Wikipedia

Kurdish people

ethnic group in western Asia
(Redirected from Kurds)

Kurds (Kurdish: کورد, romanized: Kurd) or Kurdish people are an Indo-Iranian people[1][2][3] ethnic group indigenous to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria.[4][5]

There are exclaves of Kurds in Central Anatolia, Khorasan, and the Caucasus, as well as significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey, particularly Istanbul, and Western Europe, primarily in Germany. In 2017 The Kurdish population was estimated to be between 36.5-45 million.[6]

Kurds
Kurd کورد
Flag of Kurdistan
Total population
36.5–45 million[7]
(Kurdish Institute of Paris, 2017 estimate.)
Turkeyest. 15-20 million[7]
Iranest. 12 - 12 million[7]
Iraqest. 8–8.5 million[7]
Syria3–3.6[8][9]
Germany1.5–2.5 million[10][11]
Turkmenistan50,000[12]
Azerbaijan180,000 - 4 million (inc. Ancestrial)[12]
France150,000 - 300,000[13]
Netherlands100,000 - 210,000[14]
Sweden83,600 - 115,600[15]
Russia63,818 - 130,000[16]
Belgium50,000[17]
United Kingdom49,841 - 186,000[18][19][20]
Kazakhstan46,348[21]
Switzerland51,000[22]
Denmark30,000[23]
Jordan30,000[24]
Austria110,000[25]
Greece61,000[26]
United States20,591[27]
Canada16,315[28]
Finland15,368[29]
Georgia13,861[30]
Kyrgyzstan13,200[31]
Australia10,551[32]
Armenia37,470 - 900,000 (inc. Ancestrial)[33]
Languages
Kurdish
In their different varieties: Sorani, Kurmanji, Pehlewani, Laki[34]
Zaza, Gorani[35]
Religion
Predominantly Sunni Islam
with minorities of Shia Islam and Alevism
Related ethnic groups
Other Iranian people

Background

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Kurds are one of the largest and most important ethnic groups in the Middle East. There are between about 60 million and about 80 million Kurds.[36]: 19 

Most of the Kurdish population lives in Kurdistan. Kurdistan is the area where Kurds live. Today, it is a border country with lands in the east and southeast of Turkey, in the north-west of Iran, in the north of Iraq and in the north-east of Syria.[36]: 19  (Lands in Armenia and Azerbaijan also have small Kurdish populations.)[4][36]: 19, 21 

Origin

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The name of the Kurds is very old. The first proof of the name is from writing in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), the language of the Sasanian Empire. The name became most common after the Islamic conquests during the 7th century CE.[4][37]: 3 

Middle Ages

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In the Islamic world of the early Middle Ages, the word had a loose meaning. The meaning was variable, and people gave many tribes and nomadic peoples the word Kurd. Peoples living in the mountains between Anatolia and the Iranian plateau often had the name "Kurd". In the Persian language and Arabic language, writers during the 10th century gave the name to different ethnic groups.[4][37]: 3 

20th century

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After most of these borders came into existence after World War I, many Kurds went out of Kurdistan. They migrated to the large cities in the Middle East and to Western Europe.[36]: 21  Since the Middle Ages, there have also been Kurdish communities in Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo.[36]: 20 [38]: 38  Since the Early Modern Period, there have also been Kurdish communities in Khorasan, a region covering modern north-eastern Iran and Afghanistan.[4][36]: 21 

Persecution in the Soviet Union

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The Soviet Union also commited ethnic cleansing against Kurds by forcing them to migrate from the Caucasus to Central Asia. When the Soviet Union ended, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan harmed most Kurds in the Caucasus.[4][39]

Most Kurds are Muslims associated with Sunni Islam. Most Kurds are part of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, but some Kurds are part of the Hanafi school. Sufism is also common among Kurds. There are also Kurds who are part of Shia Islam and Kurds who are part of Alevism. There are also Kurdish Jews and Yazidi people.[4][36]: 26 

