alternatehistory.com

Greater Arab successes earlier-on in the Arab-Byzantine wars are ultimately not capitalized on, and in the vacuum left by fleeing Greeks and Armenians, an Iranic hill people move into the Anatolian plateau. These people eventually cover most of Anatolia, before the Byzantines return to the peninsula and reconquer most of it. Afterwards, the cities fill once again with Greeks, but the countryside if still dominated by the Cordu, who are relegated to the position of tenant farmers under Greek landlords. The Cordu rebel against the Empire in the 11th century. The result is as it often is with troublesome minorities in the Byzantine Empire: they are carted off and relocated to another part of the Empire, in this case Epirus.

A few centuries later, and the Bulgarian Empire conquered most of the Balkans, eventually taking Constantinople. Taking advantage of Byzantine weakness, the Normans in Sicily conquer the region occupied by the Cordu, now called Cordia. Roger IV, King of Sicily, took a Cordish wife in the name of the new union. Sicily-Cordia would be a polyglot center of tolerance and a melting pot of cultures for several centuries, and Palermo would become an entrepot for trade throughout the Mediterranean.

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Edit: yep. Italian Kurds