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Definition: Kurd from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary

pronunciationpronunciation

(1595) : a member of a pastoral and agricultural people who inhabit a plateau region in adjoining parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan

Kurd•ish \॑ku̇r-dish, ॑kər-\ adj

Kurd

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Member of a people living mostly in the Taurus and Sagros mountains of eastern Turkey, western Iran, and northern Iraq in the region called Kurdistan . The Kurds have suffered repression in several countries, most brutally in Iraq, where in 1991 more than 1 million were forced to flee their homes. They speak an Indo-Iranian language and are predominantly Sunni Muslims, although there are some Shiites in Iran. There are 12 million Kurds in Turkey, 5 million in Iran, 4 million in Iraq, 500,000 in Syria, and 500,000 in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Several million live elsewhere in Europe. Although divided among several states, they have nationalist aspirations, and the growth of a pan-Kurdish movement has been helped by the recent move to towns (undertaken in search of work and to escape repression). About 1 million Kurds were made homeless and 25,000 killed as a result of chemical-weapon attacks by Iraq in 1984–89. A Kurdish parliament in exile was established in 1995 in The Hague, …
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Kurds
An INDO-EUROPEAN people whose precise origins are unknown, but who probably migrated into the region sometimes referred to as Kurdistan during the 2nd millennium BC . They have been called Kurds since at least the 7th century AD . Kurdistan (meaning ‘Land of the Kurds’), also known as the Kurdish…
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Full text Article Kurds

From Philip's Encyclopedia
Predominantly rural Islamic population numbering some 18 million, who live in a disputed frontier area of SW Asia that they call Kurdistan . Traditionally nomadic herdsmen, they are mainly Sunni Muslims who speak an Iranian dialect. For 3,000 years, they maintained a unique cultural tradition, …
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Full text Article Kurds

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(kûrds, kʊrds), a non-Arab Middle Eastern minority population that inhabits the region known as Kurdistan , an extensive plateau and mountain area, c.74,000 sq mi (191,660 sq km), in SW Asia, including parts of E Turkey, NE Iraq, and NW Iran and smaller sections of NE Syria and Armenia. The region…
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From Encyclopedia of Terrorism
The Kurds are a Middle Eastern people whose origins can be traced back at least a millennium and whose total numbers range between 20 and 25 million. The great preponderance of Kurds are Sunni Muslims. The Kurds are not Arabs, and most of them do not live in Arab lands. The Kurds have never…
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The Kurds were most likely an Indo-European people who migrated from Central Asia to Asia Minor and northern Mesopotamian regions, living among Assyrian and Babylonian inhabitants sometime between the second and first millennium BCE For centuries the Kurds maintained their own civilization, …
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Full text Article Kurds

From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
© CENGAGE LEARNING/GALE
The Kurds are an ethnic group of Indo-European descent that traces its origins and history to the Medes, a preIslamic tribal dynasty that ruled in present-day Iran from 614 to 550 B CE . They populate the mountains and plateau areas of the Zagros range and span across four states—Iraq, Turkey, …
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Full text Article Kurd

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Member of a people living mostly in the Taurus and Sagros mountains of eastern Turkey, western Iran, and northern Iraq in the region called Kurdistan . The Kurds have suffered repression in several countries, most brutally in Iraq, where in 1991 more than 1 million were forced to flee their homes. …
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Full text Article Kurds

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
A nationalistic West Iranian-speaking ethnic group settled in neighbouring mountainous areas of Anatolia, Iraq, Iran and Turkey (including some in Syria and Armenia), an area which they call Kurdistan, and numbering 9–10 million. They were originally pastoral nomads with some agriculture, but the…
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From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Member of an ethnic and linguistic group native to parts of what are now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, and Syria ( see Kurdistan ). Kurds speak one of two dialects of Kurdish, a West Iranian language related to Modern Persian. Traditionally nomadic, most were forced into farming by the redrawing of…
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Full text Article Kurd

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
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