Languages

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Many Kurds speak the Kurdish language. The two largest Kurdish dialects are Kurmanji Kurdish and Sorani Kurdish. The Kurds of Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) and of Syrian Kurdistan(Rojava)speak Kurmanji. About half of Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) and Iraqi Kurdistan (Bashur) speak Kurmanji, while other Kurds there speak Sorani. Some Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) speak the Gorani Kurdish dialect, while others in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) speak Zazaki Kurdish.[4][36]: 26–27 

Lifestyles

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Until the 20th century, most Kurds were nomadic people.[36]: 23  The Kurds' economy had a close connection with pastoralism and animal husbandry.[36]: 23 

In the 21st century, nomadism is not common among Kurds.[36]: 23–24  Most Kurds now live in cities.[36]: 27  In the 21st century, farming is the most important work in Kurdistan. Industrialization means that fewer Kurds work as farmers, and this has caused urbanization of the Kurdish population. In the past, Kurds were part of the Silk Road economic system. Trade routes form connections between different countries through Kurdistan.[4][36]: 24 

Some scholars make an argument that the meaning of the name was not an ethnonym at the time, because many different groups of nomads and pastoralists had the name "Kurds" during the Middle Ages.[source?] However, other scholars make the argument that the name was not the name of lifestyle or economic system, such as nomadism or pastoralism, but the name of a population. This population shared a common character in linguistics, shared an area to live in, and shared a mythology.[37]: 3–4  Whether the people and groups who had the name "Kurds" thought that they were a common community before the 12th century is unknown.[37]: 4 

Interethnic relations

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The Kurds share their lands with other ethnic groups. Some of the Kurds' neighbours are Turks, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Armenians and Assyrians.[36]: 24  In the past, some Arabic and Turkic people became Kurds by cultural assimilation.[36]: 25–26  In the nationalist period, the governments of the states controlling Kurdistan attempted the forced assimilation of Kurds into Turkish, Iranian or Arab culture.[40][36]: 26 

These states also moved Turks, Persians or Arabs into Kurdistan.[40][36]: 26  The governments of these states did so via genocide, ethnocide and linguicide, often with tacit approval from other countries.[41][better source needed]

History

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Antiquity

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Some scholars have associated the Kurds with the Medes, an ancient Iranian people.[42][43] Gernot Ludwig Windfuhr, professor of Iranian Studies, states that the majority of those who now speak Kurdish most likely were formerly speakers of a Median dialect.[44] Windfuhr also states Kurdish languages as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum.[45]

 
Rock relief of a Median man, Persepolis

During the Sassanid era, in "Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan" a short prose work written in Middle Persian, Ardashir I (founder of Sasanian empire) is depicted as having battled the Kurds and their leader, Madig. After initially sustaining a heavy defeat, Ardashir I was successful in subjugating the Kurds.[46] In a letter sent by Ardashir's enemy, Ardavan, and in the same work, it is stated that he was a Kurd.

You've bitten off more than you can chew and you have brought death to yourself. O son of a Kurd, raised in the tents of the Kurds, who gave you permission to put a crown on your head?[47]

The usage of the term "Kurd" during this time period most likely was a social term, designating Northwestern Iranian nomads, rather than a concrete ethnic group.[47][48]

Middle Ages

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In early Middle Ages, the Kurds sporadically appear in Arabic sources, though the term was still not being used for a specific people; instead it referred to an amalgam of nomadic western Iranian tribes, who were distinct from Persians.

However, in the High Middle Ages, the Kurdish ethnic identity gradually materialized, as one can find clear evidence of the Kurdish ethnic identity and solidarity in texts of the 12th and 13th centuries,[49] though, the term was also still being used in the social sense.[50]

Since 10th century, Arabic texts including al-Masudi's works, have referred to Kurds as a distinct linguistic group.[51] From 11th century onward, the term Kurd is explicitly defined as an ethnonym and this does not suggest synonymity with the ethnographic category nomad.[52]

In the 10th-12th centuries, a number of Kurdish principalities and dynasties were founded, ruling Kurdistan and neighbouring areas:

  • Shaddadids (951–1174) a dynasty of Kurdish origin.[53][54][55] They ruled parts of present-day Armenia and Arran.
  • Rawwadids (955–1221) a dynasty of Arab origin but later Kurdified.[56] They ruled southern Azerbaijan.
  • Hasanwayhids (959–1015) a dynasty of Kurdish origin.[57] They ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia.
  • Marwanids (990–1096) a dynasty of Kurdish origin.[58][59][60] They ruled eastern Anatolia.
  • Annazids (990–1117) a dynasty of Kurdish origin.[61] They ruled western Iran and upper Mesopotamia (succeeded the Hasanwayhids).
  • Hazaraspids (1148–1424) a dynasty of Kurdish origin.[62] They ruled southwestern Iran.
  • Ayyubids (1171–1341) was a Kurdish dynasty. Saladin, the Founder of the dynasty, was of Kurdish[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70] origin.

