the usage of a script seemingly unique to one people should surely mean that they existed as an ethnicity quite a while before that, does it not?
-seeing this source, can those Kurds mentioned in an ambiguous fashion in sources in centuries before also be regarded as ethnical ones? If so, from when on can we genuinely speak of ethnic Kurds?
-but then, why hasn't anyone discussed this source before? was it simply 'forgotten' that there was a small passage about Kurds in a text by an Arab writer of the 9th century? (The only times I've seen this discussed were on online newspapers in Arabic.)
-is the answer much more simple, and is it a forgery?

It's puzzling, really.

Though, what I have noticed is that a small number of the characters from that script seem to correspond with certain characters attributed to the Chaldean alphabets, also mentioned in the book.

Discuss.

[Zert]

Follow-up post.

I made a file in which I compared characters of the 'Old Kurdish Alphabet' to characters of other old alphabets. Some are far more convincing than others.
As one can't upload PDF's on this site, I screencapped it, enjoy:

[Anthea]

Follow-up post.

I made a file in which I compared characters of the 'Old Kurdish Alphabet' to characters of other old alphabets. Some are far more convincing than others.
As one can't upload PDF's on this site, I screencapped it, enjoy:

It amazed me that you have found a book that is over 100 years old - that is definitely dedication to your given subject

With the advancement in modern technology are there are more recent books - or researchers who have used computer technology to compare ancient scripts?

[Anthea]

With you obvious knowledge and expertise - and in light of recent advances in technology and research

What areas should be included in the historic homeland of the Kurds ?

[Serbona]

Курди - Сурди
Kurdi - Surdi ...OUR old Serbian people, haplogrup E1b1b..Why noses? ha, the same as Etruscani (Etruscans) as Trasani (Thracians) etc etc Your research is going in the wrong direction, the truth is on the other side..If you ask why? Maybe oour first Serbian emperor Nino Belov or Nemrod or Bog Bak or Hammurabi or BAAL is the answer
greetings

[Anthea]

Курди - Сурди
Kurdi - Surdi ...OUR old Serbian people, haplogrup E1b1b..Why noses? ha, the same as Etruscani (Etruscans) as Trasani (Thracians) etc etc Your research is going in the wrong direction, the truth is on the other side..If you ask why? Maybe oour first Serbian emperor Nino Belov or Nemrod or Bog Bak or Hammurabi or BAAL is the answer
greetings

Greetings Serbona

If there is a connection between Kurdi - Surdi we would all like to know more about it

I imagine that most people using this forum (myself included) know very little about ancient Serbians or Serbian history but we would love to know more