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The Medes (/midz/)[N 1] (from Old Persian Māda-) were an ancient Iranian people[N 2] who lived in Iran in an area known as Media and spoke a northwestern Iranian language referred to as the Median language. Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of Iranic tribes in the late second millennium BCE (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

According to the Histories of Herodotus, there were six Median tribes[8]:

Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, and ruled over them alone. Now these are the tribes of which they consist: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi.
The six Median tribes resided in Media proper, the triangle between of Ecbatana, Rhagae and Aspadana,[3] in today's central Iran,[9][10] the area between Tehran, Isfahan and Hamadan. Of the Median tribes, the Magi resided in Rhaga,[11] modern Tehran.[12] It was a sort of sacred caste, which ministered to the spiritual needs of the Medes.[13] The Paretaceni tribe resided in and around Aspadana, modern Isfahan,[3][14][15] the Arizanti lived in and around Kashan[3] and the Busae tribe lived in and around the future Median capital of Ecbatana, modern Hamadan.[3] The Struchates and the Budii lived in villages in the Median triangle.[16]

The Median language (also Medean or Medic) was the language of the Medes.[1] It is an Old Iranian language and classified as belonging to the northwestern Iranian subfamily which includes many other languages such as Azari, Zazaki, Laki, Gorani, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Kurmanji, Soranî, and Baluchi.[2
The Medes were an people of Indo-Iranian (Aryan) origin who inhabited the western and north-western portion of present-day Iran. By the 6th century BC (prior to the Persian invasion) the Medes were able to establish an empire that stretched from Aran (the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan) to Central Asia and Afghanistan. Today's population of the western part of the Iranian Plateau (including many Persian-speakers, Kurds and Azeris) consider themselves to be descended from the ancient Medes.

The Six Median Tribes
Herodotus lists the names of six Mede tribes or castes. Some of these are similar to tribal names of the Scythians, suggesting a definitive link between these two groups.
The Busae group is thought to derive from the Persian term buza meaning indigenous (i.e. not Iranian). Whether this was based on an originally Iranian term, or their own name, is unknown.
The second group is called the Paraetaceni, or Parae-tak-(eni) in Persian, and denotes nomadic inhabitants of the mountains of Paraetacene. This name recalls the Scythian Para-la-ti, the people of Kolaxis, believed to represent the common people in general, but whom Herodotus calls the "Royal Scythians".
The third group is called Stru­khat.
The fourth group is the Arizanti, whose name is derived from the words Arya (noble), and Zantu (tribe, clan).
The fifth group were the Budii, found also among the Black Sea Scythians as Budi-ni. Buddha was of the tribe Budha, the Saka (eastern Scythian) form of the name.
The sixth tribe were the Magi...They were a hereditary caste of priests of the Zurvanism religion that evolved out of Zoroastrianism. The name Magi implies a link with the Sumerians, who called their language Emegir, over time becoming simplified to Magi. Hungarian tradition also traces pre-European Magyar (Hungarian) ancestry back to the Magi. In time, the Sumerian-influenced religion of the Magi was suppressed in favour of a more purely Iranian form of Zoroastrianism, itself evolved from its somewhat dualist beginnings into the monotheistic faith that it is today (also known as Parsi-ism).

Early historical references to Medes
The origin and history of the Medes is quite obscure, as we possess almost no contemporary information, and not a single monument or inscription from Media itself. The story that Ctesias gave (a list of nine kings, beginning with Arbaces, who is said to have destroyed Nineveh about 880 BC, preserved in Diod. ii. 32 sqq. and copied by many later authors) has no historical value whatever; though some of his names may be derived from local traditions.
Josephus relates the Medes (OT Heb. Madai) to the biblical character, Madai, son of Japheth. "Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks" Antiquities of the Jews, I:6.

Other ancient historians including Strabo, Ptolemy, Herodotus, Polybius, and Pliny, mention names such as Mantiane, Martiane, Matiane, Matiene, to designate the northern part of Media.