Religions

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Classical antiquity

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In Classical antiquity, the most important deities of the Kurds' lands were Ahura Mazda and Mithra.[71]: 48–50  The most common religion was Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism was probably the state religion of the Achaemenid Empire. There are connections between the writings of Zoroastrianism and the Vedas, the Hindu writings of ancient India.[71]: 48–50 

Middle Ages

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In the 7th century, Kurds had many different religious beliefs.[37]: 4 [71]: 48  There were Christians and Zoroastrians.[37]: 4  There were also Kurdish Jews.[71]: 48  Some sects among the Kurdish Christians and Jews had religious beliefs from Zoroastrianism and Mithraism in their religion.[71]: 48–50  There may have been Kurds among the Companions of the Prophet.[71]: 50–51 

Islamic conquests in the 7th century meant that most Kurds became Muslim in the 7th and 8th centuries.[37]: 4  Most Kurds converted to Islam between the 7th and 9th centuries CE. Kurds who were not Muslim had to pay the jizya, a tax.[37]: 4  Most of these were part of the Shafi'ite system of Islamic jurisprudence.[37]: 4 

While most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, there are also Kurds of many other religions and sects.[71]: 48  There are Kurdish Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Israel as well.[36]: 25 

References

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kurdish people.
  1. ↑ Bois, Th; Minorsky, V.; MacKenzie, D. N., "Kurds, Kurdistān", Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Brill, p. 439, "The Kurds, an Iranian people of the Near East (...)"
  2. ↑ E. J. van Donzel (1994). Islamic desk reference. BRILL. p. 222, "(...) the Kurds are an Iranian people who live mainly at the junction of more or less laicised Turkey, Shi'i Iran, Arab Sunni Iraq and North Syria and the former Soviet Transcaucasia."
  3. ↑ Biggs, Robert D. (1983). Discoveries from Kurdish Looms. Mary and Leigh Block Gallery. Northwestern University. ISBN 978-0-941680-02-8. p. 9, "Ethnically the Kurds are an Iranian people (...)"
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8
  5. ↑
  6. ↑ "The Kurdish population". Institutkurde.org (in French). Retrieved 11 December 2024.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 The Kurdish Population In 2017 the Kurdish population was estimated at 15–20 million in Turkey, 10–12 million in Iran, 8–8.5 million in Iraq, 1–3,6 million in Syria, 1.2–1.5 million in the European diaspora, and 0.4–0.5in the former USSR—for a total of 36.5 million to 45 million globally.
  8. ↑ "Syria - Kurds". World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples. "There are around two-and-a-half million Kurds in Syria. They speak Kurdish (the Kirimanji dialect), but most speak Arabic, too, and many Kurds have at least partially assimilated into Arab society. Most are Sunni Muslims."
  9. ↑ "Kurdish population". Kurdish Institute of Paris. "In Syria, the civil war completely disrupted the demographic balance in the three Kurdish cantons (Djezirah, Kobane and Afrin) with an estimated population of 2.5 million. Added to this are the Kurdish communities of Aleppo and Damascus with more than one million people. In all, the Syrian Kurdish population can be estimated at 3 to 3.5 million, or nearly 15% of the population of Syria."
  10. ↑ ""Wir Kurden ärgern uns über die Bundesregierung" - Politik". Süddeutsche.de. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  11. ↑ "Geschenk an Erdogan? Kurdisches Kulturfestival verboten". heise.de. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ismet Chériff Vanly, “The Kurds in the Soviet Union”, in: Philip G. Kreyenbroek & S. Sperl (eds.), The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview (London: Routledge, 1992). pg 164: Table based on 1990 estimates: Azerbaijan (180,000), Armenia (50,000), Georgia (40,000), Kazakhistan (30,000), Kyrghizistan (20,000), Uzbekistan (10,000), Tajikistan (3,000), Turkmenistan (50,000), Siberia (35,000), Krasnodar (20,000), Other (12,000), Total 450,000
