Kurd

Kurd, member of an ethnic and linguistic group living in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and western Armenia, and other adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey—a somewhat loosely defined geographic region generally referred to as Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”). The name has different connotations in Iran and Iraq, which officially recognize internal entities by this name: Iran’s western province of Kordestān and Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region. A sizable noncontiguous Kurdish population also exists in the Khorāsān region, situated in Iran’s northeast.