Portal:Kurdistan/Selected article/2008/January

The Kurds are an ethnic group of Iranian origin who are indigenous to a region often referred to as Kurdistan, an area that includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish communities can also be found in Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan (Kalbajar and Lachin, to the west of Nagorno Karabakh) and, in recent decades, some European countries and the United States (see Kurdish diaspora). They speak Kurdish, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. There are many different and diverging views on the origin of the Kurds. While Encyclopædia Britannica considers the Kurds' ethnic origins as uncertain and Encarta relates them to other Iranian peoples, according to Encyclopedia Columbia, Kurds are commonly identified with the ancient Corduene which was in turn inhabited by the Carduchi.