Since before the dawn of history, the mountainous lands of the northern Middle East have been home to the Kurds. Labelled "Mountain Turks" in Turkey and "Umayyad Arabs" in Syria and Iraq and coupled with the outright denial of their existence in Iran and Soviet Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, there is much confusion over the identity of the Kurds, even among the Kurds themselves. Despite their antiquity and the growing geopolitical implications of Kurdish nationalist aspirations, very little reference work on the Kurds has been done. This book, the first of its kind, is meant to serve as a quick reference. The author, himself a Kurd, has provided a brief but documented insight into matters Kurdish. Drawing on both ancient and modern source materials, the book covers the history, ethnography, geography, culture and politics of the Kurds.