Kurds in Iraq

The Kurds are said to be the largest people never to have achieved statehood. However, the idea that the speakers of the many different Kurdish dialects – scattered across mountainous areas of eastern Anatolia, northern Iraq and western Iran, with smaller pockets in northern Syria, Armenia and north-eastern Iran – form a coherent ‘people’ is a relatively new one.

Kurdish is a language of the north-western Iranian group, and descent from people identified in the Bible as Medes, from what’s now Iran, has been claimed. Early Mesopotamian records mention tribes with names that could be linked to ‘Kurd’, but modern Kurds may not have a single ancient ethnic heritage; certainly, the tribe has long been the primary level of identity and organisation.

The name ‘Kurd’ can definitively be traced to the period following the tribes’ conversion to Islam in the seventh century AD. Even after that, they continued