Kurdistan

Kurdistan: see under Kurds.

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Kurdistan

Broad designation given to a mountainous region that includes parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, and Syria, inhabited predominantly by Kurds. Settlement is chiefly concentrated in the towns of Diyarbakir, Bitlis, and Van in Turkey, Mosul and Karkuk in Iraq, and Kermanshah in Iran. Since early times the region has been the home of the Kurds, a people whose ethnic origins are uncertain. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920, provided for the recognition of a Kurdish state, but the agreement was never ratified.

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Kurdistan, Kurdestan, Kordestan

a large plateau and mountainous region, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, south of the Caucasus. Area: over 29 000 sq. km (74 000 sq. miles)

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Kurdistan 

a mountainous region of Southwest Asia inhabited primarily by Kurds. Most of Kurdistan is located within the confines of the Armenian and Iranian plateaus. The name “Kurdistan” is used chiefly in an ethnogeographical sense, since Kurdistan has no fixed borders. The first mention of Kurdistan dates from the 12th century. In 1514, as a result of wars, the Ottoman Empire and Iran divided Kurdistan between themselves. After World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, those parts of Kurdistan that had belonged to the empire became part of the states that arose on its territory: Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.