Being the native inhabitants of their land, there are no beginnings for Kurdish history and people.

Kurds and their history are the end products of thousands of years of continuous internal evolution and assimilation of new peoples and ideas introduced sporadically into their land. Genetically, Kurds are the descendants of all those who ever came to settle in Kurdistan, and not any one of them. A people such as the Guti, Kurti. Mede, Mard, Carduchi, Gordyene, Adianbene, Zila and Khaldi. The earliest evidence so far of a unified and distinct culture (and possibly, ethnicity) by people inhabiting the Kurdish mountains dates back to the Halaf culture of 7,400 to 8000 years ago. This was followed by the spread of the Ubaidian culture, which was a foreign introduction from Mesopotamia. After about a millennium, its dominance was replaced by the Hurrian culture, which may or may not have been the Halafian people reasserting their dominance over their mountainous homeland. The Hurrian period lasted from 2,600 to 6,300 years ago. By about 4,000 years ago, the first van-guard of the Indo-European-speaking peoples were trickling into Kurdistan in limited numbers and settling there. By about 3,000 years ago, the trickle had turned into a flood and Hurrian Kurdistan was fast becoming Indo-European Kurdistan. Medes, Scythians and Sagartians are just the better-known clans of the Indo- European-speaking Aryans who settled in Kurdistan. Eventually, about 2,600 years ago, the Medes had set up an empire that included all Kurdistan and vast territories far beyond. Medes were followed by scores of other kingdoms and city-states Qall dominated by Aryan aristocracies and a populace that was becoming Indo-European, Kurdish speakers if not so already. By about 300 B.C, Kurds were already experiencing massive population movements that resulted in settlement and domination of many neighboring regions. Important Kurdish political affairs of this time were all by-products of these movements. The Zelan Kurdish clan of Commagene (Adyaman area), for example, spread to establish in addition to the Zelanid dynasty of Commagene, the Zelanid kingdom of Cappadocia and the Zelanid empire of Pontus Qall in Anatolia. These became Roman vassals by the end of the 1st century B.C. In the east the Kurdish kingdoms of Gordyene, Cortea, Media, Kirm, and Adiabene had, by the 1st century B.C, become confederate members of the Parthian Federation. By the end of the 1st century B.C, all larger Kurdish Kingdoms of the west gradually lost their existence to the Romans. The Kurdish kingdoms of Gordyene, Cortea, Media, Kirm, and Adiabene had become confederate members of the Parthian Federation. They survived into the 3rd century A.D. The last major Kurdish dynasty, the Kayosids, fell in A.D 380. Smaller Kurdish principalities (called the Kotyar, "mountain administrators") however preserved their autonomous existence into the 7th century and the coming of Islam. Several socio-economic revolutions in the garb of religious movements emerged in Kurdistan at this time, many due to the exploitation by central governments, some due to natural disasters. These continued as underground movement into the Islamic era, bursting forth periodically to demand social reforms. The Mazdakite and Khurramite movements are best-known among these. With the 12th and 13th centuries the Turkic nomads who in time politically dominated vast segments of the Middle East arrived in the area. Most independent Kurdish states succumbed to various Turkic kingdoms and empires. Kurdish principalities, however, survived and continued with their autonomous existence until the 17th century. Intermittently, these would rule independently when local empires weakened or collapsed The advent of the Safavid (Persian) and Ottoman empires in the area and their division of Kurdistan into two uneven imperial dependencies was on a par with the practice of the preceding few centuries. Their introduction of artillery and scorched-earth policy into Kurdistan was a new and devastating development. In the course of the 16th to 18th centuries, vast portions of Kurdistan were systematically devastated and large numbers of Kurds were deported to far corners of the Safavid and Ottoman empires. The magnitude of death and destruction wrought on Kurdistan unified its people in their call to rid the land of these foreign vandals. The destruction and massacre awakened in Kurds a community feeling of nationalism, that called for a unified Kurdish state and fostering of Kurdish culture and language. Thus the historian Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi wrote the first pan-Kurdish history the Sharafnama in 1597, as Ahmad Khani composed the national epic of Mem-o-Zin in 1695, which called for a Kurdish state to fend for its people. Kurdish nationalism was born.

For one last time a large Kurdish kingdom the Zand, was born in 1750. The Zands set up their capital and kingdom outside Kurdistan, and pursued no policies aimed at unification of the Kurdish nation. By 1867, the very last autonomous Kurdish principalities were being systematically eradicated by the Ottoman and Persian governments that ruled Kurdistan. They now ruled directly, via governors, all Kurdish provinces. The situation further deteriorated after the end of the World war I and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sevres signed in August 1920 anticipated an independent Kurdish state to cover large portions of the former Ottoman Kurdistan. Unimpressed by the Kurds' many bloody uprisings for independence, France and Britain divided up Ottoman Kurdistan between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The Treaty of Lausanne signed June 1923 formalized this division. Kurds of Persia/Iran meanwhile were kept where they were by Teheran. Since 1921 Kurdish society with such a degree of fragmentation, that its impact is tearing apart the Kurds unity as a nation. The 1920s saw the setting up of Kurdish autonomous province (the "Red Kurdistan") in Soviet Azerbaijan. It was disbanded in 1929. In 1945, Kurds set up a Kurdish republic at Mahabad, occupied zone in Iran. It lasted less than a year, until it was re-occupied by the Iranian army. Since 1970s, the Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed an official autonomous status in a portion of that state's Kurdistan. By the end of 1991, they had become all but independent from Iraq. By 1995, however, the Kurdish government in Erbil was at the verge of political suicide due to the outbreak of factional fighting between various Kurdish warlords. Since 1987 the Kurds in Turkey by themselves constituting a majority of all Kurds, have waged a war of national liberation against Ankara's 70 years of heavy handed suppression of any vestige of the Kurdish identity and its rich and ancient culture. The massive uprising had by 1995 propelled Turkey into a state of civil war. The burgeoning and youthful Kurdish population in Turkey, is now demanding absolute equality with the Turkish component in that state. In the Caucasus, the fledgling Armenian Republic, in the course of 1992-94 wiped out the entire Kurdish community of the former "Red Kurdistan." Having ethnically "cleansed" it, Armenia has effectively annexed Red Kurdistan's territory that forms the land bridge between the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia proper. Reference: History, Exploring Kurdistan by Prof. M. R. Izady