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Last edited on Jan-14-2024 at 02:01 AM (UTC 3 Nineveh, Assyria)
Most Kurds are not educated truthfully about their history. Kurdish nationalists have controlled the history, including more recent history, that is taught in schools. That version of history is corrupted, untruthful and misleading. Many Kurds get immediately offensive when they are informed about the true history. Instead of getting angry at their own politicians and nationalists for misleading them, they begin attacking those who provide them with genuine history narratives that do not match what they were taught at schools or at home. Consider the followings: Example 1: Kurdish leader Bedr Khan massacred tens of thousands of Assyrians (1842–1847), massacred tens of thousands of Yezidis in 1844, massacred Armenians in 1894-1895, but he is presented as a national hero. Example 2: Kurdish leader Simko invited the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Benyamin Shimun to his own headquarters in Salamas region in northeast Iran to talk about peace. As the meeting concluded and the Assyrian patriarch left the house and attempted to ride his carriage, Kurds from allover the headquarters started firing at the patriarch and his carriage, murdering the patriarch and many who were part of his entourage. Simko is presented as Kurdish national hero in northern Iraq Kurdish region history curriculum and that adds insult to injury for the Assyrians. Example 3: Kurdistan is presented in Kurdish schools as an ancient kingdom. That is a myth, because Kurdistan never existed as a politically recognized country at any time in modern history, let alone ancient history. Kurdistan was always a virtual region superimposed on the Middle East maps and which kept expanding by Kurdish nationalists. Example 4: The Kurds are presented in Kurdish schools as an ancient people linked to several ancient groups such as Halaf, Sumerians, Hurrians, Mitanni, Gutian, Hittites, Medes, Sassanid, and the list keeps growing. The fact is that the Kurds are nomad Persians who settled originally the Zagros Mountains of West and northwest Persia but expanded their regions as they massacred their Christian and Yezidi neighbors and seized their lands. Real scholars accept the below narratives as the true history of the Kurds. There are few other narratives that have been constructed more recently as the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq began to pay writers and some wannabe historians to construct a new Kurdish history by patching a word from here and another from there. 1. Vladimir F Minorsky, Russian academic, historian, and scholar of Oriental studies, best known for his contributions to the study of history of Iran and the Iranian peoples such as Persians, Laz people, Lurs, and Kurds, writes that the history of the Kurds is mysterious and vague. 2. Bernard Lewis , British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, said that Kurds belong to the Persian tribes. 3. P. M. Holt, Prof of Arab History in the University of London and publisher of the 1970 “The Cambridge History of Islam” states that the Kurds are nomad Persian. 4. Michael Morony in his 1983 book, “Iraq After the Muslim Conquest”, writes that the word Kurd is synonymous with bandits. 5. David McDowall in his book “A Modern History of the Kurds”, states that the word Kurd does not refer to an ethnic group, rather mercenaries, outlaws and fleeing robbers that lived in and around the Zagros Mountains. 6. Prof. Garnik Asatrian in his study “Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds”, Iran and the Caucasus Vol 13, No. 1. Yerevan State University. Brill, 2009, page 82, writes: “The documented history of the term Kurd, as was shown above, starts from the 6th-7th Centuries AD. Before that period, there is little reliable evidence of its earlier forms.” He adds later, Kurd is an obscurity. He later writes, the word Kurd comes from the original Kwrt, a Persian term which means Tent-Dwellers. 7. Prof. Khazal al-Majidi, who is expert on religions and civilizations, says that Kurds are Kurds, they have no link to ancient groups and that they appeared in history with the emergence of Islam in the 7th Century. 8. Basile Nikitine Book, “Les Kurdes” (The Kurds), says, “the word Kurdish is not a linguistic form of the word Kardu”. This book was written 1943 but was not able to publish it until 1956 with help of French writers including Louis Massignon and the French National Center for Scientific Research. So there is no link between Kurd some forms of other words that sound similar to Kurd. 9. Basile Nikitine Book, “Les Kurdes” (The Kurds), 1956. Page 20. The most important document that reflects the opinion of the Kurds about their origin is Sharaf-Nama’s book, which was written in Persian by Prince Sharafkhan Bidlisi in 1596.
The author tells the story of the ruthless Iranian King Zahak who contracted a weird disease of growing a snake on each of his shoulders. The doctors were unable to cure him. Satan advised him that he needed to use an ointment that is extracted from the brain of young boys and that he needed to sacrifice two boys daily for that purpose. The executioner who killed the boys, felt sorry for killing two boys daily, so he began to kill one boy and use the brain of a sheep as a replacement for the brain of the second boy. The boys that he saved daily were sent to a distance mountainous area where they were safe. These boys grew up, multiplied and became the Kurds.
