History of the Middle East brought major protests, uprisings, and revolutions to several Middle Eastern countries, followed by prolonged civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In 2014, a terrorist group and self-proclaimed caliphate calling itself the Islamic State made rapid territorial gains in western Iraq and eastern Syria, prompting international military intervention. At its peak, the group controlled an area containing an estimated 2.8 to 8 million people, 98% of which was lost by December 2017. By country: General: Works cited History of the Middle East Home to the Cradle of Civilization, the Middle East (usually interchangeable with the Near East) has seen
Origin of the Kurds Origin of the Kurds The Kurds as an ethnicity within the Northwestern Iranian group enter the historical record at the end of the seventh century. Scholars have suggested different theories for the origin of the name "Kurd". According to the English Orientalist Godfrey Rolles Driver, the term "Kurd" is related to the Sumerian "Karda" which was found from Sumerian clay tablets of the third millennium B.C, while according to other scholars, it predates the Islamic period, as a Middle Persian word for "nomad", and may ultimately be derived from an ancient toponym or tribal name, either that of the "Cyrtii"