Adiabeni, Azeri or the like). In a way, the Kurds owe the Arabs to be called by one of their pre-Islamic names , and to be seen as one people, that of the mountains . The Greeks too had different names, including Hellens , before being called by their present name. The very perceptive Arab historian al-Mas’oudi, in his ‘Golden Medows’, distinguishes between Farsi (Persian) and Kurdish , and knows the latter was divided into dialects (See my paper under ICV, ‘Le Déplacement du pays kurde vers l’ouest, X°-XV° siècles : Etude de géographie et de sociologie historique’, published in Actes du 29° Congrès international des Orientalistes , section ‘Iran moderne’ , vol.I , Paris , 1973-1976 . This paper is full with references to Arab geographers and historians , but I am no longer in agreement with myself about the extent of northwestern Kurdistan, presently in Turkey , result of an unhappy sentence.)
The main Arabo/Muslim medieval geographers were edited , and annoted , in Arabic, by the Dutch M.J. De Goeje, in the second half of the 19° cent. , in the series Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (BGA) , Brill, Leiden . The British Guy Le Strange , in his scholarly work The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , Cambridge , 1905, proves to be a useful author for the comprehension of the toponymy of the Abbasid lands , which has changed since.
If the Kurds are entitled to claim the heritage of Media -- as well as that of the Manneans , who were contemporary with the Median rise -- , they are not less entitled to claim the more ancient heritage of the Hurrians and the Mitannians, of the Khaldi (Urartians ) - together with the Armenians - , of the Gutians, the Lullubians, the Kassi, and the highlanders of Elam , other ancient mountain peoples of the Zagros, mentioned in the Assyrian/Mesopotamian records and their own, and supposed to be autochthonous . The Kurds have been constituted as a people age after age , in their country . Their heritage embraces all the legacy of Kurdistan . In their mountain fastness they resisted foreign invaders , or finished by absorbing them..
In the 12th century sultan Sinjar of Persia, who ruled from the Hijra year 511 to 548/ AD 1118-1153, created a large province of Kurdistan in the clime of al-Jibal , former Kuhistan, with Bahar as capital (now in ruins, near Hamadan). Sinjar’s Kurdistan included the following areas : today’s provinces (ostan) of Kurdistan (with Sine or Sanandaj as provincial capital), the ostan of Kirmanshah , parts of the ostan of Hamadan, the governorate of Ilam, and a northern part of the ostan of Luristam . At that time , the Lurs and Luristan (Luri-Pichuk ) and the Bakhtiyaris (Luri-Buzurg) were also considered as Kurds (see Yaqut’s Mo’jam al Buldan, under articles al-Lur and al-Luriyeh ) . Sinjar’s Kurdistan , despite wars and invasions, has remained almost as it was created in the 12th century, but it was to be dismembered under Riza shah, in the early 1920s.
In the oriental medieval historiography , we have other examples of a country called Kurdistan . In AD. 1387 , the Tatar invader Timur-Lang besieged the citadel of Van, which was kept and defended by the Kurdish king Izzeddin , belonging to the Kurdish Hakkari dynasty. Despite a long siege, Timur-Lang did not succeed forcing the stronghold. But knowing the fearful reputation of the besieger, Izzeddin thought it was safer to talk with Timur-Lang : he presented him due submission, according to the customs of the epoch . Timur-Lang was so satisfied that he raised the siege on Van and bestowed on king Izzeddin “the government of all Kurdistan” (the vilayet of all Kurdistan) . This episode is mentioned by the Persian historian Sharafaddin Ali Yazdi , in his book ‘Zafar-nama’ on the victories of Timur-Lang (pub. in Persian in Calcutta, 1887 , series Bibliotheca Indica ; the same Zafar-Nama was pub. in French translation, under the title ‘Histoire de Timur-Bec’ , by F.P. de La Croix, Paris, 1722, see on the siege of Van , tome 1 , pages 417-420 . ) Between Van and Kirmanshah there is indeed a long distance, yet we are still in the Kurdish country.
