Kurds: ethnology, religion, geopolitics

Kurdish ethnic groups and tribes

The Kurds are an Indo-European people who, from a certain point in time, began to play an important role in the area encompassing eastern Anatolia, the northern interfluvial area, and northwestern Iran - the territory formerly inhabited by the Hurrians, who later migrated north to the Caucasus region.

The Kurds are descended from the Midians, nomadic Iranian tribes who arrived in the late 2nd-early 1st millennium to the northwest of modern Iran, where they founded a state called Midia. In the 7th century B.C. they created a huge empire, which included many peoples, territories and languages. The core of the Medes remained in the same territories that became the pole of their expansion, where their capital Ekbatana (the modern Iranian city of Hamadan) was also located. Direct descendants of the Medes, in addition to the Kurds, were the Caucasian peoples of the Talysh and Tats (which must be strictly separated from the Mountain Jews).

Since the Kurds lived in the territory of the ancient Hurrians and Urartians, who were also assimilated Armenians and Kartvelians, we can assume that there was a Hurrian component in their ethnogenesis. At the same time, the captive peoples of the Guties (Tochars), Kassirs and Lullubaeans in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iran have lived since time immemorial and some historians consider them to be Indo-European. They may also have participated in the ethnogenesis of the Medes and Kurds. The ancient name of the Kurds was “kurtii,” Greek Κύρτιοι and references to them as a people inhabiting the regions of Atropatene (Azerbaijan) and northern Mesopotamia have survived in ancient sources.

In Persian chronicles the term “kurt” (kwrt) referred to the nomadic Iranian tribes that inhabited northwestern Iran, which allows the Kurds to be included in the typology of Turkic societies.

Several groups can be distinguished among the Kurds:

• The northern Kurds, who form the basis of today's Kurdish people - the Kurmanji (kurmancî), the name - kur mancî - interpreted as “son of the Midian people.”

• The southern part of the Kurmanji Kurds is referred to by the Iranian ethnonym Sorani;

• A separate group are the Zaza Kurds, who call themselves dımli, dymli, and are descended from the northern Iranian peoples who once lived in the Dailam area of the southern Caspian Sea (these people were called “kaspi”);

• The Ghurani Kurds, who once inhabited the Daylam region but later migrated further south than the Zaza Kurds, have the same origin;

• The southernmost are the Kelhuri Kurds and the Feili and Laki tribes,

• In the past the Lurians, who lived in southwestern Iran, were counted among the Kurds, while today they are commonly called Iranians.

There is also an assumption of kinship between Kurds and Baluchis.

Unlike other Iranian peoples, the Kurds have long maintained a nomadic lifestyle, which, combined with their mountainous habitat, has enabled them to keep many archaic features intact, continuing an ongoing link with Turanian culture.

Today the Kurds are a large people (more than 40,000,000) living on the territory of four states-Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran - but have no statehood of their own. This is also an indicator of the Kurds' preservation of a traditional society that has been affected by modernization to a lesser extent than the peoples among whom the Kurds live. However, modernization processes are catching up with them as well, which created a “Kurdish problem” in the last century, i.e., it raised the question of creating a separate Kurdish state, because in Political Modernity one cannot think of a people outside the state, i.e., a political nation.

Midia and medieval Kurdish polarities

In Kurdish tradition there is the idea of their connection to Noah's Ark. Because the Kurds lived in the areas adjacent to Mount Ararat, they consider themselves direct descendants of the villagers at its foot, which Noah founded when he descended to the valley at the end of the Flood. This same legend of an indigenous and original presence in the areas between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, in the region of Mount Ararat, is also found among other Caucasian peoples - particularly Armenians, Georgians and Chechens who, each according to their own ethnocentric logic, find a range of symbolic evidence there. Twentieth-century Kurds justify this by their descent from Urartians and Hurrians, which is generally true of Armenians, Kartvelians and Vainakhs, whose ethnogenesis - though to varying degrees - includes Hurrians. However, the proper Kurdish identity is Turanian (Indo-European nomadic tribes) and more specifically Madianese.

Assuming a direct genetic link with the Medes, the Kurds can be considered the bearers of an ancient state tradition, predating Persia and claiming succession to a world empire after the joint conquest of Assyria with the New Babylonian Chaldeans. But in later eras, beginning with the Achaemenids, Iran was in the hands of the Persians, who inhabited the southern territories of Iran, and the lands of Midia, along with Armenia and other territories, were only Iranian provinces.

