Origins of the Kurds

History

The earliest known evidence of a unified and distinct culture in the mountains that date back to the Halaf culture of 8,000-7,400 years ago. This was followed by the Hurrian period (in Mesopotamia and Zagros-Taurus mountains) which lasted from 6,300 to about 2,600 years ago. The Hurrians spread out and eventually dominated significant territories outside their Zagros-Taurus mountainous base. However, like the Kurds, they did not expand very far from the mountains. As they settled, the Hurrians divided into a number of clans and subgroups, founding city-states, kingdoms and empires with eponymous clan names. All these tribes were part of the to as the land of the "Karda" or "Qarduchi" and the land of the "Guti" or "Gutium." Scholars have disproved the alleged connection between the modern Kurds and the ancient Qarduchi, Qardu, Karduchia, and Corduene, by means of linguistic and philological analysis. [Maria T. O'Shea, Trapped Between the Map and Reality, 72 (London: Routledge, 2004).] The Babylonians called these people "Gardu" and "Qarda".Fact|date=October 2007 In neighboring area of Assyria, they were "Qurti" or "Guti". When the Greeks entered the territory, they referred to these people as either "Kardukh", "Carduchi", "Gordukh", Kyrti(oi), the Romans referred to them as "Cyrti." The Armenians called the Kurds "Gortukh" or "Gortai-kh" and the Persians knew them as "Gord" or "Kord". Any connection between the Kurds and the Medes cannot be established because no evidence of a written language of the Medes has been discovered; the Medes either had none, or used Assyrian as their language. [Sir Percy M. Sykes, 1 A History of Persia 121 (London: Routledge, 2003); John Curtis et al., Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia 19 (University of California Press, 2005)] The Assyrians used the term "Medes" to refer to Persians.

Genetics

Genetic testing of randomly chosen Kurdish populations has begun to shed light on the disparate origins of the Kurds. The results reveal a variety of connections between the Kurds including regional variations and different links to the past when assessing paternal and maternal lineages. [Refer to: "Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor" [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v74n5/40813/40813.text.html] .] In the overall sense, the Kurds share some genetic ties to other speakers of Iranian languages.

Connection with the Jewish populations

There also appear to be little links to northern Semitic peoples such as the Assyrians and possibly ancient Hebrews, but less links to southern Semites in the Arabian peninsula in spite of the region having been conquered very early by Muslim Arabs. The recent genetic research suggests a possible ancient bond between Jews and Kurds as well. In 2001, a team of scientists discovered that three Jewish communities of Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Kurdish Jews surprisingly shared more haplotypes and chromosomes with Muslim Kurds than with either Palestinians or Bedouins.

In 2001, Nebel et al compared three Jewish and three non-Jewish groups from the Middle East: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Kurdish Jews from Israel; Muslim Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area; Bedouin from the Negev; and Muslim Kurds. They concluded that Sephardim and Kurdish Jews were genetically indistinguishable, but that both were slightly significantlywhat different from Ashkenazim (who were most closely related to the Muslim Kurds). Nebel et al had earlier (2000) found a large genetic relationship between Jews and Palestinians, but in this study found an even higher relationship of Jews with Iraqi Kurds. They conclude that the common genetic background shared by Jews and other Middle Eastern groups predates the division of Middle Easterners into different ethnic groups.

Interestingly, Nebel et al (2001) also found that the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), considered the most definitive Jewish haplotype, was found among 10.1% of Kurdish Jews, 7.6% of Ashkenazim, 6.4% of Sephardim, 2.1% of Palestianian Arabs, and 1.1% of Muslim Kurds. The CMH and the most frequent Muslim Kurdish haplotype (MKH) were the same on five markers (out of six) and very close on the other marker. The MKH was shared by 9.5% of Muslim Kurds, 2.6% of Sephardim, 2.0% of Kurdish Jews, 1.4% of Palestinian Arabs, and 1.3% of Ashkenazim. The general conclusion is that these similarities result mostly from the sharing of ancient genetic patterns, and not from more recent admixture between the groups (p. 1099). Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman has suggested that the CMH is “likely the marker of the Jews’ and Arabs’ shared Patriarch, Abraham” (2004: 20), but much more analysis is needed on the CMH in populations throughout the world. In this study, Kurdish Jews were found to be close to Muslim Kurds, but so were Ashkenazim and Sephardim, suggesting that much if not most of the genetic similarity between Jewish and Muslim Kurds is from ancient times. [ [http://www.cryptojews.com/Comparing_DNA.htm Home ] ]

Connection with other Middle Eastern and Mediterranean groups

According to a recent study, Kurds' ancestors were from an old Mediterranean substratum, i.e. Hurrian and Hittite groups. Moreover the Aryan ancestry of the Kurds is not supported by genetic analyses. [ [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11380939&dopt=Abstract HLA alleles and haplotypes in the Turkish populati... [Tissue Antigens. 2001 - PubMed Result ] ]

Genetic distance comparisons have revealed that the Turkic and Turkmen speaking peoples in the Caspian area cluster with the Kurds, Greeks and Iranics. [ [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110485882/ABSTRACT] ]

According to a recent genetic study based on genetic distances and haplotypes, Kurds are classified as part of the eastern Mediterranean stock, close to the Turks of Anatolia. [Refer to: "The correlation Between Languages and Genes: The Usko-Mediterranean Peoples", Human Immunology, 62, p. 1057, 2001.]

Lastly, recent evidence also points to European genetic links as well. Overall, the Kurds are a varied population and the genetic inquiries into their background will require larger sampling before being deemed conclusive.

Muslim Kurds

The Kurds are considered an ancient autochthonous population [Kinnane 1970; Pelletiere 1984] who may even be the descendants of the shepherds who first populated the highlands during the Neolithic period. [Comas et al. 2000] Although Kurdistan came under the successive dominion of various conquerors, including the Armenians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Iraqis, [Kinnane, 1970] they- as well as Druze Arabs- may be the only western Asian group that remained relatively unmixed by the influx of invaders, because of their protected and inhospitable mountainous homeland. [Pelletiere, 1984.] The Y chromosome variation of Muslim Kurds falls within the spectrum observed in other populations (Turks and Arabs) living in the same region. The three populations are closer to Jews & Arabs than to Europeans. This is in good agreement with data on classical markers (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). However, on the basis of mtDNA polymorphisms, Kurds were reported to be more closely related to Europeans than to Middle Easterners. [Comas, et al. 2000 [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v69n5/013033/013033.web.pdf] .]

Recent genetic tests also do not support the hypothesis of the origin of the Zazas being in northern Iran; genetically they are more similar to other Kurdish groups. [ [http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Kurds.pdf ahg_174.tex ] ] The zazas claim themselves to be kurds, and it is very possible that their language was a dialect that got more and more distinct from kurdish.

Connection with European groups

In another study, Kurds showed mtDNA lineages that clearly belong to the European gene pool. On the basis of mtDNA variation, the Kurdish samples appear more closely related to Europeans than to Middle Eastern samples. [ [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/71008903/ABSTRACT] ]

References

ee also

*History of the Kurds
*Y-Chromosome
*Ten Lost Tribes