AHC: Largest Kurdish Empire

Lately I have wanted to write a timeline of a Kurdish Empire, with any POD, how would you get a Kurd Empire that has coastal port, either in the Black Sea or Mediterranean, though getting both gets major brownie points.
 
Indeed, the Ayyubids were Kurds

Disputable as they didn't defined themselves as Kurds, but as Muslims and Arabs.
When they distinguished themselves from Rawadiya, becoming a distinct dynasty, they were eventually as much Kurds (assuming that an anachronistic Kurd identity opposed to Arabo-Islamic one existed in first place. Even scholars as Al-Dinawari are impossible to define only as such) than a third-generation German-American is German.

In order to have a "Kurdish" Empire, the least you have to manage is having a ruler not only from Kurdish origin but as well definiting himself as such (that is, relativly hard in the Arabo-Islamic world, where hegemon was based on at least partial Arabity safe noticable exception as Persia).

In fact, before the creation of a province of Kordistan by Ahmed Sanjar, you can't really be sure of an unified Kurd identity instead of Kurdish clanic identities (a bit like Berbers, in Islamic West).
 
Most people believe that the Kurds are descended from the Medes, who had a national identity. If the Median kingdom reached the black or Caspian sea, it would qualify. If Cyrus, didn't revolt, the Median kingdom could easily reach the Mediterranian. then would would have a pre-kurdish empire.
 
Most people believe that the Kurds are descended from the Medes, who had a national identity. If the Median kingdom reached the black or Caspian sea, it would qualify. If Cyrus, didn't revolt, the Median kingdom could easily reach the Mediterranian. then would would have a pre-kurdish empire.

Not really. It is a controversial theory whose linguistic analysis is considered obsolete and suspect by most people in the field. Most likely the Kurds stem from a heterogeneous assemblage of earlier NW Iranian, Semetic, and Turkish peoples. The ethnic identity of the Kurds only really developed in medieval times.
 
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The ethnic identity of the Kurds only really developed in medieval times.

That said, it was a relativly widespread conception (I would say "widespread" if I knew a bit more about it and if most people didn't cared about it) during Islamic Middle Ages and Modern Era that Medes and Kurds were related.
Even if it's most probably wrong, many ethnic and national identities built themselves on such things.
 
That said, it was a relativly widespread conception (I would say "widespread" if I knew a bit more about it and if most people didn't cared about it) during Islamic Middle Ages and Modern Era that Medes and Kurds were related.
Even if it's most probably wrong, many ethnic and national identities built themselves on such things.

I know that during the modern era it was a prevalent notion among Kurdish nationalists.
 
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