Exploring Kurdish Origins

The question of Kurdish origins, i.e., who the Kurds are and where they come from, has for too long remained an enigma. Doubtless in a few words one can respond, for example, that Kurds are the end-product of numerous layers of cultural and genetic material superimposed over thousands of years of internal migrations, immigrations, cultural innovations and importations. But identifying the roots and the course of evolution of present Kurdish ethnic identity calls for a greater effort. It calls for the study of each of the many layers of these human movements and cultural influences, as many and as early in time as is currently possible. And to achieve this, one needs to delve deep into antiquity, and debate notions as diverse as anthropology, linguistics, genetics, theology, economics and demography, not to mention simple old narrative history.

Presently, at least 5 distinct layers can be identified with various degrees of certainty.

Halaf Cultural Period

The earliest evidence thus far of a unified and distinct culture shared by the people inhabiting the Kurdish mountains relates to the period of the ‘Halaf Culture’ that began around 8000 years ago. Named after the ancient mound of Tell Halaf west of the town of Qamishli in what is now the Syrian Kurdistan, this culture is best-known for its easily recognizable style of pottery which, fortunately, was produced in abundance. Exquisitely painted, delicately designed Halaf pottery are easily distinguishable from earlier and later productions. Judging from the pottery remains alone, Halaf culture appears to have been extant between 6000 to 5400 BC, a period of about 600 years.

In fact taking Halaf pottery as a prime example, many archaeologists now point out by that shared pottery style is a simple but crucial tool in helping to classify prehistoric cultures in the Middle East. Yet, while shared pottery can imply shared culture, it can no more imply shared ethnicity for the people who produced them than shared rug designs can now. Today, for example, the Turkic Qashqai, Luric Mamasani and the Arab Baseri peoples of southern Iran all share similar rug designs. Ethno-linguistically, however, these three peoples share virtually nothing else. This fact should serve as a clear warning to those who would use shared artistic styles and plastic arts as an indication of shared ethnicity. Pottery styles must be taken in tandem with other evidence in order to make a case for shared culture and ethnicity. But, wide-spread Halafian excavation sites have much more in common than styles of pottery.

Solid evidence has now emerged indicating striking similarities in food, technology, architecture, ritual practices and ornaments, all of which merge to suggest something more substantive. Archaeologist Julian Reade, now a curator at the British Museum’s Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities thus states: "While we really know little about how the inhabitants of a Halaf village thought, let alone what languages or languages they used for thinking, and what levels of abstraction could be expressed verbally, it seems likely they had comparable social structures, sharing many of the same implicit values, and that even those who did not travel regularly many have met from time to time in a religious or administrative centers." (footnote 1)

With the aid of these archaeological criteria, J. Reade as well as M. Roaf (archaeologist and former director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, now at the University of California, Berkeley) have determined the boundaries of the Halaf culture. They coincide almost exactly with the area the ethnic Kurds still call home: from Kirmanshah to Adyaman, and from Afrin near the Mediterranean Sea to northern areas of Lake Van. The distribution of the Halaf pottery and the distribution of ethnic Kurds today are a near-perfect match. The single exception is the Mosul-Tikrit region of the Mesopotamian lowlands. (footnote 2) James Mellaart, better known for his excavation at Catal Hüyük, meanwhile, has found many of the motifs and composite designs present on the Halaf pottery and figurines still extant in the textile and decorative designs of the modern Kurds who now inhabit the same excavated Halafian sites. (footnote 3)

It is highly unlikely that the Halaf people constituted an immigrant population. According to several demographic studies, the Zagros mountains were the site of perennial population surplus and pressure from 12000 to 5000 years ago, which must have resulted in many episodes of emigration. (footnote 4) This population pressure in the Zagros-Taurus folds was a consequence of successive technological advances in domestication of common crops and animals, and resulted in a prosperous agricultural economy and trade, ergo high population density. The Halafian phenomenon is likely the result of a massive internal migration which succeeded to culturally unify the population in Kurdistan.

The fact that the Halaf Culture spread so rapidly over such a considerable distance across the rugged Kurdish mountains is thought to have been the result of the development of a new life-style and economic activity necessitating mobility, namely nomadic herding. All the pre-requisite technologies had been developed and the necessary animals, particularly the dog, had now been domesticated by the settled agriculturists. The Halafian figurines of dogs (with jaunty upcurled tails uncharacteristic of any wolf), excavated from Jarmo in central Kurdistan is the earliest definitive evidence of the development of "man’s best friend" and the herder’s most prized protection. (footnote 5) Nomadic herding has since been a very mobile cornerstone of the Zagros-Taurus cultures and societies.

Ubaid Cultural Period

The Halaf Cultural period ends with the arrival, circa 5300 BC of a new culture and, quite likely a new people: the so-called Ubaidians.

Named after the archaeological mound of al-Ubaid in modern Iraq, where their remains first excavated, the people of Ubaid culture expanded in time from the plains of Mesopotamia into the mountains. The culture of the Ubaidians, or the proto-Euphratians, as they are sometimes called, caused a hybrid culture to emerge in the mountains. This new cultural phase in Kurdistan comprised of the earlier Halafian heritage, superimposed by this new, but foreign influence. The Ubaid cultural ascendance predominated in most of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia for the ensuing 1000 years.

