After some years, the people discovered that they could fool the monster by replacing the second man with a sheep in the commotion of the meal. The second man would run away, and for many years until the beast was finally killed, the run-away men would live in the mountains. From them and their descendants, the Kurdish race was born.

 

Where the women came from remains untold, and it underscores the fact that the Kurdish presence in present-day Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey goes back to a time before history.

 

What is clear from the Kurdish language and customs, however, is that the Kurds have Persian roots. They have their own version of Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebrated in late March to coincide with the Spring Equinox, and like the Iranians, this tradition has survived the conversion of most Kurds to Islam.

Some living today in Jabal Sanjar in northern Iraq continue to practice a pagan devotion to Satan, who they believe repented for his sins by weeping so long that he extinguished the fires of hell. Later on he hid in a patch of lettuce, and to this day, many from Jabal Sanjar avoid eating the vegetable.

 

Throughout centuries of interaction with the Arab and other peoples of the Middle East, the Kurds have been victim and oppressor, lord and serf, enemy and friend.

 

In the Levant (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria), many claim Kurdish roots through their family names and oral traditions. Fadwa Tuqan, in her memoirs A Mountainous Journey, speaks adoringly of a Kurdish family who lived next to hers in Nablus, Palestine, at the turn of the 20th century.

 

The Abu Al Haija clan, originally from the Galilee and now scattered in Jordan and the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, led the defence against Israel's army in the spring of 2002. Doubtless, they took solace in the fact that their name came down from Mohammed Abu Al Haija, a Kurdish general who fought the crusaders in Palestine during the 12th century.

If you have ever wondered why Egypt is no longer an Ismaili state, why the crusaders never reached Cairo and how the Mamluks could have taken power, the answer lies with the Kurdish Ayubid clan.

 

One of the most important Arabic chronicles of this time are the memoirs of Osama ibn Munqidh (available in English translation by Phillip Hitti), an Arab prince of Syria who lived for an incredible 95 years during the 12th and 13th centuries.

 

While in the past the Arab aristocracy of Greater Syria (the Levant) prided itself on its roots in the Arabian peninsula, a vestige of the Umayyad days, ibn Munqidh considered the Ayubids, with whom he was allied in battle, not too different from himself: they enjoyed hunting, horse-riding, reciting Arabic poems and exhibiting chivalry.

 

It was clear even then that a thoroughly acculturated Kurdish elite had grown up among the Arabs of the late Abbasid state. During that period, unlike Persian ministers and, later on, Turkish military leaders, the Kurds never sought to impose their own mores on the Arabs they lived with. It was more of a symbiotic relationship, at least for those at the top.

 

If only life could be so civilised as falconry and hunting parties in Syria. Alas it is not, and not all Kurds have had the material ability or the will to feel as empowered as the Ayubids among the overwhelming Arab presence.

 

During nearly 800 years of rule by Seljuk and especially Ottoman Turks, Kurds living in Arab countries tended to do one of two things: recede into the remote mountain reaches where only other Kurds lived, or become part of the military apparatus which ruled over the Levant.

 

Taken together with the recent history of the Kurds in Iraq, it is interesting to note that the first massacre in that country was directed by a Kurd against Assyrians.

 

In 1933, General Bakr Sidki led the killing of 3,000 of them in the village of Simle, now under Kurdish control, thus ushering in the military as a political force in Iraq. 

 

Some people are surprised that the previous Iraqi constitution defined Kurdish as the second official language. Hence the particular dialect of Kurdish spoken in the country, Karmanji, is more widely known than any other, and is the only one which has ever been in print.

 

The Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq says Kurdish nationalism has been "long in the making," but without a definite reference predating the modern nation states of the region and their boundaries. What is beyond doubt is that modern Kurdish nationalism was coalescing during the years leading up to World War II.

 

This was also a zenith for Arab nationalism, witnessing the Palestinian revolt against colonialism which led to further upheavals throughout the Arab world, including the military uprising led by Mohammed Ali Kilani in Baghdad.

 

"In the beginning, [Kurdish and Arab nationalisms] had common interests [against imperialism]," Khalid Saleh, KRG spokesman in London, tells Sharq. "But when the states were formed, [the Kurds] were left behind."

Furthermore, the Palestine Liberation Organisation enjoyed close relations with various Kurdish groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and there is a public square in KRG-controlled Suleimaniya named after Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

 

Alas, this all seems to be part of one big fashion mistake which the KRG wants to forget. It makes no apologies for the fact that it is still in control of what are effectively gangs of vigilantes trying to put a Kurdish face on cities such as Mosul.

 

Some independent Kurdish nationalists see imperialism as a present enemy waiting to swallow both the Kurds and Arabs. The occupiers of Iraq aim to "place irreconcilable communities together" in a unified, albeit federal country, Faridoun Hilmi, a former UN employee involved with regeneration work in Iraqi Kurdistan, tells Sharq.

 

He is the son of Rafik Hilmi, who founded the Hope Party in 1938 - the first organised political body to demand Kurdish independence - and a mentor to Talabani. Faridoun berates the KRG for its often clan-based system of nepotism and unashamed economic corruption, giving some members obscene access to wealth in a country where most live in hardship.

 

This reputation for mismanagement led thousands of Kurds to attack the monument which the Talabani-led regime erected to commemorate the 1988 massacre at Halabja, a rallying call for Kurdish nationalists, when their civilians paid the price for collusion between the Peshmerga - the Kurdish militia still operating in Iraq - and Iran during the war between the two countries.

 

When Sharq asks Saleh why the only post-Saddam allies of the Kurds are Iranian-backed groups working for a sectarian agenda, he says they "had common ground…on being in opposition to the then-government of Iraq."

 

To some this may seem innocent, but we must remember that it only serves to reinforce the Arab impression that the latest war is a Persian-Kurdish-Turkish-Zionist-European-American (pause for a breath) conspiracy against Arab Iraq.

 

Notwithstanding any of this, the nascent intelligentsia of which Hilmi is a member, and which will clearly be the future voice of the people of Kurdistan, demands that the KRG secure more autonomy, not less.

 

Perhaps it is time that us Arabs meet them half way and ensure that we, who have suffered so much at the hands of foreign occupiers, do not become the occupier of a stateless people.