  13. ↑ "3 Kurdish women political activists shot dead in Paris". CNN. 11 January 2013. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  14. ↑ "Diaspora Kurde". Institutkurde.org (in French). Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  15. ↑ "Sweden". Ethnologue. 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  16. ↑ "Всероссийская перепись населения 2010 г. Национальный состав населения Российской Федерации". Demoscope.ru. Archived from the original on 21 May 2012. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  17. ↑ "The Kurdish Diaspora". Institut Kurde de Paris. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  18. ↑ "QS211EW - Ethnic group (detailed)". nomis. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  19. ↑ "Ethnic Group - Full Detail_QS201NI" (PDF). Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  20. ↑ "Scotland's Census 2011 - National Records of Scotland - Ethnic group (detailed)" (PDF). Scotland Census. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 May 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2013.
  21. ↑ "Численность населения Республики Казахстан по отдельным этносам на начало 2019 года". Archived from the original on 17 March 2022. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  22. ↑ "Switzerland". Ethnologue. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  23. ↑ "Fakta: Kurdere i Danmark". Jyllandsposten (in Danish). 8 May 2006. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  24. ↑ Al-Khatib, Mahmoud A.; Al-Ali, Mohammed N. "Language and Cultural Shift Among the Kurds of Jordan" (PDF). p. 12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
  25. ↑ "Austria". Ethnologue. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  26. ↑ "Greece". Ethnologue. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  27. ↑ "2011-2015 American Community Survey Selected Population Tables". Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 29 March 2019.
  28. ↑ "Ethnic Origin (279), Single and Multiple Ethnic Origin Responses (3), Generation Status (4), Age (12) and Sex (3) for the Population in Private Households of Canada, Provinces and Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2016 Census". 25 October 2017. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  29. ↑ "Language according to age and sex by region 1990 - 2020". Statistics Finland. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
  30. ↑ PDF. "Population/Census" (PDF). geostat.ge. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  31. ↑ "Number of resident population by selected nationality" (PDF). United Nations. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 July 2012. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
  32. ↑ "Australia - Ancestry". 2016. Archived from the original on 14 January 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  33. ↑ "Information from the 2011 Armenian National Census" (PDF). Statistics of Armenia (in Armenian). Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  34. ↑ "Atlas of the Languages of Iran A working classification". Languages of Iran. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
  35. ↑ Michiel Leezenberg (1993). "Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish: Substratum or Prestige Borrowing?" (PDF). ILLC - Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam: 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 July 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  36. ↑ 36.00 36.01 36.02 36.03 36.04 36.05 36.06 36.07 36.08 36.09 36.10 36.11 36.12 36.13 36.14 36.15 36.16 36.17 Aydin, Selcuk (2018). "Geography". In Maisel, Sebastian (ed.). The Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 19–30. ISBN 978-1-4408-4257-3.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 37.5 37.6 37.7 37.8 Bajalan, Djene Rhys (2018). "Origins and History". In Maisel, Sebastian (ed.). The Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 3–18. ISBN 978-1-4408-4257-3.
  38. ↑ McDowall, David (2021) [1996]. "Kurdistan Before the Nineteenth Century". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). London: I. B. Tauris. pp. 23–44. doi:10.5040/9780755600762.ch-002. ISBN 978-0-7556-0076-2. S2CID 241348432.
  39. ↑ Hassanpour, Amir (2005), "Kurds", in Shelton, Dinah L. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 632–637, retrieved 5 June 2021,