We can see how the Iranian element gradually became dominant; princes with Iranian names occasionally occur as rulers of other tribes. But the Gelae, Tapuri, Cadusii, Amardi, Utii and other tribes in northern Media and on the shores of the Caspian may not have been Iranian stock. Polybius (V. 44, 9), Strabo (xi. 507, 508, 514), and Pliny (vi. 46), considered the Anariaci to be among these tribes; but their name, meaning the "not-Arians", is probably a comprehensive designation for a number of smaller indigenous tribes.

The Medes, people of the Mada, (the Greek form "Μηδοί" is Ionian for Madoi), appear in history first in 836 BC. Earliest records show that Assyrian conqueror Shalmaneser II received tribute from the "Amadai" in connection with wars against the tribes of the Zagros. His successors undertook many expeditions against the Medes (Madai).

At this early stage, the Medes were usually mentioned together with another steppe tribe, the Scythians, who seem to have been the dominant group. They were divided into many districts and towns, under petty local chieftains; from the names in the Assyrian inscriptions, it appears they had already adopted the religion of Zoroaster.

An Assyrian military report from 800 BC lists 28 names of Mede chiefs, but only one of these is positively identified as Iranian. A second report from c. 700 BC lists 26 names; of these, 5 seem to be Iranian, the others are not.

Sargon in 715 BC and 713 BC subjected them up to "the far mountain Bikni," i.e. the Elbruz (Damavand) and the borders of the desert. If the account of Herodotus may be trusted, the Medes' dynasty derived its origin from Deioces (Daiukku), a Mede chieftain in the Zagros, who was, along with his kinsmen, transported by Sargon to Hamath (Haniah) in Syria in 715 BC. This Daiukku seems to have originally been a governor of Mannae subject to Sargon, prior to his exile.

In spite of repeated rebellions by the early chieftains against the Assyrian yoke, the Medes paid tribute to Assyria under Sargon's successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, whenever these kings marched in with their fierce armies. Assyrian forts located in Median territory (Zagros Mtns) at the time of Esarhaddon's campaign (ca. 676) included Bit-Parnakki, Bit-kari and Harhar (Kar-Sharrukin).

The Empire of the Medes
In the second half of the 7th century BC, the Medes gained their independence and were united by a dynasty. The kings who established the Mede Empire are generally recognized to be Phraortes and his son Cyaxares. They were probably chieftains of a nomadic Mede tribe in the desert and on the south shore of the Caspian, the Manda, mentioned by Sargon, and they likely founded the capital at Ecbatana. The later Babylonian king Nabonidus also designated the Medes and their kings always as Manda.
According to Herodotus, the conquests of Cyaxares the Mede were preceded by a Scythian invasion and domination lasting twenty-eight years (under Madius the Scythian, 653-625 BC). The Mede tribes seem to have come into immediate conflict with a settled state to the West known as Mannae, allied with Assyria. Assyrian inscriptions state that the early Mede rulers, who had attempted rebellions against the Assyrians in the time of Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, were allied with chieftains of the Ashguza (Scythians) and other tribes - who had come from the northern shore of the Black Sea and invaded Armenia and Asia Minor; and Jeremiah and Zephaniah in the Old Testament also agree with Herodotus that a massive invasion of Syria and Palestine by northern barbarians took place in 626 BC. The state of Mannae was finally conquered and assimilated by the Medes in the year 616 BC.

In 612, Cyaxares conquered Urartu, and with the help of Nabopolassar the Chaldean, succeeded in destroying the Assyrian capital, Nineveh; by 606, the remaining vestiges of Assyrian control. From then on, the Mede king ruled over much of Iran, Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cappadocia. His power was very dangerous to his neighbors, and the exiled Jews expected the destruction of Babylonia by the Medes (Isaiah 13, 14m 21; Jerem. 1, 51.).

When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon married a daughter of Cyaxares, and an equilibrium of the great powers was maintained until the rise of the Persians under Cyrus.

About the internal organization of the Mede Empire, we know that the Greeks adopted many ceremonial elements of the Persian court, the costume of the king, etc., through Media

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 02:30 AM

Yes we Kurds are children of the Medes, but the Medes (and other true Iranic tribes) were always native to Kurdistan, Zagros Mountains and the Iranian Plateau!