At a certain period, after the death of Alexander the Great, the nomadic (Turkic) Parthian tribes, who founded the Parthian dynasty, also became the head of Iran, but the cultural basis still remained the specifically Persian tradition, which became even more pronounced in the Sasanian era. However, there is a theory, shared by many historians, that Parthians and Kurds are related, as both inhabited the northern territories of Iran and belonged to nomadic Indo-European peoples. Later, the peoples of northern Iran and Atropatene (Azerbaijan) are on the periphery of this process, and during the next wave of Iranian statehood, coming right from the north under the Safavids, the Iranian Turks (Shiite-Kizilbashi) turn out to be the base of the political elite. The Kurds do not play an important role in this process.

Historically, the Kurds, descendants of the Medes, were Zoroastrians and the Zoroastrian religion of Sassanid Iran was traditional for them.

Beginning in the first century AD, Christianity began to be preached among the Kurds. Eusebius of Caesarea reports that the apostle Thomas preached among the Midi and Parthians. Since the Christian Kurds lived in the eastern regions, Nestorianism later prevailed among them, making them part of the Iranian Church. There were many influential centers of Nestorian religion in Kurdistan that played an important role in the ages: the center of Erbil in the 16th century, that of Jezir in the 17th century, and the Kurdish city of Kujan became the center of a Nestorian diocese in the 19th century. Miaphysitism also spread (this time under Armenian influence).

Beginning in the 7th century AD, when Iran was invaded by the Arabs, who reached the Caucasus and the southern Caspian Sea, i.e., occupied all the territory historically inhabited by the Kurds, the latter found themselves under the authority of the Arab Caliphate and under the influence of Islam, respectively. At first, the Kurds fiercely resisted the Arabs in their conquest of Holwan, Tikrit, Mosul, Jizra and southern Armenia and later participated in anti-Arab uprisings. Gradually, however, the Kurds themselves began to convert to Islam. Sunni Islam of the Shafiite mazkhab is more widespread among them, bringing them closer to the Muslims of Dagestan and the North Caucasus as a whole. A small minority of Kurds practice Shiism. During the period of the spread of Sufism (9th century) the Kurds willingly accepted its teachings, and Sufism in its two main versions, naqshbandiya and kadyriya, became an integral part of Kurdish Islam. However, Sufism did not spread until the 16th century.

In some periods, the Kurds created large-scale political formations and established ruling dynasties. One such Kurdish dynasty was the Shaddadids, who established an independent state on the territory of Caucasian Albania in the 11th-12th centuries. The Saddadids practiced Sunni Islam and presented themselves as adherents of Islam, unlike Christian Georgia and Armenia. In 1072 the dynasty split into two branches, Ganja and Ani. The population of the Ganja and Ani emirates was predominantly Armenian and the culture predominantly Persian.

The Saddads ruled until the end of the 12th century. Later, the Kurds recognized the rule of the Seljuks, with whom they were allied, and obtained the right to establish another vassal entity, the Emirate of Ani.

Another Kurdish dynasty was founded in Jebel Province in 959 by a Barzikan Kurdish leader, Hasanwayhid bin Hasan, who was overthrown by the Buyids.

Another dynasty, the most famous, was that of the Mervanids (990 to 1096). This Kurdish dynasty was founded by Abu Ali bin Mervan bin Dustaq.

Salah ad-Din (1138 - 1193), the greatest military leader of the 12th century, of Kurdish ethnicity and belonging to the same Ravadi tribe, from which the founder of the Shaddadi dynasty - Mohammed Shaddad ben Kartu - should be mentioned separately.

Salah ad-Din deposed the last Shiite ruler of the Fatimid state, eliminated the Fatimid Caliphate, conquered vast territories in the Middle East, including the Holy Land, from the Crusaders, and became sultan of Egypt, Iraq, Hijaz, Syria, Kurdistan, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, establishing the Ayyubid dynasty, which existed until 1250. But Salah ad-Din in his exploits did not speak on behalf of the Kurds as a community, but on behalf of the Seljuks, in whose service he was and on whose army he relied.

