Who are the Kurds? People, language and homeland

The Kurds are a people of West Asia with their own language, Kurdish, and deep roots in the mountains where today’s Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria meet. Most estimates put their number somewhere between 30 and 45 million. Many also live far from those mountains, from the Caucasus to Germany and Sweden.

This guide covers the basics: where Kurds live, how many there are, what language they speak, which faiths they follow and which traditions they share. Along the way you will pick up a few words in Kurmancî (Northern Kurdish) and Soranî (Central Kurdish), the two forms of Kurdish most learners start with.

Where do Kurds live?

The Kurdish homeland is a wide, mountainous region. It takes in the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountains, and its high plateaus are where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers begin. Kurds call this region Kurdistan, which simply means “land of the Kurds”.

Today the region crosses four countries: southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria. Long-established Kurdish communities also live in Armenia, Georgia and other parts of the Caucasus, and in Central Asia, for example in Kazakhstan.

This is how you tell someone where you are from:

Ez ji Kurdistanê me /ɛz ʒi kuɾdisˈtanɛ mɛ/ من خەڵکی کوردستانم I am from Kurdistan

In Iraq, the Kurdistan Region is a federal region recognised in the country’s 2005 constitution, and its capital is Erbil. The same constitution names Arabic and Kurdish as the two official languages of Iraq, and official institutions in the Kurdistan Region use both.

How many Kurds are there?

Nobody has an exact figure, so every number you see is an estimate. Most researchers place the total between about 30 and 45 million people, depending on the year and the method they use.

Here are rough ranges by country, from the lower to the higher published estimates:

• Turkey: about 14 to 20 million, the largest Kurdish population of any country
• Iran: about 8 to 12 million
• Iraq: about 5.5 to 8.5 million
• Syria: about 1.6 to 3.6 million
• The Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia: a few hundred thousand

Kurds around the world

Kurds began moving to Western Europe in larger numbers in the 1960s, many of them as workers, and more families followed in later decades. Today Germany has the largest Kurdish community in Europe, with estimates from about one million to 1.5 million people.

France, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland each have Kurdish communities of tens of thousands or more, and Denmark, Norway and Finland have smaller ones. For Europe as a whole, estimates range from about 1.5 million to more than 2 million Kurds. There are also communities in the United States and Canada.

Kurdish has a short expression for missing home:

Dilê min li welêt e. دڵم لە وڵاتە. My heart is in the homeland (I miss home).

If you grew up hearing Kurdish at home but speak it less than you would like, our guide for heritage speakers is written for you.

The Kurdish language

Kurdish belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. That makes it a close relative of Persian and a distant cousin of English and German, but Kurdish is very much a language of its own.

Kurdish has more than one standard form. Kurmancî has the most speakers and is written in Latin letters; it is used in Turkey, Syria, the Caucasus and parts of Iraq and Iran. Soranî is the main form in much of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region and in western Iran, and it is written in an Arabic-based script. Southern Kurdish is spoken further south, mostly in western Iran.

The Kurmancî of the Duhok area, known as Behdînî (Badini), has features of its own and is often written in the Arabic-based script. Zazakî (Kirmanckî) and Hewramî (Gorani) are close relatives: many of their speakers see themselves as Kurds, while linguists often class them as separate languages of the same family. Our guide to Kurdish dialects explains the differences.

A few words to start with:

Soranî speakers also say شاخ for “mountain”. You can use it in a first short sentence:

Çiya bilind e شاخ بەرزە The mountain is high.

Faiths and communities

Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, and most of them follow the Shafiʽi school. There are also Shia Kurds, and Turkey has a sizeable community of Alevi Kurds.

Êzidîs (Yazidis) follow their own religion, and almost all of them speak Kurmancî. It is also the language of their religious hymns, which have long been passed on by word of mouth. Some Êzidîs see themselves as Kurds and others as a separate people, and both views deserve respect.

Yarsanis, also called Ahl-e Haqq (“People of Truth”), live mainly in western Iran around Kermanshah, and in Iraq, where they are often known as Kakaʼi. Much of their sacred poetry is in Gorani.

There are also small Kurdish Christian communities. For many centuries, Jewish communities lived in Kurdish towns and villages as well; most spoke a form of Aramaic as their mother tongue, and many also spoke Kurdish. Most of them moved to Israel in the early 1950s.

Newroz, music and poetry

The best-known Kurdish celebration is Newroz, the new year, usually celebrated on 21 March, as spring begins. People gather outdoors, often in colourful traditional clothes, to light fires, dance and share food. An old folk tale links the fires to Kawa the blacksmith, who is said to have freed his people from a cruel king. Our post on Newroz tells the whole story.

Weddings and festivals are full of music, and guests join hands to dance the govend in a long line or an open circle. The dengbêj, Kurdish singer-storytellers, perform long sung stories from memory, usually without instruments. Read more about the dengbêj tradition.

Kurdish poetry has a long written history, too. Its most famous classic is Mem û Zîn, a love story in verse completed by the poet Ehmedê Xanî in the 1690s. It tells of two lovers kept apart, and it is still read and retold today.

Say it in Kurdish

Ready to put a few of these words together? Here are short sentences about culture, music and heritage in both dialects:

Every Kurdish word and sentence in this guide comes from the ZimanGo lessons. The app teaches Kurmancî and Soranî today, with Behdînî, Zazakî and Hewramî coming soon, and the core course is free.