Kurdish Christians - History

History

According to a legend, Mar Saba succeeded in converting some sun-worshipping Kurds to Christianity in the fifth century. According to Coptic documents, the earliest Christian missionary works among the Kurds are attributed to St. Andrew.

Most Kurds converted to Islam after the Arab conquest of the Sassanid Empire. However, there were Kurdish converts to Christianity even after the spread of Islam. In the ninth century, a Kurd named Nasr or Narseh converted to Christianity, and changed his name to Theophobos during the reign of Emperor Theophilus and was the emperor's intimate friend and commander for many years. During the same period, the Kurdish prince Ibn-ad-Dahhak, who possessed the fortress of al-Jafary, abandoned Islam for Orthodox Christianity. In return, the Byzantines had given him extensive lands and a fortress. He was eventually executed with his entire family during a summer raid by Thamal, the Arab governor of Tarsus, in 927.

There were many Kurdish Christian communities and tribes reported by medieval writers as late as the 10th and 13th centuries AD. In the late 11th and the early 12th century AD, Kurdish Christian soldiers comprised 2.7% of the army of fortress city of Shayzar in present-day Syria.

A Christianized Kurdish family under the title of Zakarids ruled parts of northern Armenia in the 13th century AD and it tried to reinvigorate intellectual activities by founding new monasteries. The family was known as Mxargrdzeli in Georgian and their ancestors were of Mesopotamian Kurds of Babirakan tribe. The family was converted to Christianity by the Armenian kings of Tashir or Dzoroyget. After the fall of Tashirs, the family came to serve the Georgian kings. Two brothers of this family, Zakare and Ivane became prominent in the Georgian Army and were instrumental in Queen Thamar's victory in Ani in 1199. Queen appointed them as rulers of Ani in 1201. Later, Mongols gave Akhlat to princess Tamta daughter of Ivane in 1243 and confirmed Shanshe son of Zakare in Ani in 1245.

In the 19th century, several Christian villages existed in Kurdistan, whose inhabitants spoke only Kurdish, and there were Muslim Kurdish tribes that recalled they were once Christians. Kurds who converted to Christianity usually turned to the Nestorian Church. In 1884, researchers of the Royal Geographical Society reported about a Kurdish tribe in Sivas which retained certain Christian observances and sometimes identified as Christian. It is also possible that many Kurdish Christians have been linguistically and hence ethnically absorbed by Semitic-speaking Christians of Mesopotamia, especially after Islamic expansions in Middle East.

In the early 20th century, a Lutheran mission from United States and Germany began to serve the Kurds of Iran. From 1911 to 1916, it established a Kurdish congregation and an orphanage. One of the most prominent Kurdish leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan, Sheikh Ahmed Barzani who was a brother of Mustafa Barzani, announced his conversion to Christianity during his uprising against the Iraqi government in 1931.