However, the very fact of Kurdish dynasties confirms the classic pattern of the Turanian beginning: warlike Indo-European nomads often become the founders of dynasties or the political-military elite of sedentary states.

The area inhabited by the Kurds until the 13th century was called “Jebel” (literally “Plateau”) by the Arabs; later it became known as “Kurdistan.” By the early 16th century there were small Kurdish principalities or emirates in Kurdistan: Jazire, Hakari, Imadia, Hasankayf, Ardelan (in Iranian Kurdistan), Soran, and Baban. These were joined by smaller fiefdoms. In addition, since the early Middle Ages (1236 to 1832) the Yezidi Kurds had a small emirate in northern Mesopotamia Sheikhan. The “ideal state” of the Yazidis, part political-administrative, part ethno-religious, included Sheikhan and Sinjar, as well as the sacred valley of Lalesh, where the main Yazidi shrine is located-the tomb of Sheikh Adi, founder of the Kurdish religion of Yazidism.

After the establishment of the Safavid dynasty, the Iranians deliberately destroyed the independence of the Kurdish principalities. The memory of the heroic resistance of the Kurds is preserved in Kurdish legends about the defense of the Dymdım fortress. After the defeat of the Shah by the Ottomans under Selim I, most of Kurdistan came under the authority of the Turks, who also began to abolish the autonomous Kurdish principalities.

During the Mongol conquests, most of the Kurdish-populated areas came under the rule of the Halaguids, and after Kurdish resistance was crushed, many Kurdish tribes moved from the plains to the mountainous regions, partly repeating the civilization scenario of the Caucasian peoples, with whom the Kurds were in many ways very close. Some Kurds also settled in the Caucasus.

Later Kurdish territories ended up in the border area between Ottoman Turkey and Iran, which had a painful divisive effect on the cultural horizon and gave a tragic dimension to Kurdish Dasein. Direct descendants of the great Medes who led the world empire, they were deprived of political power and divided between two warring empires, neither of which was for the Kurds theirs all the way. With the Iranians they were linked by Indo-European ancestry, ancient Zoroastrian roots and linguistic proximity, while with the Turks by Sunnism and a common nomadic and warlike lifestyle, which made them allies even in the Seljuk era.

Yazidism and its layers

The majority of Kurds belong to Sunni Islam, but, in all cases, Kurds strongly feel their difference from other nations while keeping their identity intact. This identity is the Kurdish horizon, which for centuries has been closely linked to the mountains and the mountainous landscape that hosts them. Like the Kalash and Nuristan, the Kurds have retained many archaic characteristics of the Indo-European Turan peoples and have never fully intermingled with either the sedentary Persians (mostly Shiite) or the Sunni Turks, despite close and prolonged cultural contacts with both.

This Kurdish identity is most clearly expressed in the heterodox (from the Islamic point of view) phenomenon of Yezidism, a particular and unique religious movement among the northern branch of the Kurds, the Kurmanju. This current emerged as an offshoot of Sufism in the 12th century, based on the teachings of the Sufi sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (1072 - 1162), who came to Iraqi Kurdistan from the Balbek region of Lebanon. Sheikh Adi was well acquainted with important figures in Sufism such as al-Ghazali and Abdul-Qadir al-Gilani, the founder of the tariqat qadiriyyah. The Yazidis themselves believe that Sheikh Adi, whom they venerate as the embodiment of divinity, simply reformed and renewed according to divine mandate the oldest faith, which they call “Sharfadin”.

The teachings of the Yazidis are virtually uninvestigated because of the closed nature of this religious group, which keeps away not only from other denominations and peoples, but also from the bulk of the Kurds, and is very reluctant to communicate the fundamentals of its faith. According to one legend, the Yazidis possess collections of sacred texts that representatives of the highest castes - the sheikhs and pirs - carefully hide from others. Only two of these texts-clearly fragmentary and composed of heterogeneous elements-have become known and have been translated into European languages: the “Book of Revelations” (Kitab-ol-Jilwa) and the “Black Book” (Mashaf-Resh). They were published in English in 1919 and in Russian in 1929. Overall, however, the Yezidi religion has remained virtually unknown to the present day.

Some details of Yezidi religious theology have given surrounding peoples, especially Muslims, the impression that the Yezidi religion worships Shaitan (the Christian devil). However, this tradition is certainly something more complex, although it clearly differs significantly from Islam-even in its Sufi form.