    • "... thousands of Caucasian Kurds were subjected to two waves of forced deportation to the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, and Uzbekistan in 1937 and 1944. ...
    • "Muslim Kurdish populations of Armenia and Nagorny-Karabakh were largely displaced in the course of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan between 1990 and 1994 ...
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Hassanpour, Amir (2005), "Kurds", in Shelton, Dinah L. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 632–637, retrieved 5 June 2021, The majority live in Kurdistan, a borderless homeland whose territory is divided among the neighboring countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. … The dismantling of the Ottoman empire in World War I led to the division of its Kurdish region and the incorporation of that territory into the newly created states of Iraq, then under British occupation and mandate, 1918–1932, Syria (under French occupation and mandate, 1918–1946), and Turkey (Republic of Turkey since 1923). The formation of these modern nation-states entailed the forced assimilation of the Kurds into the official or dominant national languages and cultures: Turkish (Turkey), Persian (Iran), and Arabic (Syria, and, in a more limited scope, Iraq).
  41. ↑ Hassanpour, Amir (2005), "Kurds", in Shelton, Dinah L. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 632–637, retrieved 5 June 2021,
    • "The intent to commit genocide is inscribed, explicitly, in Turkey's Law No. 2510 of 1934, which stipulated the transfer of non-Turks to Turkish speaking regions, where they would not be allowed to form more than 5 percent of the population. ...
    • "... Iran undertook a policy of forcible Persianization of the Kurds through linguicide and ethnocide as well as war, killing, jail, and deportations. ...
    • "The 1988 campaign of mass murder, code-named Operation Anfal ("spoils" of war, also the title of a chapter in the Koran), is widely considered a genocide. ...
    • "Although the Kurds of Syria have not engaged in armed conflict with the state, they were targeted for ethnic cleansing beginning in the early 1960s. ...
  42. ↑ Jwaideh, Wadie (2006). The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3093-7. p. xv, "The empire of the Medes, one of the reputed ancestors of the Kurdish people (...)"
  43. ↑ Daryaee, Touraj (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-020882-0. p. 122, "(...) the Medes (ancestors of many Iranians, particularly the Kurds) (...)"
  44. ↑ Windfuhr, Gernot (1975). Isoglosses: A Sketch on Persians and Parthians, Kurds and Medes. Monumentum H. S. Nyberg II (Acta Iranica–5). Tehran-Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi. 457–472. p. 468.
  45. ↑ Windfuhr, Gernot (1975). Isoglosses: A Sketch on Persians and Parthians, Kurds and Medes. Monumentum H.S. Nyberg II (Acta Iranica–5). Leiden: 457–471.
  46. ↑ "Kârnâmag î Ardashîr î Babagân" (1896). Trans. D. D. P. Sanjana.
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Limbert, J. (1968). The Origins and Appearance of the Kurds in Pre-Islamic Iran. Iranian Studies. 1 (2): 41–51.
  48. ↑ Asatrian, G. (2009). Prolegemona to the Study of Kurds. Iran and the Caucasus. 13 (1): 1–58.
  49. ↑ James, Boris. (2006). Uses and Values of the Term Kurd in Arabic Medieval Literary Sources. University of Beirut. pp. 6–7.
  50. ↑ James, Boris. (2006). Uses and Values of the Term Kurd in Arabic Medieval Literary Sources. American University of Beirut. pp. 4, 8, 9.
  51. ↑ James, Boris (2019). Constructing the Realm of the Kurds (al-Mamlaka al-Akradiyya): Kurdish In-betweenness and Mamluk Ethnic Engineering (1130-1340 CE). In Tamari, Steve (ed.). Grounded Identities: Territory and Belonging in the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East and Mediterranean. Brill. p. 20.
  52. ↑ James, Boris (2014). Arab Ethnonyms ('Ajam, 'Arab, Badu and Turk): The Kurdish Case as a Paradigm for Thinking about Differences in the Middle Ages. Iranian Studies. 47 (5): 683–712 (see 692).
  53. ↑ Peacock, Andrew (2000). "SHADDADIDS". Encyclopædia Iranica, "(...) Caucasian dynasty of Kurdish origin reigning from about 950 until 1200, first in Dvin and Ganja, later in Ani."
  54. ↑ Bosworth, C.E (1996). The New Islamic Dynasties. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10714-3. p. 151, "The Shaddādids were another of the dynasties which arose in north-western Persia during the 'Daylamī interlude', and it is probable that they were of Kurdish origin."
