Kurds

Religion:

"Kurds are estimated to be about 95 percent Muslim, especially Sunni Muslim (65%) and belong to the Shafi and Hanafi Schools of Islam. There are also Shia Muslims (20%) who primarily live in the Kermanshah and Ilam provinces of Iran and Central Iraq ("Al-Fayliah" Kurds). Alevi Muslims make up another 10% and are mainly found in Turkey. The remaining 15% are Christians, Jews and Yezidis.

Before the spread of Islam in the 7th century, most Kurds practiced Zoroastrianism. Yezidism is an ancient Kurdish religion. The faith's most holy place lies in Iraqi Kurdistan in the village of Lalish, north of Mosul and originally known as Ninevah. Most Yazidis live in Iraqi Kurdistan in the vicinity of Mosul, Sinjar, and Lalish. Large numbers of Yezidis are also found in Syria and Turkey. According to Yezidi sources, there are 800,000 Yezidis in the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds

Not at all. They are a mixture of ancient Medes and Asur-Muslim Assyrians. I guess they immigrated to Zagros and northern Mesopotamia from inner Iran but not sure.

Noting that after WWI, lots of Armenians were converted to Islam against the law of "tehcir" in Eastern Anatolia, especially north and west of Van. Lots of Kurds of Eastern Anatolia including most in Tunceli and Erzurum are the descendents of those Muslim Armenians.

And they arent totally unique people. You cant differ some Kurds from a regular Turk. You cant differ some Kurds neither from an Iranian nor an Armenian. People of the same rgion resemble each other...

Kurds exist in that region as early as history can remember and commonly identified with the ancient Corduene, which was inhabited by the Carduchi (mentioned in Xenophon). The question is not from where they came? Someone can say from Afghanista, or from Africa or the moon. the question is are they the  first and original inhabitant of that region is rather more precise.

Beside ancient records of Kurds, Marco Polo described them as soon as he crossed the moutain range of eastern Turkey and all the way to Persia. You can search for his records. Though he had an unpleasant experience with them unfortunately .

Well, according to Marco Polo's description, he said about the Kurds: "they are a people who rob you happily".  He also went on saying that, they had a great inhospitality toward foriegners.

Im suprised from his descriptions, because I met Iraqi Kurds and they are very friendly and honest. I guess it is his experience, and it is my experience.

Why don't you look up the Sharraf Nameh?  Kurdish history written by a Kurd in Persian from the 15th century, is that early enough for you?

I will add that "Kurd" is historically a geographic adjective describing the people of the Zagros mountains. It was first used in in pre-Iranic times by the Sumerians in the form of "Kurt".  Over the millenia Iranic migrations Iranianised the area starting with the Mitani and the results are modern Kurds.. 

"Native inhabitants of their land, there are no "beginnings" for Kurdish history and people. Kurds and their history are end products of thousands of years of continuous internal evolution and assimila-tion of new peoples and cultures intro-duced sporadically into their land. Genetically, Kurds are the descendants of all those who came to settle in Kurdistan, and not any one of them. Thus, ancient peoples such as the Kurti, Guti, Mede, Mard, Carduchi/ Gordyene, Adianbene, Zela and Khaldi, each constitute only one ancestor and not the ancestor of the modern Kurd.

Archaeological finds continue to docu-ment that some of mankind's earliest steps in the development of agriculture, domes-ti-cation of many common farm animals (sheep, goats, hogs and dogs), manufacture of grape wine and beer, record keep-ing (the token system), development of domestic technologies (tabby weaving, fired pot-tery making and glazing), metallurgy and urban-ization took place in Kurdistan between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The earliest evidence so far of a unified and distinct culture (and possibly, ethnicity) by people inhabiting the Kurdish moun-tains dates back to the Halaf culture of 8,000-7,400 years ago. This was followed by the spread of the Ubaidian culture, which was a foreign introduction from Mesopotamia. After about a millennium, its dominance was replaced by the Hurrian cul-ture, which may or may not have been the Halafian people reasserting their domi-nance over their mountainous homeland. The Hurrian period lasted for nearly 4000 years from circa 6,300 to 2,600 years ago.