There are several versions about the origin of the Yazidi religion, which can be seen not as mutually exclusive, but as corresponding to different layers of this tradition.

The deepest layer is Zoroastrianism, which manifests itself in the doctrine of the seven archangels (Amesha Spenta of Mazdaism), fire worship, sun worship, and even the main symbol of the Yezidis - the Great Peacock, sometimes represented only by a bird (the Yezidis in the “Black Book” are called Angar) - may be a version of the image of the sacred Zoroastrian bird Simurg. All Kurds in general (including Yezidis) admit that before the adoption of Islam they practiced the Zoroastrian religion, so the preservation in the Indo-European mountains of fragments of the ancient faith seems quite natural. Also close to Zoroastrian clothing are the sacred garments of the Yezidis: a white shirt (kras) with a special embroidered collar (toka yezid or grivan) and a long sacred belt of wool (banne pshte), called “kusti” by the Zoroastrians.

The name Yezid comes from the son of the first Umayyad caliph, Muwiya I Yazid. The Yazidis themselves sometimes point out that the reformer (or founder) of their teachings, Sheikh Adi, was himself a descendant of Muawiya through Yazid. Yazid was one of the main opponents of Imam Ali and his family and is considered responsible for the death of Imam Hussein. That is why he is not very popular among Muslims, and Shiites openly and vehemently hate him. At the same time, traces of the historical Yazid have been almost completely erased by the Yazidis, anti-Shia pathos is absent, and Yazid or Yazid himself is considered a heavenly deity (perhaps the highest). This is because Iranian etymology interprets the word Yazid or Yezid as a Middle Persian word yazad or yazd (from the ancient Iranian base *yazatah), meaning “deity”, “angel”, “being worthy of worship”. Therefore, the very name “yazidi” can be interpreted as “people of angels” or “people of worshippers”, but also as “people of Yazd”. that is, “people of God”.

But the most obvious trace of Zoroastrianism is the complete caste-based closure of the Yezidi community. It is strictly divided into three castes: two priestly (sheikhs and pirs) and one secular (mrid), although the secular caste, to which most Yezidis belong, represents by definition the followers of the spiritual masters and is more closely related to the two upper castes. Thus, every mrid (simple yazid) must have a “brother in the hereafter”, who can only be a member of the sheikh and feast caste. The “brother in the afterlife” should help the deceased yezid pass through the thin bridge (the direct equivalent of the Zoroastrian Chinwat bridge) to heaven. Castes are strictly endogenous and it is strictly forbidden for all Yazidis to marry or have extramarital relations with members of another caste. This is justified by the fact that Yezidis belong to a special kind of people, radically-ontologically-different from others. Yezidi legend has it that the first human beings Adam and Eve, who did not know marriage, tried to generate offspring from their own seed by placing it in two jars. After 9 months, male and female children emerged in Adam's jug from his seed, and stinking worms emerged in Eve's jug from her “seed”. The Yezidis believe they are continuing the line of these children of Adam created without females. The rest of the people came from the later sons of Adam, already conceived by Eve. Here we see the classic Zoroastrian motif of the sacred purity of the sons of Light, who must in no way mix with the sons of Darkness. Hence the strict endogamy of castes.

The first of the three main rules of the Yazidi religion is the prohibition of caste mixing. The second rule is the prohibition against changing faiths. The third is the prohibition of disobedience to priests and even more so of violence against members of the Sheikh and festive castes.

All these fundamental and foundational elements of the Yezidi religion and its ethno-political organization go directly back to classical Zoroastrianism.

At the same time, there is a curious feature in Yezidi myths and legends that has, this time, Turanian roots. It concerns the ban on the cultivation of grains. Adam's own fall is described not as a consequence of eating an apple, but as a consequence of eating the grain forbidden by God. This is a classic feature of nomadic society, which perceived grain-an integral part of agricultural culture-as a forbidden realm, a kind of “hell for the nomad”. For a bearer of a purely Turanian culture, eating bread is a sin. The same pattern has been preserved in the Indo-European Talysh people, who are close in language and culture to the Kurds, but unlike the Kurds (especially the southerners - Zaza and Gurani) the Talysh have not abandoned their territories and moved from the Caspian Sea to Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Middle East, remaining in the land of Azerbaijan. Thus, a marked Turkic trace is added to classical Zoroastrianism in Kurdish Yezidism.