  55. ↑ Kennedy, Hugh (2016). The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. Routledge. ISBN 9781317376392. p. 215, "The Kurdish dynasties which emerged in the second half of tenth century [...] Shaddadids of Azerbayjan (...)"
  56. ↑ Peacock, Andrew (2017). "RAWWADIDS". Encyclopædia Iranica, "(...) a family of Arab descent [...] Their Kurdicized descendants ruled over Azerbaijan and parts of Armenia in the second half of the 10th and much of the 11th century."
  57. ↑ Gunter, Michael M (2010). Historical Dictionary of the Kurds. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810875074. p. 117, "The Hasanwayhids were a Kurdish dynasty dominated the Zagros (...)"
  58. ↑ Bosworth, C.E (1996). The New Islamic Dynasties. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10714-3. p. 89, "The Marwānids of Diyār Bakr, Khilāt and Malāzgird were Kurdish in origin."
  59. ↑ Ashtiany, Julia; Bray, Julia; Smith, Gerald Rex; Johnstone, T. M.; Latham, J. D.; Serjeant, R. B.; Menocal, María Rosa; Cambridge, University of; Scheindlin, Raymond P. (1990). Abbasid Belles Lettres. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24016-1. p. 15, "(...) the Marwanids of Mayyafaraqin, were Kurdish."
  60. ↑ Fisher, William Bayne; Boyle, J. A.; Boyle, John Andrew; Gershevitch, Ilya; Yarshater, Ehsan; Frye, Richard Nelson; Avery, Peter; Jackson, Peter (1968). The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-06936-6. p. 24, "The Marwānids of Diyārbakr, Akhlāt, and Malāzgird [...] were also of Kurdish origin (...)"
  61. ↑ Aḥmad, K. M. (1985). "ʿANNAZIDS". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. II, Fasc. 1, pp. 97–98, "ʿANNAZIDS [...] a Kurdish dynasty [...] whose territory on the Iran-Iraq frontier (...)"
  62. ↑ Bosworth, C. Edmund (2003). "HAZĀRASPIDS". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XII, Fasc. 1, p. 93, "HAZĀRASPIDS, a local dynasty of Kurdish origin which ruled in the Zagros mountains region of southwestern Persia, essentially in Lorestān and the adjacent parts of Fārs (...)"
  63. ↑ Riley-Smith, Jonathan (2008). The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14625-8. p. 64, "Saladin's relative obscurity in Muslim history was understandable. He was a Kurd."
  64. ↑ Laine, James W. (2015). Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-95999-6. p. 133, "A Kurd, Saladin was born in Iraq (in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown), and became famous in medieval legend for his chivalrous exchanges with Richard the Lionheart, commander of the Third Crusade."
  65. ↑ Humphreys, R. Stephen (1977). From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-87395-263-4. p. 29, "Among the free-born amirs the Kurds would seem the most dependent on Saladin's success for the progress of their own fortunes. He too was a Kurd, after all..."
  66. ↑ Esposito, John L. (2004). The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-975726-8. p. 31, "(...) Kurdish officer Salah al-Din (Saladin)."
  67. ↑ Lewis, Bernard (2002). Arabs in History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-158766-5. p. 166, "A Kurdish officer called Salāh al-Dīn, better known in the West as Saladin, went to Egypt, where he served as Wazir to the Fațimids while representing the interests of Nūr al-Din. In 1171 Saladin declared the Fațimid Caliphate at an end."
  68. ↑ Riley-Smith, Jonathan (2002). The Oxford History of the Crusades. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-157927-1. p. 228, "(...) Saladin (or Salah al-Din) from the Kurdish clan of Ayyub (...)"
  69. ↑ Rogers, Clifford J.; Caferro, William; Reid, Shelley (2010). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533403-6. p. 213, "Saladin was born into a Kurdish military family (...)"
  70. ↑ Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (2020). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-753278-2. p. 607, "(...) Kurdish warlord Saladin (...)"
  71. ↑ 71.0 71.1 71.2 71.3 71.4 71.5 71.6 Chaman Ara, Behrooz; Gholami, Vali (2018). "Religion". In Maisel, Sebastian (ed.). The Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 48–63. ISBN 978-1-4408-4257-3.
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