History of The Kurdish People - Muslim Conquests

Muslim Conquests

In 641 CE, Arab commander Utba ibn Farqad conquered Kurdish forts of Adiabene. Around this time, Kurds lived a partly sedentary life and raised sheep and cattle in the regions of Beth Begash and Beth Kartewaye above Arbil in Adiabene. In 696, Kurds joined the Khariji revolt near Hulwan.

Under the caliphs of Baghdad there were numerous uprisings. In 838, and again in 905, formidable insurrections occurred in northern Kurdistan; the amir, Aqpd-addaula, was obliged to lead the forces of the caliphate against the southern Kurds, capturing the famous fortress of Sermaj, whose ruins are to be seen at the present day near Behistun, and reducing the province of Shahrizor with its capital city now marked by the great mound of Yassin Teppeh. One of the very well known Kurdish scholars, Al-Dinawari (828–889), from Dinawar near Kermanshah, lived in this period. He wrote a book about the ancestry of the Kurds.

A Kurd named Nasr or Narseh converted to Christianity, and changed his name to Theophobos during the reign of Emperor Theophilus and was the emperor's intimate friend and commander for many years. Narseh joined Babak's rebellion in southern Kurdistan, but Abbasid armies defeated his forces in 833 and according to the Muslim historian Tabari around 60,000 of his followers were killed. Narseh himself fled to the Byzantine territories and helped form the Kurdish contingent of Theophilus. This Kurdish force invaded the domain of caliphate in 838 to help Babak's rebellion. After the defeat of Babak, Narseh and his followers settled in Pontus (north-central Anatolia).

The eclipse of the Sasanian and Byzantine power by the Muslim caliphate, and its own subsequent weakening, let the Kurdish principalities and "mountain administrators" set up new independent states. The Shaddadids of the Caucasus and Armenia, the Rawadids of Azerbaijan, the Marwandis of eastern Anatolia, the Hasanwayhids, Fadhilwayhids, and Ayyarids of the central Zagros are some of the these Kurdish dynasties.

Throughout Kurdish history after the Muslim conquests, there was a tendency for Kurdish tribes to move northwest as vassals of greater Muslim powers--from the Zagros to east Assyria and south-central Armenia, to west Assyria and west Armenia, to in modern times, migration of individuals into western Turkey, western Europe or even the Western Hemisphere.