Some elements of heterodox Iranism combined with Judeo-Christian motifs can also be distinguished. Judeo-Christian currents are close to Iranism both genetically and conceptually in their structure. In contrast, Judeo-Christian sects had a great influence on Manichaeism and, consequently, Manichaeism. Traces of Judeo-Christian Christianity are present among the Yezidis in the preserved rites of baptism and communion with wine during the sacred meal. In addition, Yezidis practice circumcision, which also corresponds to the Judeo-Christian cycle. The fact that the main Yezidi shrine in Lalesh was once a Nestorian monastery thus fits well into this sequence. These same heterodox Iranian-Christian currents (such as the Mandeans, Sabeans, etc.) were also characterized by Gnostic motifs, which are found in abundance in the Yezidis. This layer has, this time, a Middle Eastern origin and overlaps with an older Turanian-Iranian identity.

Finally, Islamic influences proper constitute the last layer of the Yezidis' complex religion. Here we see both Sufi and Shiite traditions. Associated with Sufism is the very practice of worshipping the sheikh as kutb, the pole. An important role in Yazidi metaphysics is played by the image of the white pearl, in which the divine essence was embodied even before the beginning of creation. This theme is central to Sufi ontology and develops the thesis of the hadith that “God was a hidden treasure (the pearl) but wanted to be known”. This image plays an important role in the teachings of the Shiite Nusayri. Also associated with Shi'a Islam is the notion of the special significance of the sheikh's first circle of followers, which in Shi'a Islam has been transferred to the family of Muhammad and especially the family of Imam Ali.

In Yazidi teachings, the ambiguity of the main sacred gestalt, the Angel-Paolin (Malaki-Ta'uz), identified with the Hebrew angel Azazil, attracts special attention. In the Hebrew Kabbalah, the same name (Aza, Azazil) is used for the demon of death. Yezidic texts point out that in other religions, which have their origins in Adam and Eve and not just Adam, like the Yezidis themselves, the angel-Paul is misunderstood as a “fallen angel”. This is the most disturbing aspect of Yezidi religion, which has led other cultures to consider them devil-worshippers. On the one hand, the primordial bird can be linked to the Indo-European tradition, the sacred birds of the Scythians, the Garuda of the Hindus, the Simurg of the Persians, and the eagle of Zeus of the Hellenes. But this image is not the least bit ambiguous and is considered an attribute of the highest heavenly deity.

But the demonization of the eagle outside the Indo-European context we encounter it among the Adyghe-Abkhazic peoples of the Caucasus, where the iron eagle of the evil god Paco becomes the victim of the “positive” hero Bataraz, and furthermore there is an even more expressive image of the “Tha of raptors”, in whose image appears the head of fallen angels. The geographical proximity of Caucasians and Kurds and the common ties to the Hurrian substratum suggest another dimension of the Kurdish Yazidi religion, responsible for its “dark” or at least ambiguous aspects.

Adding to this ambiguity is the subtle dialectic of al-Khallaj's Sufi metaphysics, which contains a kind of justification for Iblis (the devil), who refuses to prostrate himself before Adam not out of pride, but out of absolute Love for God that admits no intermediaries. This theme is consonant with the Gnostic motifs of Sophia's fall. Although in the Yezidis this theme is not directly emphasized, the Gnostic structure of their tradition and some antinomian allusions-for example, the plot of the Yezidis' Black Book, where it is Malaki-Ta'uz who encourages Adam to break the divine prohibition against eating grain-allow this interpretation.

Overall, the Yezidi religion reflects a deep Kurdish identity that goes back to the depths of time. The analysis of what external critics blame on the Yazidis and what constitutes an ambiguous aspect of their religion is largely based on a misunderstanding of its internal structure, as well as a misinterpretation of individual figures and images, compounded by the truly syncretistic and closed nature of the Yazidis, which makes it difficult to understand the integral morphology of their teachings.

Shiite Kurds

Kurdish identity manifests itself very differently at the other end of the religious spectrum, among the Shiite Kurds. Two streams should be distinguished in this regard: the Alevi Kurds, the most numerous among the Zaza ethnic groups (but also among the northern Kurds-the Kurmanji) and the Kurds who share the doctrine of Ahli Haq (literally, “people of truth”).

