Historical Brief on the Kurds and Assyrians and the Relationship Between Them (3) – Ancestors of the Kurds: Urartians, Nairians, Carduchians, and Elamites
The state of Urartu was established in the land of the Nairians (Lake Van region) in the early ninth century BC, following the union of the Nairian and Hurrian princes. At one point, the borders of the Kingdom of Urartu extended from the north to Lake Gokcha and Alexandropol in the Caucasus, from the south to Rawanduz and the headwaters of the Zab River, from the west to the Euphrates River, and from the east to Lake Urmia. They also ruled current western Kurdistan for a period of time. The city of “Tuspasi” (Van) was the capital of the Khaldian land, and it is believed that the Khaldian king, “Sarduris I,” built this city in the year 840 BC (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Earliest Historical Era to the Present. Translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, Second Edition, 1961, page 66). The Khaldian king (Ispuinis) replaced the Assyrian language—which was the language of editing and literature until that time in the Kingdom of Urartu—with the Khaldian language. The Kingdom of Urartu lasted until the year 625 BC, after which it came under the protection of the Medes for a period of time until it was eliminated during the uprising of the Guti Kurdish tribes in the year 585 BC, following its seizure by the Armenians, who inhabited the western part of the Khaldian land (Source No. 1).
The Urartians were adept in organizing administrative affairs (Source No. 2) and in architecture and the construction of cities and dams, where traces of the canals and streams built by the Urartians still stand to this day, such as the Shamiram water canal, which was dug to bring water to the eastern shores of Lake Van (Gwendolyn Leick: A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Architecture. Translated by Ghassan Taha Yasin and Kamal Nadir, Beirut, 2003, page 204).
Nairi – Niri
The Kurds appeared under this name as a kingdom in the tenth century BC, and it is likely that this tribe formed a section of the Subarians and Gutians. Later, they overcame the other sections of these two peoples, and the name “Nairi” replaced the names “Subaru” and “Guti,” with the Nairians coming to represent the Kurdish people as a whole (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Earliest Historical Era to the Present. Translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, Second Edition, 1961, pages 70, 71, 101). The land of Nairi extended from the middle basin of the Great Zab River to the headwaters of this river, and the provinces of Amed (Diyarbakir), Kharput, Dersim, and the Bitlis and Taurus mountains were within the land of the Nairians (Major Soane: To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise, London, 1912). Major Soane adds in his aforementioned book that the Nairi people blended with the Mede people, and from both of them the Kurdish nation was formed, where the Cyrtii/Cordueni people lived in this region in the year 401 BC, late in the era of the Achaemenid government that was established after the extinction of the Median government. The current tribes inhabiting the Niri (Nehri) region in the Shemdinan district belong to the Nairi people (Vladimir Minorsky: The Kurds and Kurdistan. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Cairo, 1929). The orientalist Thureau-Dangin also mentions that the “Nairi” or “Hubushkia” region is the Botan Valley, and an independent Nairian government was established in the eastern part of the land of the Nairians (Thureau-Dangin: Account of the Eighth Campaign of King Sargon, Paris, 1912).
This people possessed great courage, numbers, and strength, and was a constant source of threat to the Kingdom of Assyria, as the Assyrian king “Tiglath-Pileser” I fought the armies of 23 Nairian kings (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Earliest Historical Era to the Present. Translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, Second Edition, 1961, page 101).
Carduchi
The Carduchian people are among the remnants of the ancient Guti people, the conquerors of the land of Sumer and Akkad, as the name “Carduchi” is the corrupted form of the name “Guti.” Thus, this name changed over time until it became “Kuti” and “Kurti” during the reign of the Assyrian king “Tukulti-Ninurta.” The studies and research of the orientalist “Driver” indicate that the names “Kurti” and “Karda,” which were common during the reign of the King of Lagash “Arad-Nannar,” along with other similar names, are names of the current Kurdish people across different eras (G. R. Driver: The Kurds in Ancient Sources, translated by Fuad Hama Khurshid, Baghdad, 1986). The scholar Muhammad Amin Zaki mentions that the historian “Speiser” points out in his book “General History for Historians” that proper names are subject to modification by other peoples; he mentions, for example, that the Hurrian people had nine different names, which are: Hurlili, Hurlas, Hurlu, Huri, Kurhuruhi, Huruwhi, Hari, Muri, Hurrit, and the Mitanni people had two different names, which are “Mitanni” and “Mitlani” (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Earliest Historical Era to the Present. Translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, Second Edition, 1961, pages 74, 75).