In AD. 1032 the Kurdish Merwanid prince Nasr-ad-Daula, Lord of Farqin (present Silvan) and Diyarbekir, whose lands reached the sources of the Araxes River, sent an army of 5000 horsemen, under the command of the raïs (general) Bal , to take the town of Urfa (also called Ruha or Edessa) from Arab tribes supported by Byzantium. The Kurdish commander Bal took the city and killed the Arab tribal chief, then he wrote to his lord Nasr-ad-Daula asking for reinforcements “if you want to save your Lordship on Kertastan.” .This episode is written by the Armenian chronicler Mathieu d’Edesse , native of Edessa, who finished his chronicle , in Armenian , in 1036. The chronicle was publishd in French translation by Ed. Dulaurier, Paris, 1858 (see pp. 46-52 on Urfa) . The name of Kertastan , obviously for Kurdistan , is it a corruption by the Armenian chronicler, or by the French translator ? We are here, in AD. 1032, about one century before the creation by sultan Sinjar of the province of Kurdistan in the Zagros mountains.. The town of Urfa had actually a mixed population , as Diyarbekir itself at that time , but the countryside was Kurdish . Let us add that the Kurdish Merwanid rulers had often a good relationship, and sometimes due alliance, with the Byzantine emperors (see on the history of the Merwanids : ‘Tarikh al-Fariqi’ , written in Arabic by a citizen of Farqin, just after the fall of the Merwanids) . The Kurdish Shaddadi rulers in Armenia and Transcaucasia had also good relationship with Byzantium (see below).
Sultan Sinjar’s Kurdistan did not include Azerbaijan , which was also known as “Media Minor”, or Atropatenian .Yet the presence of the Kurds in Azerbaijan, and in Armenia, is attested from ancient times . Whence the Armenian equation : “Mar = Median = Kurd” . Moses of Khoren , who would have lived in AD 5th century, author of a History of Armenia (full with legends and anachronism) , and considered as “the father of the Armenian historians’ (but not by all), refers to the Mar/Medians/Kurds as neighbours on the slopes of the Ararat , or prisoners of Armenia . Vladimir Minorsky , in his book ‘Studies in Caucasian History’ (London, 1953, p.127) , writes about Khoren and his Mar=Medians on the slopes of the Ararat : “There is no doubt that the term Mar (Medians) refers to the Kurds. In the time of Moses of Khoren there were no Medians in existence , but even now the Kurds continue to occupy the slopes of the Ararat . In the curious Armenian manuscript containing samples of alphabets and languages, written some time before AD 1446, a prayer in Kurdish figures as a specimen of ‘the language of the Medians(Mar)’ and such a use of the term is still attested in dictionaries”. Minorsky has published the text of this Kurdish-”Median” prayer (in ‘Bulletin du Centre d’Etudes kurdes’, No.10, Paris, 1950) : It is a short Christian prayer in North-Kurmanji Kurdish, hardly different from the language of today . The Armenian name of ‘Mar’, for the ancient Medians and the Kurds, should be derived from that of ‘Mard’, the name of these northern Kurds who occupied, among other highlands, the slopes of the Ararat and were the closest neighbours of the Armenians .
As said above , the Haic Armenians , who had their early kingdom, all their successive capitals and the residence of the Armenian church, on the northern bank of the Araxes River and its northern tributaries, were not to be limited to this area . At different epochs their restless and combative feudal aristocracy settled elsewhere , including in Kurdish areas. An enlarged Armenia was recognized as a vassal state by the Abbasid caliphate , to which it had to pay an annual tribute. A new Armenia was even to be created in the Byzantine province of Cilicia, which was to be paid for the passage of the Crusaders (See J. Laurent , ‘L’Arménie entre Byzance à L’Islam, depuis la conquête arabe jusqu’en 886’ , Paris, 1919) . In the enlarged Armenia , vassal under the caliphate , says J. Laurent (p. 2-3) , the Armenian feudality “did not assimilate the non-Armenians who were under its power” ; besides, this “Arab Armenia” , adds Laurent (pp. 83-128) was torn between several Armenian aristocratic dynasties , the Bagratounis (Bagratids), the Mamikonians, the Rechtounis , and the Ardzrounis .