The Alevites are a Shiite-Sufi order formed in the 13th century in southeastern Anatolia, close to the school founded by Haji-Bektash and which later became the religious base of the “new army” of the Ottoman sultans - the Janissaries. The Alevites continued the tradition of extreme Iranian Sufism (Gulat), centered on the veneration of Ali and the Imams, and of Salman Fars as a particular key figure of Iranian-centric luminous gnosis. Later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Alevis were joined by the Turkic branches of the Qizil Bash, who became the base of Iran's Safavid dynasty, but in the Turkic territories under Sunni control they were forced to adapt to hostile conditions and hide their identity. Similarly, the Kurds saw Alevism as a chance to remain within Ottoman society, where an aggressive and rather intolerant Zahirite Islam became the dominant force after Selim I, because the Ottoman rulers had respect for Alevism - as the original religious ideology of the early Ottoman rulers and the spiritual basis of the Ottoman Empire's most important military and religious institution - the Janissary Army and the Bektashi Order.

On the other hand, the Kurds saw in Alevism many features close to the Zoroastrian tradition, which made their participation in this current justified in terms of preserving their original Indo-European identity. A number of ritual characteristics bring the Kurdish Alevis closer to the Yazidis. For example, the principle of strict endogamy applies among them: the Kurdish Alevites have the right to marry only members of the Alevite community, thus preserving the purity of the “sons of light” on which the Mazdean tradition and various later versions of Iranism are based.

Another current of radical Shiism (Gulat) is the Ahli Haqq, founded by Sultan Sahak in the late 14th century. This trend is widespread among the Kurds of the south and especially among the Kurds of Iran. Most of them belong to the Goran ethnic group, but there are also large groups of Ahli Haqq in the Kurdish populations of Kelhuri and Lur. Another name for this doctrine is Yarsan (Yâresân - literally “community of lovers” or “community of friends”).

The doctrine of the Ahli Haqq movement is very similar to that of Yezidism. It also affirms the idea of the incarnation of supreme beings (God or angels) in a chain of seven chosen messengers. This theme is a classic of Judeo-Christian propheology and Manichaeism. It is also a feature of Shi'ism, especially radical Shi'ism, where members of Muhammad's family and Imam Ali's clan are considered embodiments of this type. Members of the Ahli-Haqq recognize seven successive incarnations, where the second and third coincide with the line of Shiite seminarians, Ali and Hasan (“Shah Khoshen”). In general, it is easy to detect Ismailite influence in Ahli Haqq's teachings (e.g., the mention of Sheikh Nusayr among Ali's attendants). The first incarnation, however, is Havangdagar, by which Ahli Haqq members refer to the Supreme Deity himself. Each incarnation is accompanied by four “friendly angels” or “helper angels” (yārsān-i malak), hence the name of the entire Yarsan community. The fifth “helper” is the female angel, a classical figure in Zoroastrianism (fravarti). The Ahli Haqq shares the traditional Sufi doctrine of the four stages of truth knowledge - shariah, tarikat, marifat and haqiqat - and the stages of spiritual development of the soul. Followers of this school of thought practice traditional Sufi zikr.

An Iranian-Zoroastrian trait is the idea of the duality of humanity's origin, which brings the Ahli Haqq closer to the Yazidis. According to their doctrine, members of the Ahli-hakk community were originally created from “yellow clay” (zarda-gel), while the rest of humanity came from “black earth” (ḵāk-e sīāh).

The eschatology of Ahli Haqq generally reproduces classical Shi'ism: the elect await the coming of the Man of Time, the Mahdi. But according to Ahli Haqq, the Mahdi will appear among the Kurds-in the Kurdish region of Sultaniyah (the Iranian province of Zanjan) or in Shahrazur, the city that, according to Kurdish legends, was founded by King Dayok (or Dayukku), considered the founder of a dynasty of Midian kings. This detail underscores the ethnocentric character of Kurdish eschatology.

At the same time, as with the Yezidis, the influence of Judeo-Christian groups is noted-particularly the immaculate conception of the founder (or reformer) of this doctrine, Sultan Sahak, whose tomb in the city of Perdivar is a center of pilgrimage.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of the spiritual leaders of the Ahli Haqq Hajj Nematallah worked hard to activate this group, publishing a series of religious and poetic texts that enjoyed great popularity among the Kurds, chief among them the Shah-name-i haqikat (The Book of the King of Truth).

