Zerzari

The Zerzari, also called Zarzariyya, were a Kurdish tribe of the Middle Ages, probably an offshoot of the Hadhbani confederation and among the oldest Kurdish tribes named in Arabic historiography. One of their sons, al-Adil ibn al-Sallar, became vizier of Fatimid Egypt in 1148, and Zerzari cavalry served the Zengids and others before forming a noted unit in the Ayyubid army; tribal emirs fought under Saladin and at the siege of Acre.

Originally from the Erbil region, by the fourteenth century they held a mountain pocket between Rawanduz, the Qandil range and Lake Dukan, with strongholds at Rawanduz and Qala Diza. The geographer al-Umari, who died in 1349, described them as effectively independent of the Ilkhanids and surrounding powers.