The Ardzrouni nobility took the town of Van, possibly in the 9th century, from the Kurdish Mards and created in this part of former Mardastan an Armenian principality called Vaspourakan , whose history was written by Thoma Ardzrouni , member of the governing family, in the 10th century, on the demand of its chief, prince Grigor .
We owe M. Brosset , French orientalist working at Saint-Petersburg under the aegis of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Russia, the translation into French and the annotation of a series of Armenian authors, who wrote in Armenian , from the 10th to the 17th centuries. One of them is Thoma Ardzrouni (‘Histoire des Ardzrouni’ , in ‘Collection d’historiens arméniens’ , vol. 1 , St-Petersburg, 1874.) A few points mentioned by the Armenian author, and commented or annoted by Brosset, should be mentioned. The author brings more information than Khoren on the Mar (Kurds) as inhabiting not only the slopes of the Ararat, but also the area of Nakhchevan (Golten in Armenian). When the author speaks of an area called ‘Tmorik’ in Armenian, Brosset (p. 34) explains it is a ‘Kurdish Armenia’ (Arménie kourde). The construction of “the marvellous , wonderful city of Akhtamar”, says the author (p.239, speaking of the small island in the Lake, near Van) is due to the prince Kagik of Vaspourakan , “who had reduced the Mar (Kurdish Mards) to silence.” This is an indication that Vaspourakan was a part of former Mardastan, and that the Akhtamar Armenian building , indeed a master piece of Christian architecture, was built at a previously Kurdish Mard place .
In the same series of Armenian historians translated and annoted by Brosset , we find Arakel de Tauriz (Tabris) , author of ‘Livre d’histoires’, who lived in the 17th century . For him too, the Mars (Medians) and the Kurds are the same people
By the end of the 9th century the power of the Abbasid caliphate was shrinking to be confined in Arab Iraq. The Arabs who, just after the Islamic conquest, established with their families as Lords among the Kurds or the Persians, had been assimilated by their human environment . As an example the Arab family of Abu Dulaf who came from Kufa or Basra with the Islamic conquest and established among the Kurds in the so-called area of “Iraq Ajami” (southeast of Hamadan, today no longer Kurdish) , was assimilated by the Kurds. Real power in Persia and Kurdistan was in the hands of local non-Arab Muslim dynasties . In Azerbaijan , two Iranic speaking peoples, on one hands the Daylams, mountenaineers from the south of the Caspian, who fought on feet, and on the other hand the Kurds, who were horsemen , disputed power in Tabriz .
The medieval Shaddadi Kurds , who were Muslims , crossed the Araxes River most probably from Azerbaijan and ruled over the area called by the Russians Eeastern Transcaucasia , between the Araxes and the Kur Rivers , that is present-day Armenia and most of later Russian Azerbaijan . They ruled as sovereigns , without taking the title of kings, and had branches , one at Ganja (former Elizabethpol, now depending on Baku) , another at Dvin (Duwain in Arab sources) , ancient capital of Armenia. A later branch of the dynasty ruled in Ani, another former Armenian capital. Professor V. Minorsky , who consecrates the essential of his scholarly ‘Studies in Caucasian History’ (op.cit.) to shed light on the history of the Shaddadid Kurds, says in the introduction to this work : “The Shaddadids are intersting because in their warlike and peaceful activities they came into close contact with their Christian neighbours, the Armenians and the Georgians, and with various northern invaders, including the Alans and the Russians (…). The second point is that the Shaddadids became involved in world politics at a moment when the Byzantine emperors were nervously seeking to secure their positions in Armenia and Transcaucasia, while from the East there was rising the tidal wave of the Turkish invasion which was to change the whole aspect of the Near East. Finally, the Kurdish Shaddadids were one of the manifestations of the Iranian ‘interlude’ – a short but highly significant epoch between the periods of Arab and Turkish domination.”