The Kurds: identity and statehood

Although they drew their origins from the Muslims who founded the mighty Empire, and although they were sometimes the progenitors of powerful dynasties (such as the Ayubids), the Kurds were unable to build a state of their own until the present day.

However, they made significant contributions to the culture of the Islamic Middle Ages, particularly in the field of poetry. The earliest Kurdish poet is considered to be Piré Sharir, who lived in the 10th century and left a body of short aphoristic poems that were extremely popular among the Kurds. Another early Kurdish poet was Ali Hariri (1009-1079). The first grammar of the Kurdish language was compiled in the 10th and 11th centuries by a contemporary of Ali Hariri, the poet Termuqi, who was the first to write poetry in Kurmanji. One of Termuqi's works has the same name as Calderon's famous play “Life is indeed a dream”.

Later, in the 16th century, the important Kurdish poet Mela Jeziri laid the foundation for a Sufi trend in Kurdish poetry, becoming a model for subsequent generations of Kurdish Sufi poets. Throughout the Kurdish intellectual elites, a focus on Kurdish identity is evident from the earliest poets. In the 17th century, another Kurdish Sufi poet, Faqi Tayran (1590-1660), also called “Mir Mehmet”, collected many Kurdish folk tales in a collection entitled “Tales of the Black Horse” (Qewlê Hespê Reş). He was also the first to praise the heroic defense of the Dymdım fortress between 1609 and 1610.

Representatives of the Kurdish elite are gradually becoming aware of the anomaly-the gap between the Kurds' great history, level of awareness of their unique identity, militancy and heroism on the one hand, and their subordinate position within other empires-first the Arab Caliphate, then Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran.

Thus, the greatest Kurdish poet Ahmed Khani (1650-1708), author of the famous inter-Kurdish epic poem about the tragic love story “Mother and Zin”, steeped in grief for the vanished Kurdish state and nostalgia for past greatness. Ahmed Hani is considered one of the early ideologues of the Kurdish renaissance and is known as a fighter for Kurdish identity, preparing the next phase of the awakening of national consciousness. Another important Kurdish poet, Hadji Qadir Koy (1816-1894), continued this trend. In his work, the desire for Kurdish liberation and the creation of their own state is even more contrasting and unequivocal.

In the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire began to weaken and many of its constituent peoples (Arabs, Greeks, Slavs, etc.) began to draw up plans for independence, similar sentiments arose among the Kurds. In 1898, the first newspaper in Kurdish, Kurdistan, was published in Cairo. Later, the newspaper Kurdish Day (later renamed Kurdish Sun) began to be printed in Istanbul. A magazine in Turkish called Jin (Life) is published, openly proclaiming the desire to establish an independent Kurdish state.

In the late 19th century, Kurds increasingly raised anti-Turkish uprisings (e.g., in 1891 in Dersim).

Kurds initially supported the Young Turks and Kemal Ataturk's rise to power, seeing in it a hope of ending the oppression of the Ottoman administration. The Alevis even recognized Ataturk as the Mahdi, an eschatological figure destined to liberate peoples from oppression and injustice: this is how the religious consciousness interpreted the end of the era of the rule of strict Sunni Zahirism, which since the time of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent had been replaced by a completely different religion-spiritual and Iranian-style-of the early Ottoman rulers, inextricably linked to the ardent Sufism of Sheikh Haji-Bektaş, Yunus Emre and Jalaladdin Rumi and with many Shiite themes.

However, the Kurds did not get what they wanted from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Part of Kurdistan remained in the new Turkish state, another part was incorporated into Iraq by the British occupation administration, the third was ceded to Syria, and the fourth remained in Iran. Thus a huge nation of forty million people was divided into four parts, comprising two colonial powers, where Arab nationalism became the dominant ideology (Syria and Iran), Turkey, where Turkish nationalism in a new form - secular - took hold, and Iran, where the dominant twelve-point Shiite and Persian identity also served as the common denominator of the state, without giving the Kurds a special place, though not oppressing them to the extent that was the case in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Thus, the 20th century was not a time when the Kurds could establish their own statehood and the issue was postponed to an indefinite future. At the same time, there was no clear consensus among the Kurds on what kind of Kurdish state should be and on what ideological basis it should be based. Moreover, there was no agreement among the leaders either.

