Kurd
PEOPLE
WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
See Article History

RELATED TOPICS
Arab
Badr Khānī Jāladat
Baloch
Mustafa al-Barzani
Bedouin
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
Kurdistan
Moabite
Philistine
Rechabite
Kurd, member of an ethnic and linguistic group living in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, Syria, and Armenia, and other adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey—a somewhat loosely defined geographic region generally referred to as Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”). The name has different connotations in Iran and Iraq, which officially recognize internal entities by this name: Iran’s northwestern province of Kordestān and Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region. A sizable noncontiguous Kurdish population also exists in the Khorāsān region, situated in Iran’s northeast.

Areas of Kurdish settlement in Southwest Asia.
An Iraqi Kurdish woman working in a folk museum in Irbīl, Iraq, winding lamb’s wool onto a spool to make handwoven carpets.
Areas of Kurdish settlement in Southwest Asia.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
An Iraqi Kurdish woman working in a folk museum in Irbīl, Iraq, winding lamb’s wool onto a …
Ali Al-Saadi—AFP/Getty Images
The Kurdish Language And Traditional Way Of Life

The Kurdish language is a West Iranian language related to Persian and Pashto. The Kurds are thought to number from 25 million to 30 million, including communities in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Syria, and Europe, 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 (1914–18) 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.

A Kurdish goatherd in Yüksekova, Turkey.
A Kurdish goatherd in Yüksekova, Turkey.
Rupert Conant—Impact Photos/Imagestate
History

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 whom the Greek historian Xenophon speaks of in Anabasis (they attacked the “Ten Thousand” near modern Zākhū, Iraq, in 401 bce) 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 ce. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, and among them are many who practice Sufism and other mystical sects.

Iraqi Kurds celebrating Nōrūz (a New Year festival often associated with Zoroastrianism), northern Iraq.
Iraqi Kurds celebrating Nōrūz (a New Year festival often associated with …
Safin Hamed—AFP/Getty Images

SIMILAR TOPICS
Phoenician
Sikanese
Banda
Brigantes
Midianite
Sabine
Dyula
Senufo
Ha
Efik
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. The sultan Saladin, best known to the Western world for exploits in the Crusades, epitomizes the Kurdish military reputation.
Social Organization

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 large urban areas. Detribalization proceeded intermittently as Kurdish culture became urbanized and was nominally assimilated into several nations.

Kurds from the Jaff tribe cheering as they watch a horse race during the annual festival of their tribe, south of Al-Sulaymāniyyah, Iraq.
Kurds from the Jaff tribe cheering as they watch a horse race during the annual festival of their …
Shawan Mohammed—AFP/Getty Images
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 women—who traditionally have been more active in public life than Turkish, Arab, and Iranian women—as well as Kurdish men, have taken advantage of urban educational and employment opportunities, especially in prerevolutionary Iran.
The Dream Of Autonomy

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
The Procession of the Trojan Horse into Troy from Two Sketches Depicting the Trojan Horse, oil on canvas by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, c. 1760; in the National Gallery, London. Greek and Roman Literature: Fact or Fiction?
Kurdish nationalism came about through the conjunction of a variety of factors, including the British introduction of the concept of private property, the partition of regions of Kurdish settlement 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.

 

BRITANNICA STORIES
DEMYSTIFIED / SCIENCE
How Do You Tell the Difference Between Total, Annular, Solar, and Lunar Eclipses?
solar eclipse, sun, moon, astronomy, space
SPOTLIGHT / SCIENCE
The Solar Eclipse That Made Albert Einstein a Science Celebrity
Albert Einstein.
SPOTLIGHT / HISTORY
The Mechanical Turk: AI Marvel or Parlor Trick?
game and gambling, gaming machines, chess playing Turk, design by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734 – 1804), built by Christoph Mechel, mechanical turk
DEMYSTIFIED / MUSIC
Does Listening to Mozart Make Kids Smarter?
Pregnant woman holding headphones on her belly
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 Sèvres, drawn up in 1920, provided for an autonomous Kurdistan but was never ratified; the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres, 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.
Kurds In Turkey

The Kurds of Turkey received 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 dress 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. Periodic rebellions occurred, and in 1978 Abdullah Öcalan formed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known by its Kurdish acronym, PKK), a Marxist organization dedicated to creating an independent Kurdistan. Operating mainly from eastern Anatolia, PKK fighters engaged in guerrilla operations against government installations and perpetrated frequent acts of terrorism. PKK attacks and government reprisals led to a state of virtual war in eastern Turkey during the 1980s and ’90s. Following Öcalan’s capture in 1999, PKK activities were sharply curtailed for several years before the party resumed guerilla activities in 2004. In 2002, under pressure from the European Union (in which Turkey sought membership), the government legalized broadcasts and education in the Kurdish language. Turkey continued to mount military operations against the PKK, including incursions into northern Iraq.