Is this how history is constructed? Which nation constructs its history based on a myth? Let us be sure that the Kurd’s central theme of their history derives from ethnocentricities and nothing is based on academic endeavor. 10. Arshak Safrastian, Kurds and Kurdistan, The Harvill Press, 1948, p. 16 and p. 31, writes, books from the early Islamic era, including those containing legends like the Shahnameh and the Middle Persian Kar-Nmag i Ardashir i Pabagan and other early Islamic sources provide early attestation of the term kurd in the sense of "Iranian nomads". The term Kurd in the Middle Persian documents simply means nomad and tent-dweller and could be attributed to any Iranian ethnic group having similar characteristics. 11. Wladimir Ivanon, "The Gabrdi dialect spoken by the Zoroastrians of Persia", Published by G. Bardim 1940. pg 42, writes, “The term Kurd in the middle ages was applied to all nomads of Iranian origin”. 12. Martin van Bruinessen, "The ethnic identity of the Kurds", in: Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey, compiled and edited by Peter Alford Andrews with Rüdiger Benninghaus <=Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe B, Nr.60>. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwich Reichert, 1989, pp. 613–21, we read: The ethnic label "Kurd" is first encountered in Arabic sources from the first centuries of the Islamic era; it seemed to refer to a specific variety of pastoral nomadism, and possibly to a set of political units, rather than to a linguistic group: once or twice, "Arabic Kurds" are mentioned. By the 10th century, the term appears to denote nomadic and/or transhumant groups speaking an Iranian language and mainly inhabiting the mountainous areas to the South of Lake Van and Lake Urmia, with some offshoots in the Caucasus...If there was a Kurdish-speaking subjected peasantry at that time, the term was not yet used to include them. 13. David N. Mackenzie, "The Origin of Kurdish", Transactions of Philological Society, 1961, pp 68–86, we read: If we take a leap forward to the Arab conquest we find that the name Kurd has taken a new meaning becoming practically synonymous with 'nomad', if nothing more pejorative. 14. The term “Kurds" in Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Accessed 2007, we read, We thus find that about the period of the Arab conquest a single ethnic term Kurd (plur. Akrād ) was beginning to be applied to an amalgamation of Iranian or iranicised tribes. 15. In Kurds, Kurdistan. Encyclopedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs, Brill, 2009. Brill OnLine. The classification of the Kurds among the Iranian nations is based mainly on linguistic and historical data and does not prejudice the fact there is a complexity of ethnical elements incorporated in them". We thus find that about the period of the Arab conquest a single ethnic term Kurd (plur. Akrād ) was beginning to be applied to an amalgamation of Iranian or iranicised tribes. Even today, The two Kurdish separate regions or the united autonomous Kurdish region are not recognized by the United Nations as states. Structurally, these actors are operating as proto-states, that is each controls a specific territory, regulates the population residing there, enjoys the monopoly of force to tax the population,and deploys the taxed resources for its protection from challengers—thus, according to Wagner’s (2000) definition of a state, both the KDP and the PUK are unrecognized states. Given that both sides still keep their standing armies (“peshmerga”), the end of the armed conflict between them resembles that of an interstate war rather than a civil conflict, in which one side is expected to disarm. Thus,the findings from this case study could apply to weak states that are not regional powers and, thus, are susceptible to influence by outside actors. Historian David McDowall has noted that before the Kurds began to define themselves ethnically around the 17th and 18th centuries, the term “Kurd” referred more to a socioeconomic class of nomadic tribes who moved from the mountains that define the borders between Turkey, Iran and Iraq, to the various plateaus around them.” There is a reason why Kurds claim that they originate from various ancient people.
Kurds claim that their origin is from the Medes, because the Medes originated in northwest modern Iran and did invade northern Iraq at one time.
Kurds claim that their origin is from the Hittite, because the Hittites originated in Anatolia/eastern and central Turkey.
The Kurds claim that their origin is from the Mitanni, because the Mitanni originated in northern Syria.
The Kurds claim that their origin is from the Akkadians and Sumerians, because the Akkadians and Sumerians originated in central and southern Iraq.
With these claims, the Kurds try to justify why they are controlling many of the above regions or planning to control the rest. But Kurds are Kurds and no one else as most reputable historians and scholars tell us. Kindly listen to the short video attached. -- Frederick A. Aprim | https://www.fredaprim.com | profile | writings | website
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