Another manifestation of what Minorsky calls the “Iranian interlude” , that I would rather call a Kurdish interlude (account being made of the role of Saladin and the Ayyubid Kurds), is represented by the Kurdish Merwanid state in northern Kurdistan , heir to ancient Korduene mentioned above. In 524 H/ AD 1130 , the Kurdish Shaddadi prince Fadlun III of Dvin lost his life before an attack by a Turkic raider, while he was defending his capital city of Dvin, still for the most inhabited by Armenians. One of his Kurdish generals , Shadi son of Merwan , born in the Kurdish village of Ajdanakan , near Dvin , unhappy because of the death of has master Fadlun (Minorsky, 1953) , left Armenia with his two sons, Ayyoub and Sherkuh , seeking Baghdad, where he had friends serving the Abbasid caliph . Shadi was made ‘dizdar’ (commander of a fortress) of Tikrit, in Iraq . He died in Tikrit and his eldest son, Ayyoub, succeeded him as dizdar. Salaheddin Yusuf , son of Ayyoub, was born in Tikrit in 1138. This Salaheddin, son of a Kurdish émigré, says Minorsky , was to become “the mightiest king of Islam” (Saladin).
The Kurds owe a lot to professor Minorsky , but I would allow myself to be in disagreement with him when , in the chapter “Prehistory of Saladin” of the same1953 book, he thinks that Saladin’s grand-father, Shadi, is a Kurd descending from an Arab Omeyyad governor of Tabriz, named Rawwâd, who had governed two centuries earlier and whose descendence had, meanwhile, become Kurds under the corrupted Kurdish name of Râwand . We have cases of Arabs established among Kurds , or Persians, who, with time, became Kurds, or Persians, as the family Abu Dulaf mentioned above, but not in the case of Rawwâd .
The name Râwand is a Kurdish and pre-Islamic name and has nothing to do with Rawwâd. In Ibn Khallikan , Saladin’s ancestry belonged to the Rawâdi Kurds, but in the Sharafnama , they belonged to the Râwendi Kurds. The latter is the correct one . We have in the toponymy of the area and in the classical Roman literature enough evidence to affirm it .
We have had , above , some news about the Kurdish Korduene kingdom , constitued apparently in the 4th century BC , on the upper Tigris, which extended westwards beyond the Euphrates . We know that, under Islam, the Kurdish Merwanid state occupied almost the same area and was, in a way, heir to ancient Korduene .
We have had a few information on the kingdom of Adiabene , to the southeast of Korduene, and member of the Parthian federation . It covered present day Badinan, Mosul, the area around Mount Sinjar, Arbil , which was its capital , and its area , perhaps part , if not all of the area of Sulaimaniya (the city itself is modern, built in 1199 H /AD 1784).
Adiabene is an old pre-Islamic name , a kingdom inhabited by Kurds who lived mainly on breeding and cultivation, partially city-dwellers, as in Arbil . Socially speaking , they were a confederation of semi-nomadic tribes of horsemen, whose aristocracy lived in fortresses . Judaism, then Christianity penetrated into the city of Arbil, but one may presume that the Kurdish tribal aristocracy kept faithful to Mazdaism .