Elamites
The scholar (Hinz) mentions that the Elamites belong to the Guti Kurdish tribes, which are among the peoples of the Zagros Mountains that were the original homeland of the ancestors of the Kurds {Walther Hinz: The Lost World of Elam. Translated by Firouz Firouznia. Ilmi and Farhangi Publications, 1376 AH (in Persian)}. The Elamites migrated from the Zagros Mountains to the Ahvaz region, where the fertile plains lie, settled there, and discovered agriculture and food production, where they were able to build a large and powerful empire with an advanced civilization about 5000 years ago. In 4200 BC, the Elamites built the city of Susa on the Karun River on fertile agricultural land surrounded by a number of agricultural villages; it was built on a large foundation platform of bricks and served as their center, as well as a center for trade in Mesopotamia.
Through excavations carried out by an American team of archaeologists led by Dr. (Ezat O. Negahban / Ezatollah Negahban), the team discovered during them the ruins of the Elamite city of “Anshan” or “Anzan,” which was considered a center for one of the main provinces of the land of Elam {Pierre Amiet: History of Elam. Translated by Shirin Bayani, Tehran University Publications, 1372 AH (in Persian)}. The name Elam was found for the first time on one of the Sumerian tablets, where it is mentioned that the king of the Sumerians (Enmebaragesi) obtained many weapons and spoils in his wars with the Elamites {George Cameron: Iran at the Dawn of History. Translated by Hassan Anousheh, Ilmi and Farhangi Publications, 1365 AH (in Persian)}.
The time periods through which the Elamite state passed can be divided into three periods or eras. The first period begins before history (8 thousand years BC to the year 2225 BC). This period was contemporary with the Sumerians and Akkadians, and this era concludes with the extinction of the Sumerian and Akkadian states at the hands of the Elamites. Their conquests were mentioned in the Torah in Chapter Four of the Book of Genesis (verses 1, 5, 9, 17), and the name of the King of Elam (Chedorlaomer) is also mentioned in the Torah. The second period is the period of the Elamites being contemporary with the Babylonians, extending from the year 2225 BC to the year 745 BC. As for the third period, it is the period of the Elamites being contemporary with the Assyrians, which began in 745 BC and ended in 645 BC, where the extinction of the Elamite state occurred at the hands of Ashurbanipal in the year 645 BC.
When the Kingdom of Elam was at the height of its power, it included parts of Mesopotamia and present-day western Iran, where the borders of the Elamite state extended from Isfahan in the east, the banks of the Tigris River in the west, the Gulf in the south, and the road connecting Babylon and Hamadan in the north. In the time of King “Kutir-Nahhunte,” the Elamites managed to seize the lands of Sumer and Babylon for a period of time, end the rule of the Kassites, and install the son of King “Kutir-Nahhunte” as king over Babylon, during whose reign parts of the Stele of Hammurabi were transferred to the city of Susa (Shush).
The civilization of Elam is one of the oldest human civilizations, built in present-day Khuzestan and Ilam in addition to the present-day provinces of Wasit and Maysan. Archaeologist “Potts” mentions that as a result of the advancement of Elamite civilization, many aspects of life in the Achaemenid Empire, such as the form of clothing and the method of state administration, were influenced by Elamite civilization, to the extent that the Achaemenids used the Elamite alphabet (Source No. 3). Archaeological excavations conducted in Khuzestan province indicate that the Elamite state possessed an advanced civilization during the third millennium BC.
The kings of Elam built temples for their gods in the city of Shush, the most important of which are the Ziggurat and Chogha Zanbil in Khuzestan, and many artifacts were found there, such as colored vessels and handcrafted antiques buried in graves near the base of the city. The diversity of these artifacts and the multiplicity of personal sources for their manufacture indicate that a large number of artists lived in the city of Shush. In around 3400 BC, pottery, ceramics, cylinder seals, and statues were manufactured in the cities of Chogha Mish and Susa, which are similar to those found in southern Iraq (Muhammad Bayomi Mehran: Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East. Part 10, 2012).
Excavation work in the city of “Susa” revealed dwellings of agricultural communities and vessels and tools made of pottery used for many purposes. Some of these vessels were colored and others were adorned with decorative work. Clay tablets were also discovered in the city of “Susa” bearing written records in pictographic script {Walther Hinz: The Lost World of Elam. Translated by Firouz Firouznia. Ilmi and Farhangi Publications, 1376 AH (in Persian)}.
The Elamite language was called the (Yaphetic) language and was the spoken language; however, with the appearance of the alphabet, the Elamite language and alphabet became more developed. The Elamites learned writing from the Sumerians, who were also among the ancestors of the Kurds. The Elamites were nature worshippers, especially of the sun, while the Assyrians and Babylonians were idol worshippers.
Foreign Sources
1. Bury, J.B (1925). The Cambridge ancient history. The Assyrian Empire, S.A. Cooke. Volume: 111, London.
2. Saggs, H.W.F. (1975). The Assyrian,The people of Old Testment,Oxford, p.160.
3. Potts, D.T. (2012) A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near – Elam: Iran s First Empire, Volume 2, Part 6, Chapter thirty-nine, Blackwell Reference Online.
2013 / 10 / 14
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