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My hunter-gatherer & farmer breakdown with qpAdm by @sapphiregnm
30.8% Zagros Neolithic Farmer
32.4% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer
15.5% EHG
10.8% CHG
6.5% Natufian
4% East Asian
Nothing can beat the natural charm of ancient architecture. This is 100 times more beautiful to me.
Photos taken by me recently in Mardin. ☀️
Hingiv in Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) and hengiwîn in Central Kurdish (Sorani), apparently derived from Proto-Iranian *hangubáynah.
Even though it sounds similar to the Germanic terms for honey, there seems to be no shared etymological root. However the *báynah in Proto-Iranian meaning bee shares the same etymological root as the English word bee (from Proto-IE *bʰey-).
Most people are really bad at classifying phenotypes I’ve noticed. Inönü doesn’t look Zagrosian at all, he looks Armenoid.
Diyar Dersim and Hozan Comerd look very Zagrosian/Iranid. I’d recognize from 100 km that they are Kurds. Both Kurmanjis from Dersim btw.
Yezidis would turn into Kurdish nationalists overnight if this happened. We’d witness another Assyrian-Mede war and the second Fall of Nineveh in modern times.
According to this, Western Kurmanji spoken in regions west of the Euphrates is closer to medieval Kurdish than Standard Kurmanji, which is based on the Botani dialect.
Massive drop, make sure to read this post ⬇️
MAJOR development. After several years of on and off attempts, I have finally solved the etymology of the ethnonym Kurd, which currently has no solution in academia. It comes from Proto-Indo-European *kr̥t-í- “cut” → Proto-Indo-Iranian *kr̥ti- → Proto-Iranian *kr̥ti- → *kur(ə)ti- (“cut”, but also an outer “garment”) → *Kurt(i)- (adopted as a tribal name) → *Kurt → *Kurd (by the 3rd c. CE) → Kurd (from a tribal identity to an ethnonym).
The first image, an etymological tree, sets out and justifies each sound change, if you want to see how the derivation is linguistically proven. It also contains the historical details on each form where attested. X reduces image resolution, so to read it clearly, expand the image and open it in a new tab. The second image shows the garment in question: the thick, tent-like traditional shepherd’s cloak made of dense felted wool, or wool mixed with goat hair.
Specifically, the name Kurd comes from this outer-garment sense, which was later adopted as a tribal name. Among Iranian languages, the garment word first appears in Avestan as kərəti-, in instructions on how Zoroastrians should wear it together with the sacred shirt and belt. In Parthian, kórt-ēn was the garment boys received as a coming-of-age gift when they reached manhood (which is linguistically a close match to the word Kurd, as the stem's predicted outcome of the Parthian would eventually become Kórd/Kurd since that gloss predates t > d). The word has cognates across the Iranian world, living and extinct, such as Khotanese, Ossetian, Sogdian and Bactrian.
There is historical evidence that Kurd still carried a secondary garment meaning in the early Islamic period, as the word was borrowed into Classical Arabic for a type of garment: kurdī, from the narrator Ibn Abī al-Zinād (d. 790 CE in Baghdad), in Abū Dāwūd 915 (before 889 CE), and kurdiyya in Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1148 CE), among others. The hadith reads: “…from ʿĀʾisha, with this report. He said: and he took a kurdī that belonged to Abū Jahm. It was said: O Messenger of God, the khamīṣa was better than the kurdī.” This is important because it shows the t > d form unlike Kurt-(ek), and other forms that passed through west Iranian languages later on via Sogdian. They are still from the same root however.
Tribal names and clans very often come from places, animals, objects and so on. The Kurdish tribe Sanjabi is named after the squirrel fur, Herki is named after a citadel, etc. Kurds are first attested in history specifically as a tribe by Eratosthenes, Strabo and others. The older reading of Kurd as “nomad” has no etymological basis in any Iranian language, and many Kurdologists/Iranologists today regard it as an anti-Kurdish narrative with no basis in the historical record (see Boris James). Some earlier academics unknowingly built on Arabic mistranslations and deliberate misreadings, which are now corrected. There were also at least 11 Iranian nomadic tribal organisations on the plateau before Islam with no Kurdish identification, and 5 Iranian tribal organisations on the plateau that never had a Kurdish tribal affiliation which completely contradicts this narrative.
The main sound-change question left open in my tree is how r̥ became ur, since it normally gives ar or ər. There are several resolutions, but it is not yet clear which one it is. The u-form *kur(ə)ti- may have spread by borrowing, as a garment from the East Iranian lands: ur is the usual outcome in Parachi, Sanglechi-Ishkashmi and Shughni (Clayton 2022), and Sogdian kurθ- probably passed into Persian kurta. Or it may be a regular change in some western dialect, as in Balochi kurt “did” < *kr̥ta- (Korn 2003).
Several scholars already tie the garment word to the root for “cut”. Abaev derives Ossetian kærc “fur coat” from Old Ossetian *karti-, which “corresponds perfectly” to Avestan kərəti- “garment” (that is, *kr̥ti-), perhaps from *(s)ker- “to cut”; he calls Ossetian kuræt a loan. Bailey derives Khotanese kīḍakyä “garment” from kart- “to cut, tailor”, comparing kərəti-. Henning took Sogdian kurθ- “garment” as the same word as kərəti-, and Benveniste linked Persian kurta to the Sogdian. Sims-Williams, publishing Bactrian kuratīg “shirt”, calls it “a word of unknown but probably non-Iranian origin”, which would leave room for a substrate source such as the BMAC (2007: 224). Although Sims-Williams did not gloss through the full extent of the Iranian forms, or look too deeply into it.
