Portal:Kurdistan/Selected article/2007/October

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurdish costumes, 1873.
Kurdish costumes, 1873.

The Kurds are an ethnic group who are indigenous to a region often referred to as Kurdistan, an area which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Kurdish communities can also be found in Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan (Kalbajar and Lachin, to the west of Nagorno Karabakh) and, in recent decades, some European countries and the United States (see Kurdish diaspora). Ethnically related to other Iranian peoples,[1] they speak Kurdish, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. However, the Kurds' ethnic origins are uncertain.[2]

According to Encyclopedia Columbia, Kurds are commonly identified with the ancient Corduene which was in turn inhabited by the descendants of the Carduchis. But Ethnically close to the Iranians.[3]

According to Britannica encyclopedia,The Persians, Kurds, and speakers of other Indo-European languages in Iran are descendants of the Aryan tribes that began migrating from Central Asia into what is now Iran in the second millennium BC[E]. [4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, s.v. Iran, (by Eric Hooglund), section 3A (accessed 24 July 2006).
  2. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v. Kurds, (accessed 4 August 2006)
  3. ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, s.v. http://www.bartleby.com/65/ku/Kurds.html Kurds], (accessed 17 July 2007)
  4. ^ Britannica encyclopedia, s.v. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9046466/Kurd,