At springtime , the Kurdish Adiabene tribes , or rather their ruling aristocracy , leaving their millenary-old peasantry , of unknown ascendance , busy with cultivation, used to leave their lower strongholds with their flock to their pasture highlands . This is the old Kurdish ‘zozan’ , that even city-dweller Kurds with no flock still practice each ‘Newroz’, the Iranian and Kurdish new year on the 21st of March , to have communion with a blossoming nature. In these annual displacements , the Adiabene tribes used to follow a leading and paramount tribe of theirs called ‘Râwend’, an old pre-Islamic name. The Râwand , or Râvend, left their name to Râwendiz a name constituted of : Râwend + diz (citadel), meaning in ancient Kurdish ‘the citadel of the Râwend’. This name still designates nowadays a small mountain Kurdish town , with an old citadel ( that I visited), in Iraqi Kurdistan, northeast of Arbil, on the way leading to Azerbaijan and the pasture highlands. After the Islamic conquest , the name of the Adiabene Kurdish tribes was corrupted into Hadhbani Kurds, in the same way as the Median Amadana town has been called Hamadhan . Besides , in the classical Muslim authors there are two ‘Râwendiz’ , the one we have seen , northeast of Arbil , and ‘the Rawendiz of Maragha’, in Azerbaijan, the pasture highlands of the Râwend. In the geographical dictionary of Yaqut , Mo’jam al-Buldan (ed. in Arabic by the German F. Wüstenfeld), the Muslim classical author says : “It is reported that Rawendiz of Mosul is an old town built by Biurasf the Great, son of Azdahak..” We are here in the field of the mythical Iranian kings , to tell how old Rawendiz is .
We do not need to have recourse to Iranian legends of old to tell how old the name of Rawendiz is . The Romam historian Pliny the Elder , who lived in the 1st century (circa 23-79) , mentions in his work entitled Natural History, four Kurdish tribes in Azerbaijan : The Aloni , Anzone , Silici, and the Orontes . The British author H.C. Rawlinson, in his paper entitled ‘Memoir on the Site of the Atropatenian Ecbatana’ (pub. in JRGS, vol. x, 1840 : pages 73 ff ) , referring to Pliny and his Kurdish tribes in Azerbaijan , says the name of the fourth one , the Orontes , is a Western corruption of the old Kurdish tribal name of Rawend (Persian form : Arwand .) Rawlinson adds that even at his time, in 1840 , there was a Kurdish tribe still named Rawend in Azerbaijan.
Before the Saljukid danger , Byzantium preferred to rely on the Kurdish Muslim principalities and to obtain from the Armenian nobility to abandon its possessions in the East for honours at Constantinople. In 1021 , that is what emperor Basil II obtained from the Armenian Ardzrouni dynasty of Van , the end of the principality of Vaspourakan for a golden life at the Byzantine capital. In 1042 , emperor Constantine Monomach concluded an official treaty , under the imperial Golden Bull, with the Kurdish Shaddadi Abul –Aswar , prince of Dvin , in Armenia, encouraging him to invade the territory of Ani , what he did (see Minorsky, 1953 : 52-54). It seems that some Armenian families preferred the Islamic faith to the golden exile at the Bosporus .
In 1514, the battle of Chaldiran, in northern Kurdistan (not far from the northeasten edge of Lake Van), opposed the Ottomam sultan Selim 1st , and with him, in his camp, most of the princes of Kurdistan, who had joined him with their own forces , to the Safavid shah Ismail of Persia , who was defeated . The sultan was so satisfied that , in 1515 , he sent his Kurdish counsellor , Idris Bitlisi al-Hakim (The Wise), to travel across Kurdistan in order to receive the loyalty of the Kurdish princes to the Ottoman sultan, in exchange of the recognition by the sultan of their hereditary power on their own principalities and their possessions. Sultan Selim had signed in advance firmans (royal Islamic acts ) to this effect , to be filled up by Idris Bitlisi for each of the princes . Von Hammer , the Austrian author of ‘History of the Ottoman Empire’ (who lived in the 19th century , but whose history on the Ottomans remains a reference work) , writes with this respect : “Idris Bitlisi was asked by the sultan to travel and receive the oath of loyalty from the princes and beys of all the country inhabited by the Kurds, from the coast of Lake Urmia , which is the extreme oriental frontier of Kurdistan, till Malatya, its western frontier” (see the French translation of von Hammer, ‘Histoire de l’Empire ottoman’ , tome IV, 223-224). At this latitude , the borders of the Kurdish country extends indeed from the coast of Lake Urmia to Malataya. With Malatya, we are not far from Zara, on the Kizil-Irmak. Nothing has changed since 1515 . Yet a lot was to change with the advent of Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish Republic.