Shirwan

2nd February 2013 - 02:59 AM

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 02:30 AM

Yes we Kurds are children of the Medes, but the Medes (and other true Iranic tribes) were always native to Kurdistan, Zagros Mountains and the Iranian Plateau!

They weren't, as genetics show, but they were of West Eurasian stock, which is two different things. Because Kurdistan as a single entity never existed.

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 03:11 AM

Shirwan

2nd February 2013 - 02:59 AM

Quoting limited to 2 levels deep

???

Genetic show that Kurds are native to Zagros Mountains, so were the Medes (and other true Aryan tribes). Zagros Mountains and the Northern part of the Iranian Plateau is the birthplace of the Aryan race.

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 03:18 AM

The Medes were NOT from Central Asia!!!

The Medes were native to the Iranian Plateau. Iranian Plateau borders Central Asia and actually a part of the Iranian Plateau IS in Central Asia!

The Medes were NOT the newcomers is Kurdistan but just rather NATIVE inhabitants of Kurdistan.


Umman Manda (Akkadian for host of Manda) is a term used in the early second and first millennia BC for a poorly known people in ancient near east whom by some scholars are identified as to be of Indo-European origin. The homeland of Ummanda seems to be somewhere from Central Anatolia to north or northeastern Babylonia in what later came to be known as Mitanni, Mannae and Media, respectively. Zaluti, a leader of Ummanda Manda is mentioned, whose name seems to have an Indo-Iranian etymology. He is even suggested to be identified with Salitis the founder of the Hyksos, the Fifteenth dynasty of Egypt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umman_Manda

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The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with the descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans known as the Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon, and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west, the Tian Shan on the east.

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The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with the descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans known as the Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon, and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west, the Tian Shan on the east.

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 03:49 AM

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo, Mitanni were not Indo-Aryan (proto-Indic people). But Indo-IRANIC (ancestors of IRANIC (Aryan) people! There's a huge diffrence between Indo-Aryans and Indo-Iranians (true ARYANS, without any affix)

This is what I have to say (with all due respect, but I don't like to argue with you. According to me you’re misinformed and you’re to much indoctrinated by nonsense and propaganda from sites like stormfront and forumbiodiversity):

The Medes and Kurds have genetic links with Central Asia, is just because we have some relatives there and there was always an INTERACTION between the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. The Median Empire was from Kurdistan to Central Asia. Of course there was some mixing.


Your maps say nothing about the TRUE origin of the Medes, only that Aryans occupied, inhabited (and invaded) Central Asia.

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 04:12 AM

What?? I don’t have any account on stormfront and I NEVER had an account on stromront. It would be very insulting toward my intellect if I had an account on stormfront.

And yes, I had an account on forumbiodiversity because I did’t (and don’t) like the propaganda and hatred from disgusting Semitic ASSyrians (from desert Arabistan) toward Kurds. But that Semitic little doggie admin banned my account and ip-adres.


used only wikipedia, only to introduce 'Umman Manda' people. very few Kurds have knowledge about our real ancestors!

thesunchild

2nd February 2013 - 04:27 AM

And no single refurbished scholar ever denied the fact that Kurdish is not the closest living language to Avestan . The true fact is that Kurdish (Dmili and Hewrami are KURDISH dialects) is very close to Avestan but there's no true serious global research done on it. Because not so long ago, our Kurdish language was even banned in our native homeland, Kurdistan.


But back on topic, the Zagros Mountains (and the Northern parts of the Iranian Plateau) is the native homeland of the true Aryans and NOT Central Asia! Aryans just invaded and later occupied Central Asia.

The Medes were the native people of Kurdistan!


I know who I'm, I'm very proud of it. And no asshole in the world will ever confuse me.

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I know who I'm, I'm very proud of it. And no asshole in the world will ever confuse me.