Abdullah Öcalan at a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) training camp in Lebanon, 1992.
Abdullah Öcalan at a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) training camp in Lebanon, 1992.
Ramzi Haidar—AFP/Getty Images
Kurds In Iran And Iraq

 

BRITANNICA LISTS & QUIZZES
MRI Image Of Head Showing Brain
HEALTH & MEDICINE QUIZ
The Human Brain
Urtica dioica, often called common nettle or stinging nettle
SCIENCE LIST
7 Plants You Can’t Even Touch
The Pulitzer wall at the New York Times, celebrating the journalistic awards received by the newspaper and its journalists. Pulitzer prize
ARTS & CULTURE QUIZ
Pulitzer Prize
Entrants falling and tumbling over while chasing the cheese at the 2016 ’Cheese Rolling’ held at Cooper’s Hill, in the Cotswolds, Brockworth England
SOCIETY LIST
7 of the World’s Most Dangerous Festivals
Kurds also felt strong assimilationist pressure from the national government in Iran and endured religious persecution by that country’s Shīʿite Muslim majority. Shortly after World War II (1939–45), the Soviet Union backed the establishment of an independent country around the largely Kurdish city of Mahābād, in northwestern Iran. The so-called Republic of Mahābād collapsed after Soviet withdrawal in 1946, but about that same time the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) was established. Thereafter, the KDPI engaged in low-level hostilities with the Iranian government into the 21st century.

Although the pressure for Kurds to assimilate was less intense in Iraq (where the Kurdish language and culture have been freely practiced), government repression has been the most brutal. Short-lived armed rebellions occurred in Iraq in 1931–32 and 1944–45, and a low-level armed insurgency took place throughout the 1960s under the command of Muṣṭafā al-Barzānī, leader of the Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party (IKDP), who had been an officer of the Republic of Mahābād. A failed peace accord with the Iraqi government led to another outbreak of fighting in 1975, but an agreement between Iraq and Iran—which had been supporting Kurdish efforts—later that year led to a collapse of Kurdish resistance. Thousands of Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey. Low-intensity fighting followed. In the late 1970s, Iraq’s Baʿth Party instituted a policy of settling Iraqi Arabs in areas with Kurdish majorities—particularly around the oil-rich city of Kirkūk—and uprooting Kurds from those same regions. This policy accelerated in the 1980s as large numbers of Kurds were forcibly relocated, particularly from areas along the Iranian border where Iraqi authorities suspected Kurds were aiding Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). What followed was one of the most brutal episodes in Kurdish history. In a series of operations between March and August 1988, code-named Anfal (Arabic: “Spoils”), Iraqi forces sought to quell Kurdish resistance; the Iraqis used large quantities of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians. Although technically it was not part of Anfal, one of the largest chemical attacks during that period took place on March 16 in and around the village of Ḥalabjah, when Iraqi troops killed as many as 5,000 Kurds with mustard gas and nerve agent. Despite these attacks, Kurds again rebelled following Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) but were again brutally suppressed—sparking another mass exodus.

CONNECT WITH BRITANNICA
With the help of the United States, however, the Kurds were able to establish a “safe haven” that included most areas of Kurdish settlement in northern Iraq, where the IKDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—a faction that split from the IKDP in 1975—created an autonomous civil authority that was, for the most part, free from interference by the Iraqi government. The Kurds were particularly successful in that country’s 2005 elections, held following the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Baʿth Party in 2003, and in mid-2005 the first session of the Kurdish parliament was convened in Irbīl.

Violence and instability in Iraq following the removal of Saddam Hussein and in Syria following the outbreak of civil war in 2011 threatened the security of Kurdish communities but also offered new opportunities for Kurds to advance their claims to autonomy. The primary threat to Kurds was the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which captured and occupied territory adjacent to Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria in 2013. Kurdish fighters in northern Syria entered into heavy fighting with ISIL and quickly proved to be some of the most effective ground forces against the group. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish forces participated in a multinational campaign to expel ISIL from its strongholds in northern and western Iraq.

Picking up the pieces of the shattered olive industry near Mosul, Iraq, after Kurdish forces dislodged the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2016.
Picking up the pieces of the shattered olive industry near Mosul, Iraq, after Kurdish forces …
© CCTV America (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
ADDITIONAL MEDIA
During mid-September 2014 some 138,000 Kurdish Syrians fled into Turkey to take refuge against the assault by ISIL/ISIS on their villages; by November Turkey was playing host to 1.1 million Syrian war refugees.

On Dec.ember 29, 2011, near the southeastern Turkish village of Ortasu, people gaze at some of the 35 Kurdish civilians killed in a botched military air raid along the Iraq border the night before. The Turkish government admitted that the victims, who were identified as cigarette smugglers, had been mistaken for guerrillas.
MORE ABOUT Kurd
31 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES
Assorted References
chemical-weapon attacks (in chemical weapon: Weapons of mass destruction) (in ʿAlī Ḥasan al-Majīd)
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (in Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK))
opposition to Qāsim (in ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim)
jewelry styles (in jewelry: Islamic)
distribution
Adiyaman (in Adıyaman)
Al-Sulaymāniyyah (in Al-Sulaymāniyyah)
Damascus (in Damascus: People)
Iraq (in Iraq: Kurds) (in Iraq: Kurds)
VIEW MORE