KURD

Areas of Kurdish settlement in Southwest Asia member of an ethnic and linguistic group living in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, northern Iraq, and adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, a region generally referred to as Kurdistan (Land of the Kurds). A sizable, noncontiguous Kurdish population also exists in the Khorasan region of northeastern Iran. The Kurdish language is a West Iranian language related to Farsi and Pashto. The Kurds are thought to number more than 15 million, including communities in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Lebanon, and Syria, but sources for this information differ widely because of differing criteria of ethnicity, religion, and language; statistics may also be manipulated for political purposes. The traditional Kurdish way of life was nomadic, revolving around sheep and goat herding throughout the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands of Turkey and Iran. Most Kurds practiced only marginal agriculture. The enforcement of national boundaries beginning after World War I impeded the seasonal migrations of the flocks, forcing most of the Kurds to abandon their traditional ways for village life and settled farming; others entered nontraditional employment. The prehistory of the Kurds is poorly known, but their ancestors seem to have inhabited the same upland region for millennia. The records of the early empires of Mesopotamia contain frequent references to mountain tribes with names resembling Kurd. The Kardouchoi who attacked Xenophon and the Ten Thousand in 401 BC (near modern Zakhu, Iraq, just south of the Turkish border) may have been Kurds, but some scholars dispute this claim. The name Kurd can be dated with certainty to the time of the tribes' conversion to Islam in the 7th century AD. Most Kurds are Sunnite Muslims, but among them there are also many Sufis and other mystical and heretical sects. Despite their long-standing occupation of a particular region of the world, the Kurds never achieved nation-state status. Their reputation for military prowess has made them much in demand as mercenaries in many armies. Saladin, the Kurd best known to the Western world, epitomizes the Kurdish military reputation. The principal unit in traditional Kurdish society was the tribe, typically led by a sheikh, or an aga, whose rule was firm. Tribal identification and the sheikh's authority are still felt, though to a lesser degree, in the villages. Detribalization proceeded rapidly as Kurdish culture became urbanized and was nominally assimilated into several nations. In traditional Kurdish society, marriage was generally endogamous. In nonurban areas, males usually marry at age 20 and females at age 12. Households typically consist of father, mother, and children. Polygamy, permitted by Islamic law, is sometimes practiced, although it is forbidden by civil law in Turkey. The strength of the extended family's ties to the tribe varies with the way of life. Kurdish womenwho traditionally have been more active in public life than Turkish and Iranian womenas well as Kurdish men, have taken advantage of urban educational and employment opportunities, especially in prerevolutionary Iran. Kurdish nationalism, a recent phenomenon, came about through the conjunction of a variety of factors, including British introduction of the concept of private property, the partition of traditional Kurdistan by modern neighbouring states, and the influence of British, U.S., and Soviet interests in the Persian Gulf region. These factors and others combined with the flowering of a nationalist movement among a very small minority of urban, intellectual Kurds. The first Kurdish newspaper appeared in 1897 and was published at intervals until 1902. It was revived at Istanbul in 1908 (when the first Kurdish political club, with an affiliated cultural society, was also founded) and again in Cairo during World War I. The Treaty of Svres, drawn up in 1920, provided for an autonomous Kurdistan but was never ratified; the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which replaced the Treaty of Svres, made no mention of Kurdistan or of the Kurds. Thus the opportunity to unify the Kurds in a nation of their own was lost. Indeed, Kurdistan after the war was more fragmented than before, and various separatist movements arose among Kurdish groups. Short-lived armed rebellions occurred, and in 193132 and 194445 there were serious conflicts in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds of Turkey received particularly unsympathetic treatment at the hands of the government, which tried to deprive them of their Kurdish identity by designating them Mountain Turks, by outlawing the Kurdish language (or representing it as a dialect of Turkish), and by forbidding them to wear distinctive Kurdish costume in or near the important administrative cities. The Turkish government suppressed Kurdish political agitation in the eastern provinces and encouraged the migration of Kurds to the urbanized western portion of Turkey, thus diluting the concentration of Kurdish population in the uplands. Kurds also felt strong assimilationist pressure from the national government in Iran and endured religious persecution by that country's Shi'ite Muslim majority. Iraqi Kurds suffered relatively less cultural suppression. In 1958 the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, but Kurdish hopes of a measure of administrative devolution, enhanced status for their language, and a fairer share of social services and development projects under the new government were not fulfilled. In 1970 a new Ba'thist government granted the Kurds of Iraq a limited autonomy that was nonetheless declared inadequate by Kurdish leaders. Unsuccessful, short-lived Kurdish rebellions continued into the late 20th century; slaughter, dislocation, and starvation were the usual consequences. See also Kurdistan.