Thus, in each of the countries where the Kurds lived, the following forces were formed.

In Turkey, the leftist organization based on socialist (communist) principles-the Kurdistan Workers' Party-became the political expression of the Kurds' struggle for autonomy and, at the limit, independence. Since the mid-1940s, the Soviet Union has provided military and political support to the Kurds to counter the interests of Western countries in the Middle East. Thus, Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani (1903 - 1979) fled to Soviet territory from the defeat of the Iraqi Kurdish Mehabad Republic, where he was welcomed, supported, and then sent back to Iraq. For the Kurds, therefore, the USSR was considered a geopolitical fulcrum, which to a large extent predetermined the ideological orientation of the Kurds-especially the Turkish Kurds. Among Kurds living in a traditional society, communism was difficult to understand and attractive, so this choice was probably driven by pragmatic considerations. Moreover, Iraqi Kurds had clashed repeatedly with the British (the first anti-English uprising was raised by Mustafa Barzani's brother Ahmed in 1919), during which the British conducted punitive operations against the Kurds, destroying everything in their path, but the British were enemies of the USSR.

The leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party was Abdullah Öcalan, who led the Kurdish armed insurgency, proclaiming in 1984 the beginning of an armed struggle for the creation of an independent Kurdistan. The party's military wing consists of the People's Self-Defense Forces. Öcalan is currently detained in Turkey after being sentenced to life in prison.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party itself is considered a “terrorist organization” in many countries. In fact, the Peace and Democracy Party, transformed from the banned Democratic Society Party in 2009, now acts on behalf of Kurds in Turkey. But for all these structures, the tradition of left-wing socialist and social democratic ideas among Turkish Kurds is maintained.

Iraqi Kurds are united in the Kurdistan Democratic Party, formed by Mustafa Barzani, which, as we have seen, was also oriented toward the USSR and enjoyed its support. The military wing of the party became the Kurdish Army - Peshmerga (Pêşmerge literally, “those who stare death in the face”), which emerged in the late 19th century during the Iraqi Kurds' struggle for independence.

There was an initial clash between two leaders in the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which reflects the interests of two Kurdish tribal formations-the Barzani, based in Bahdinan, and the Sorani Kurds, based in Sulaymaniyah.

The representative of the Barzani tribe was the hero of the Kurdish independence struggle Mustafa Barzani, whose cause after his death was led by his son Masoud Barzani, former president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region during the critical period for Iraq from 2005 to 2017. Masoud Barzani had been engaged in military operations with Kurdish peshmenga units since 16. After Massoud Barzani resigned as president, his grandson Nechirvan Idris Barzani, grandson of Mustafa Barzani, took over.

The opposing tribal alliance after 1991 was represented by the flamboyant figure of Jalal Talabani, who served as Iraq's president from 2005 to 2014...

After the defeat of Saddam Hussein's forces by the Western coalition, Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani worked together to establish military and political control over the territories of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the contradictions between the leaders were reflected in the effective division of Iraqi Kurdistan into two parts: the eastern part (Sulaymaniyah, Soran district, named after the Kurdish Sorani tribe), home of Talabani, where his position was stronger, and the northwestern part (Bahdania), home of Barzani, where his supporters prevailed.

This relative dualism among Iraqi Kurds has persisted to the present day. In some situations, the leaders of the two tribal entities form alliances with each other. In others, cooperation gives way to rivalry.

In Syria, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria can be considered the main Kurdish organization. Currently, during the Syrian civil war, there is also the Syrian National Council, which includes other forces. The Syrian Kurds did not have such brilliant figures as Barzani, Talabani or Ocalan, so their ideas and structures were heavily influenced by Turkish or Iraqi Kurdish structures, where in both cases leftist tendencies were strong.

In Iran, Kurds live in four provinces: Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Ilam. Iranian Kurds have historically shown less willingness to establish an independent state and have not organized centralized autonomous political structures.

In 2012, two parties, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and the Komala (Revolutionary Workers' Party of Kurdistan), made an attempt at unification.

Translation by Costantino Ceoldo