Kurds before Islam

The Kurds, speaking an Iranian language, are may be issued from Medes (and so arrived to the Near-East during the first millenium B.C.), or are the descendants of more ancient populations who could have been assimilated to their invaders. Arabian geographers and historians described their strong resistance to the muslim invasion, as it is reported by Tabari : " Persians enclosed themselves in Daragberd. For two months, Muslims assieged them. (They) called for help the Kurds of the province and much of them came ".

Their territory seems to have been larger than nowadays though, with Jibal (Media) and Mesopotamia, Kurds were in Fars, Armenia, Ahwaz. Kurds and Lurs were not precisely characterized, as later Christtians and the first muslim Kurds. The geographers and the historians of Islam described them as nomadic or half-nomadic people, with their wintering places or summer residence in towns, and used often to go to markets. Their way of life and their mountaneous dwelling protected them to a cultural assimilation with new invaders and their conversion was quite slow, for one or two centuries. As for their arabisation, it never happened. Heirs of ancient cultures, they kept their own traditions, sometimes altered, behind the veil of Islam.