Cyrtians

The Cyrtians or Kyrtians (Ancient Greek: Κύρτιοι, romanized: Kýrtioi, Latin: Cyrtii) were an ancient tribe in historic Iran near the Zagros Mountains.^[1] Based on their name, it had been suggested in the past that they may be ancestors of the Kurds^[2][3] or the source of the ethnonym Kurd, but this is deemed unlikely by modern scholarship.^[4]

According to Rüdiger Schmitt, they were a tribe dwelling mainly in the mountains of Atropatene (Northern Zagros Mountains) together with the Cadusii, Amardi (or "Mardi"), Tapyri, and others (Strabo 11.13.3). Strabo characterized the Cyrtians living in Persia as migrants to the region and predatory brigands.^[2]

In the Hellenistic period, they seem to have been in demand as slingers, because they fought as such for the Median satrap Molon in his revolt against King Antiochus III in 220 BC.^[2]

Friedrich Carl Andreas was the first scholar to propose a connection between the names Cyrtian and Kurd. He placed the ethnic territory of the Cyrtians in the area of the Armenian province of Korchayk, the name of which he derived from the hypothetical form *korti-ayk‘, with the first element developing from *kurti to *korti- to *korč-, although majority modern scholarship links the term "kurd" to the late Sassanid Persian term "Kwrt", meaning nomad.^[1]

Origins

According to Garnik Asatrian, Cyrtians were a collection of indigenous, non-Iranian tribes descended from peooles extant prior to the migration of Iranic speaking peoples into the region after 1000 BCE, who only shared a nomadic lifestyle, and were not necessarily related to each other.^[5] The Cyrtians were not connected to the Carduchii (Cordyaei, Gordyaei, Karduchoi) and the like, who lived further north west.^[2]