Kurdish

The Kurds are an Iranic people of Kurdistan's mountains, from the Tigris through the Zagros, speaking Northwestern Iranian languages. A name resembling Kurd appears in Xenophon's Corduene and classical sources, but under the Sasanians and early caliphs it chiefly meant Iranian nomads, becoming an ethnic name only in the tenth to twelfth centuries, when the Seljuk era coined the term Kurdistan.

The Islamic Middle Ages saw Kurdish principalities, above all Saladin's Ayyubid dynasty; he retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders at Hattin in 1187. Fourteenth-century Mongol invasions ended Ayyubid rule and drove many tribes to Syria and Egypt. In 1337 Kurdish emirates were among the Ilkhanate's successor states.

The Safavids ruled the eastern Kurds from 1501, but defeat at Chaldiran in 1514 split Kurdistan between Safavids and Ottomans for three centuries under hereditary chiefs. Shahs deported tribes to Khorasan after Dimdim fell under Abbas I; in the eighteenth century the Kurd Karim Khan Zand held the throne before Qajars inherited his lands.