I have opted otherwise, and agree with the other scholars who do derive it through Iranian, because of the following reasons. Avestan kərəti-, Ossetian kærc and Khotanese kīḍ- show the regular outcomes of *kr̥ti- at opposite ends of the Iranian world. The root has an Indo-European etymology, *(s)ker-t- “cut”, shared with Vedic kṛtí- “dagger”, and the Pahlavi commentary renders kərəti- as kirrēnīdag “cut”. The forms Sims-Williams compares are the u-forms, and they can all be accounted for within Iranian. The Sogdian θ comes from the regular change ty > θy. Persian kurta, Arabic qurṭaq, Pashto kurta and Ossetian kuræt are loans. A word with a regular Iranian etymology doesn’t need a substrate source.
To clarify for anyone who doesn't know, the stem is important for derivation as it carries the evidence of descent, while the the suffixes don’t necessarily. A stem passes down through Iranian forms and goes through its regular sound changes, so kurt- with t, kurθ- with θ and kurd with d each show where a form sits on the tree. Suffixes are added afresh by each language and are often swapped or borrowed depending on the application and context.
Given this etymology, the identification of the Cyrtians with the Kurds is even stronger than it already was, as the forms are an exact match. Identifications with the Carduchi, Qardu, among other folk proposals have become even more improbable, both linguistically and historically, than they already were.
eylok retweeted
A preview of another forthcoming article of mine in the Journal of Indo-European Studies. The article re-examines the meaning of Avestan airiia- and investigates the geographical location of Airiianəm Vaējah, traditionally understood as the ‘Aryan homeland’. 1/10
A Kurd from Antep (@bilz_27, not even from mainland Kurdistan) has the same amount of early Iranian ancestry as this Iranian sample from Sassanian period.
I was literally in Diyarbakir yesterday. That‘s not Kurdish culture and these people are an absolute minority among Kurds and are being side-eyed by Kurds themselves. This is authentic Kurdish culture without any foreign influence:
eylok retweeted
📊 Genetic breakdown of an interesting male sample (possibly an Iranian merchant from the Sasanian period) from Akbari2026 study belonging to the Imenkovo culture from Novoslavka-2, Bolgar, Russia (Republic of Tatarstan) dating between 350-500 CE during the Migration Period Age
eylok retweeted
Y-DNA chart for Yusufzai Pashtuns (n=538)
The Yusufzai are among the largest Pashtun tribes today and represent one of the best-sampled groups, with a sample size of n=538. They also show a high frequency of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a, particularly the subclade R1a-YP1123, often associated with Proto-Pashtun paternal ancestry and ultimately linked to Iron Age Iranian herder populations. More specifically Yusufzai Pashtuns are under R1a-YP1123 > B141> BY193552, which has a TMRCA around 750 BCE according to FTDNA.
Originally from the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, the later migrated to Kabul and the surrounding areas, where they came into conflict with other tribes and local rulers. After losing their position in Kabul, they moved toward the Peshawar Valley under the leadership of Malik Ahmad Khan.
At the time of their arrival, the Peshawar Valley was inhabited by the Dilazaks, a Karlani Pashtun tribe, who may also account for some of the G2b lineages found among modern-day Yousafzai. With the support of their allies, the Yousafzai fought the Dilazaks and gradually established control over the valley.
From Peshawar, they expanded into Swat and neighboring regions, including Buner and Dir. These areas were already inhabited by local populations, including the Swatis and other groups. Yousafzai expansion took place over time through a combination of migration, alliances, raids and military conflict rather than a single mass movement. It is also here in 1519, where they are first explicity mentioned in the Baburnama by Babur, when he was fighting with rebellious Yusufzai tribes around Swat.
As the Yousafzais settled in the region, they established villages and consolidated their local power across its fertile valleys, gradually expanding in population and influence. Over time, they grew into one of the largest and most prominent Pashtun tribes. In later centuries, many Yousafzai migrated to India, where they became part of the Rohilla communities, which comprised of Pashtun immigrants as well as local people that had adopted Pashtun identity and customs. As a result, the Yusufzai are today often among the most South Asian-shifted Pashtun tribes in terms of autosomal ancestry. At the same time, they show a very high frequency of R1a-YP413 > YP1123 associated with ancient Iranic-related populations and early Iron Age herders, as well as lineages linked to ancestral Proto-Pashtun populations. This apparent contrast highlights strong founder effects and genetic drift, which preserved and even increased specific paternal lineages over many generations despite substantial South Asian-related ancestry in their overall genetic profile.
The East Eurasian component in Turks is what pulls them away. Majority of their ancestry is still Byzantine Anatolian, with significant Turkic admixture. Genetic heatmaps can be very misleading for populations who are a mixture of genetically distinct groups.
Important post that refutes the narrative that the term „Kurd“ historically meant merely „Iranian nomad“.
I’ve tabulated the Iranian tribal groups of the plateau that historical sources describe as nomadic. Here you can see many examples of non-Kurdish Iranian nomads, which refutes the notion that “Kurd” was merely a generic term for Iranian nomads.
The sources treat the Kurds as a distinct group and name other nomads separately. Take for example Sasanian-era Syriac texts distinguish the nomadic Kermanis (Qarmānāyē) from the Kurds, and Yāqūt describes the Baloch of Kerman as “a people like the Kurds” rather than calling them Kurds, which directly implies a distinction.
The notion that “Kurd” means Iranian nomad stems from a misreading of cherry-picked comparative remarks in Arabic and Arabic-influenced historiography, such as “the Kurds are the Bedouin of Persia”. It projects the Arab division between the ʿarab (settled) and the aʿrāb (nomads) onto Iranian society. We know this not to be the case because Sassanian social structure is quite decently attested, and this isn't how society was divided up.