Of the language and ethnic affiliation of the Ubaidians we know nothing beyond the barest conjecture. However, it is they who gave the names ‘Tigris’ and ‘Euphrates’ to the primary rivers of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia. (footnote 6)

Personally, I have come to suspect that the Ubaidian people may be identical or related to the enigmatic "Khaldi." The Khaldi are well represented in ancient Kurdistan, and were time Kurdicized to survive today as many Kurdish clans and tribes bearing variations of the old name, such as the modern Khallikan.(footnote 7) The modern survivors are found precisely were the classical Graeco-Roman sources recorded the Khaldi around 2000 years ago: mainly in northern and western Kurdistan. In support of this one may note the important fact that as the Ubaidians were found in lowland Mesopotamia as also in highland Kurdistan, the same is true of the Khaldi who were found in large numbers in both regions. Like their highland branch, the lowland Khaldi were also in time assimilated. In Mesopotamia, the Ubaidians were Semitized, becoming known as the celebrated Chaldeans.

The cultural impact of the Ubaidians on the mountain communities, nonetheless, was vast, although apparently it was not particularly deep.

Hurrian Cultural Period.

By approximately 4300 BC, a new culture, and possibly a new people, came to dominate the mountains: the Hurrians.

Of the Hurrians we know much more, and the volume of our knowledge becomes greater as the time becomes more recent. We know, for example, that the Hurrians spread far and wide into the Zagros-Taurus-Pontus mountain systems, and intruded for a time also on the neighboring plains of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau. However, they never expanded too far from the mountains. Their economy was surprisingly integrated and focused, along with their political bonds, which runs largely parallel with the Zagros-Taurus-Pontus mountains, rather than radiating out to the lowlands, as was the case during the preceding Ubaid cultural period. Mountain-plain economic exchanges remained secondary in importance, judging by the archaeological remains of goods and their origin.

The Hurrians spoke a language, or properly, languages, of the north-eastern group of the Caucasic family of languages, distantly related to modern Chechen, Lezgian and Lakz. Their direction of Hurrian expansion is not yet understood, and by no means should be taken as having been north-south, i.e., an expansion out of the Caucasus, as often is presumed without any evidence. It may well be that it was the prolific Hurrians who introduced Northeast Caucasian languages into the Caucasus, instead of having originated from that tiny, sparsely-populated region.

For a long time the states founded by the Hurrians remained small, until around 2500 BC when larger political-military entities evolved out of the older, Hurrian city-states. Six polities are of special note: Urartu, Mushq/Mushku, Urkish, Subar/Saubar, Baini, Guti/Qutil and Manna. The kingdom of Mushku is now believed to have brought about the final downfall of the Hittites in Anatolia. Their name survives in the city of Mush/Mus in north-central Kurdistan of Turkey. The Subaru who operated from the areas north of modern Arbil in central Kurdistan have left their name in the populous and historic Kurdish tribal confederacy of Zubari, who still inhabit the areas north of Arbil.

The Guti/Qutils of central and southern Kurdistan, after gradually unifying the smaller mountain principalities, became strong enough in 2250 BC to actually annex Sumeria and the rest of lowland Mesopotamia. A Guti/Qutil dynasty ruled Sumeria for 130 years until 2120 BC.

Four legendary emporia, Arrap’ha, Melidi Washukani and Aratta served the Hurrians in their inter-regional trade with the economies outside the mountains. With certainty, Arrap’ha is to be identified with modern Kirkuk, Melidi with Malatya, while Washukani and Aratta are probably to be identified, respectively, with the rich archaeological sites of Godin Teppa (near Kangawar in southeastern Kurdistan, Iran) and Tell Fakhariya (west of Qamishli, in west-central Kurdistan, Syria). By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the culture and people of Kurdistan appear to have been unified under a Hurrian identity.

The legacy of the Hurrians to the present culture of the Kurds is fundamental. It is manifest in the realm of Kurdish religion, mythology, material and martial arts, and even the genetics. Nearly three-quarters of Kurdish clan names and roughly half of topographical and urban names are also of Hurrian origin, e.g., the names of the clans of Bukhti, Tirikan, Bazayni, Bakran, Mand; rivers Murad, Balik and Khabur, lake Van; the towns of Mardin, Ziwiya and Dinawar. Mythological and religious symbols present in the art of the later Hurrian dynasties, such as the Mannaeans and Kassites of eastern Kurdistan, and the Lullus of the southeast, present in part what can still be observed in the Kurdish ancient religion of Yazdanism, better-known today by its various denominations as Alevism, Yezidism, and Yarisanism (Ahl-i Haqq).

It is fascinating to recognize the origin of many tattooing motifs still used by the traditional Kurds on their bodies as replicas of those which appear on the Hurrian figurines. One such is the combination that incorporates serpent, sun disc, dog and comb/rain motifs. In fact some of these Hurrian tattoo motifs are also present in the religious decorative arts of the Yezidi Kurds, as found most prominently at the great shrine at Lalish.

By the end of the Hurrian period, Kurdistan seem to have been culturally and ethnically homogenized to form a single civilization which was identified as such by the neighboring cultures and peoples. Sumerians, for example, called everybody in the Kurdish mountains as "Subaru," while the Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians used the term "Guti/Qutil." To the ancient Jews, they were are all the "Qarduim." All these ancient appellations have modern representatives in the names of major Kurdish clans, and were by no means the artifacts of the imagination of those early Mesopotamians. The lowlanders of Mesopotamia must have seen the uniformity of the culture (and presumably the ethnicity) of the peoples of the Kurdish mountains, prompting them to call these mountaineers by a single native ethnic/tribal name that was most familiar to them at any given time. Likewise, today we know all of these same mountain people as Kurds. This portrait of a culturally homogenized Kurdistan was not to last.