Whenever it becomes impossible to deny the existence of the Kurds, some shift to putting the name “Kurdistan” on trial: When did it appear? Who used it? Was it in the Abbasid or the Seljuk era? The question might be legitimate in the study of the history of names, but it turns into manipulation when used to delay the birth of a people or sever their connection to their land.
A name does not create its inhabitants, and the first preserved mention is not the birth certificate of geography. Between the existence of a people, the documentation of their name, the establishment of an administrative unit bearing that name, and the founding of their state lie differences that the discourse of denial effaces, making the date of the document the beginning of the homeland’s history.
In Marasid al-Ittila’ ‘ala Asma’ al-Amkina wa-al-Biqa’ by Safi al-Din Abd al-Mu’min al-Baghdadi (1260–1338 AD), a description appears stating that the Lur are among the Kurds, and he then says of their land: “The district is known by them, and it is called Kurdistan.” Here, the testimony goes beyond merely recording the name; it links the naming of the land to its inhabitants. How then does a text connecting a people to their geography turn into a pretext for delaying their presence in it? References to the name are also cited from Rashid al-Din Fadlallah al-Hamadani (1247–1318 AD) in his history of the Mongols.
Among the well-known pieces of evidence is what Hamdallah al-Mustawfi recorded in Nuzhat al-Qulub regarding the province of Kurdistan, linking it to the arrangements of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar in the twelfth century. Here arises the question that the discourse of denial bypasses: What presence allowed the name of a people to enter the definition of the land and its administrative organization within a world where the names of states and empires constantly changed?
Reducing this evidence to the historical appearance of the word obscures its most important significance: the association of the name of the Kurds with a known geographical domain. The Sultan organized a province; he did not create a people by decree. Whoever makes administrative organization the beginning of Kurdish existence grants authority the right to invent the past, after having granted it the right to divide the land.
The deeper problem is the double standard. Existing states are permitted to invoke thousands of years of history and annex successive empires into their national narrative, while the Kurds are demanded to present a document carrying the exact modern name, the same borders, and the same state institutions—otherwise, their existence is deemed accidental. This is a condition that most of those who impose it fail to meet.
Take Iran, for example. The name “Iran” is not a Pahlavi invention; the form “Iran/Eransahr” is documented in the Sasanian era since the third century AD. What happened in 1935 was a request to adopt “Iran” instead of “Persia” in international usage. Yet, the antiquity of the name does not make the modern state identical to the Sasanian Empire, nor does it convert all the peoples of that empire into Persians. Hence, a distinction must be made between the historical Iranian domain, Persian identity, and the current Iranian state.
The same rule applies to Turkey. Its name has geographical usages predating the Republic, but the Ottoman Empire was not a Turkish nation-state with the borders and political identity of the Republic. It was an empire encompassing multiple peoples, languages, and provinces. The modern state’s appropriation of its legacy does not turn those peoples into branches of its nationality, nor does it render all its territories a Turkish national homeland.
And if the origin of the ruling family were sufficient to attribute an empire to a single ethnicity, why is this standard invoked with the Ottomans yet suspended with the Ayyubids? The Sharafnama by Sharaf Khan al-Bitlisi, written in the late sixteenth century, addressed Kurdish families and principalities and included the Ayyubids among them. However, the Kurdish origin of the Ayyubid dynasty does not make all its subjects Kurds, just as the origin of the Ottoman dynasty does not make all its subjects Turks. What is required is a single standard, not a rule that changes depending on the identity of the ruler intended to be glorified.
As for Iraq and Syria, both have names and historical domains predating the two modern states, but their current borders are not eternal borders, nor do they encapsulate the history of all the peoples included within them. It is unacceptable to redraw the past with the pen of the contemporary state and then accuse those whose memory does not align with its map of being newcomers.
This is where the usurpation occurs: state borders are treated as the origin of history, while the history of a people is treated as an objection to them. The state is then granted the right to define its inhabitants, distribute their seniority, and determine who possesses memory and who must apologize for their existence.
Kurdistan, with its historical name and regional presence, predates the establishment of a number of the nation-states that share it today. Proving this does not require claiming that it is older than every name and every geography in the Middle East. Deconstructing the core fallacy is enough: the absence of a sovereign Kurdish state does not mean the absence of Kurdistan, just as the establishment of a state over part of it does not erase the history that preceded its creation.
Al-Bitlisi documented the history of Kurdish principalities, dynasties, and domains centuries before the maps of current states. This alone reveals the superficiality of portraying Kurdistan as a modern political invention. The borders of the domain designated by the name may change, and its authorities may shift, but changing borders is not equivalent to the demise of a people or the severance of their connection to their land.
Not all historical writing is innocent merely because it includes footnotes. When one people is granted continuity across changing names and dynasties, while another people is deprived of it due to a name change or the absence of sovereignty, the footnote becomes a tool for justifying authority. Some historians write the past from the vantage point of the document; others read the document from the vantage point of the borders they wish to protect.
Therefore, the question that ought to be directed at them is: Why do you make the modern state the heir to all that preceded it, while making the Kurds strangers to everything prior to the recording of their name?
In my reading, what concerns the states sharing Kurdistan is that the name retains a meaning that their national maps cannot accommodate: the existence of a people and a historical domain extending across their borders. Thus, the dispute over a word turns into a dispute over memory and sovereignty.
The history of peoples does not begin on the day a state permits them to enter its register. What requires questioning is the methodology that treats the victory of authority as proof of its antiquity, and the defeat of a people as proof that they never existed.
United States of America
October 7, 2026
Note: This text is translated from the original Arabic version… Read the Arabic version:Click here