Much more is known of the Hurrians. They spoke a language of the Northeast Caucasian family of languages (or Alarodian), kin to modern Chechen and Lezgian. The Hurrians spread far and wide, dominating much territory outside their Zagros-Taurus mountain base. They settled most of Anatolia and all the way to the Bosphorus. Like their Kurdish descen-dents, they however did not expand too far from the mountains. Their intrusions into the neighboring plains of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau, there-fore, were primar-ily military annexations with little popula-tion settlement. Their economy was sur-prisingly integrated and focused, along with their political bonds, mainly running paral-lel with the Zagros-Taurus mountains, rather than radiating out to the lowlands, as was the case during the preceding (foreign) Ubaid cultural period. Mountain-plain eco-nomic exchanges remained secondary in importance, judging from the archaeological remains of goods and their origin.

The Hurrians-whose name survives now most prominently in the name of the Kurdish districts of Hawraman/Awraman and Hakkari, and the clan name Haraki-divided into many clans and subgroups, who set up city-states, kingdoms and em-pires known today after their respective clan names. These included the Qardu, Guti, Khaldi, Mard, Mushku, Manna, Hatti, Mittani, Urartu, and the Kassu, to name a few. All these were Hurrians, and to-gether form the Hurrian phase of Kurdish history.

By about 4,000 years ago, the first van-guard of Indo-European-speaking peo-ples were trickling into Kurdistan in limited numbers. They formed the aristocracy of the Mitanni, Kassite, and Hittite kingdoms, while the common peoples remained solidly Hurrian. Meanwhile, around 3800 years ago, the name "Kurti" (Kurd) made its first debut into ancient records for a people and a kingdom located on the south shores of Lake Van and the Hakkari heights.

By about 3,000 years ago, the trickle had turned into a flood, and Hurrian Kurdistan was fast becoming Indo-European Kurdistan. Far from having been wiped out, the Hurrian legacy, despite its linguistic eclipse, remains the single most important element of Kurdish culture to date. It forms the substructure for every aspect of Kurdish existence, from their native reli-gion to their art, their social organization, women's status, and even their militia warfare.

Medes, Scytho-Sarmatians, Sindis, Alans and Sagarthians are just the better-known clans of the Indo-European-speaking Aryans who settled in Kurdistan. About 2,600 years ago, the Medes had already set up a federation that in-cluded all Kurdistan and vast territories beyond. Medians were fol-lowed by scores of other kingdoms and city-states-all dom-inated by Aryan aristocracies and a populace that was becoming Indo-European speaking if not already so.

By the advent of the classical era in 300 BC, Kurds were already experiencing mas-sive population movements that resulted in settlement and domination of many neigh-boring regions. Important Kurdish polities of this time were all by-products of these movements. The Zelan Kurdish clan of Coppadocia (Malatya-Kaysari area), for example, spread to establish in ad-dition to the Zelanid dynasty of Commagene, the Zelanid kingdom of Cappadocia and the Zelanid empire of Pontus-all in Anatolia. These became Roman vassals by the end of the 1st cen-tury BC. In the east the Kurdish kingdoms of Adiabene, Sophene, Gordyene, Cortea, Media, and Kirm had, by the 1st century BC, become confederate members of the Parthian Federation. By the 3rd century BC, the use of the name Kurd (Greek: Kurti; Latin: Cyrti) for the people inhabit-ing modern Kurdistan and other Kurdish colonies become prevalent in the classical Graeco-Roman texts.

While all larger Kurdish kingdoms of the west gradually lost their existence to the Romans, in the east they survived into the 3rd century AD and the advent of the Sasanian Persian empire. The last major Kurdish dynasty, the Kayosids, fell in AD 380. Smaller Kurdish principalities (called the Kofy�r, "mountain administrators") however, preserved their autonomy into the 7th century and the advent of Islam."

Salahaddin Ayyubi was a kurd so why are you trying to prove there werent kurds at that time? And besides i want to learn where they came from, the Afghanistan idea seemed interesting and wondered if someone else knows if it is true if it isnt, their actual origin.