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The Poetry of Kurdistan: Language Embodies Kurdish National Unity
| Article
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18657 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
5,036 Words |
| Author
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Joyce Blau
Joyce Blau is professor of Kurdish language, literature,
history, and civilization at the Institut National des Langues
et Civilsations Orientales in Paris. She is a member of the
Kurdish Institute of Paris. |
Despite the genocidal wars against the Kurds by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, their history is little known or studied in the West. Some twenty to twenty-five million Kurds live in a vast, continuous, and homogeneous territory in the heart of the Middle East, and Kurds from the fourth-largest national group in the area (after the Arabs, Turks, and Persians). The more than 300,000 square miles that is considered their traditional territory covers most of the mountainous region that extends from the Black Sea in the north to the Mesopotamian steppes in the south and the Zagros Mountains in the east. The Kurdish mountain ranges are the source of many rivers, notably the biblical Tigris and Euphrates.
But the Kurds' mountainous environment and tribal, seminomadic way of life have not favored the creation of a nation-state. In fact, their territory, Kurdistan (literally meaning "the land of the Kurds," is a country without political or legal existence. The name Kurdistan is used only by geographers, scholars, and Kurdish nationalists. Politically, the Kurdish region was divided after World War I between the USSR, Turkey, Persia, Iraq, and Syria, despite the protests and opposition of its inhabitants. Since that time the Kurds have found themselves reduced to a state of being foreign minorities in their own land.
The Kurds have always lived in Kurdistan. Indeed, the area has been settled since the prehistoric agrarian Ubaid culture first appeared in 6000 B.C., in what eventually would become northern Mesopotamia. Superimposed upon the indigenous population were waves of Indo-European invaders who came down from the Caucasian mountains around 2000 B.C. Among these were the Medes, horsemen and herdsmen who settled in the area now occupied by the Kurds to become the local aristocracy. The Medes allied themselves with Babylon against the Assyrians, and in 612 B.C. they captured the Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Kurdish nationalists, who consider themselves the descendants of the Medes, claim this historic victory as the beginning of the Kurdish era.
The origins of the Kurds
Historically, the origins of the Kurds--as of most peoples--are still obscure. Their language identifies them as originally part of the hordes of Indo-Europeans who invaded the area. The Kurds probably assimilated most of the area's indigenous peoples, who then adopted Kurdish language and ethnic identity. Linguistically, they are closely related to the Persians (as Kurdish falls within the Irano-Aryan group of languages); they are unrelated to the Semitic Arabs, who
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