Karash

5th February 2013 - 09:28 AM

I don't understand your discussion. However, we have Kawa the Blacksmith to confirm this.

thesunchild

5th February 2013 - 09:46 AM

Karash

5th February 2013 - 09:28 AM

I don't understand your discussion. However, we have Kawa the Blacksmith to confirm this.

What don't you understand?

According to me we Kurds are descendants of the Medes and that the Medes were native to Kurdistan, to our beloved Zagros mountains just under the Caspian Sea which lie on the Iranian Plateau. The Medes (true Aryans) were not the intruders or immigrants, but actually native to Kurdistan (at least eastern parts of Kurdistan)!
The Medes destroyed the Semites in South Mesopotamia, which called the Medes the intruders of their land South of Mesopotamia (Central & South Iraq).

'Umman Manda' from Kurdistan attacked & destroyed the Semites in South Iraq (South Mesopotmia) because the Semites terrorized us Kurds, like they’re doing right now.

But history is repeating itself and we all know what the Medes did to the ASSyrians.

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Origin of The Kurds
Mon, 01/07/1991 - 05:00
By Prof. Mehrdad A. Izady

Being the native inhabitants of their land. there are no "beginnings" for Kurdish history and people. Kurds and their history are the end products of thousands of years of continuous internal evolution and assimilation of new peoples and ideas introduced sporadically into their land. Genetically, Kurds are the descendants of all those who ever came to settle in Kurdistan, and not any one of them. A people such as the Guti, Kurti. Mede, Mard, Carduchi, Gordyene, Adianbene, Zila and Khaldi signify not the ancestor of the Kurds but only an ancestor.

Archaeological finds continue to document that some of mankind's earliest steps towards development of agriculture. domestication of many common farm animals (sheep, goats, hogs and dogs), record keeping (the token system), development of domestic technologies (weaving, fired pottery making and glazing), metallurgy and urbanization took place in Kurdistan, dating back between 12,000 and 8.000 years ago.

The earliest evidence so far of a unified and distinct culture (and possibly, ethnicity) by people inhabiting the Kurdish mountains dates back to the Halaf culture of 8,000-7,400 years ago. This was followed by the spread of the Ubaidian culture, which was a foreign introduction from Mesopotamia. After about a millennium, its dominance was replaced by the Hurrian culture, which may or may not have been the Halafian people reasserting their dominance over their mountainous homeland. The Hurrian period lasted from 6,300 to about 2,600 years ago.

Much more is known of the Hurrians. They spoke a language of the Northeast Caucasian family of languages (or Alarodian), kin to modern Chechen and Lezgian. The Hurrians spread far and wide, dominating much territory outside their Zagros-Taurus mountain base. Their settlement of Anatolia was complete-all the way to the Aegean coasts. Like their Kurdish descendents, they however did not expand too far from the mountains. Their intrusions into the neighboring plains of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Pteau, therefore, were primarily military annexations with little population settlement. Their economy was surprisingly integrated and focused, along with their political bonds, mainly running parallel within the Zagros- Taurus mountains, rather than radiating out to the lowlands, as was the case during the preceding (foreign) Ubaid cultural period. The mountain-plain economic exchanges remained secondary in importance, judging by the archaeological remains of goods and their origin.

The Hurrians-whose name survives now most prominently in the dialect and district of Hawraman/Awraman in Kurdistan- divided into many clans and subgroups, who set up city-states, kingdoms and empires known today after their respective clan names. These included the Gutis, Kurti, Khadi, Mards, Mushku, Manna, Hatti, Mitanni, Urartu, and the Kassitis1es, to name just a few. All these were Hurrians, and together form the Hurrian phase of Kurdish history.

By about 4.000 years ago, the first vanguard of the Indo-European-speaking peoples were trickling into Kurdistan in limited numbers and settling there. These formed the aristocracy of the Mitani, Kassite, and Hittite kingdoms, while the common peoples there remained solidly Hurrian. By about 3,000 years ago, the trickle had turned into a flood, and Hurrian Kurdistan was fast becoming Indo-European Kurdistan. Far from having been wiped out, the Hurrian legacy, despite its linguistic eclipse, remains the single most important element of the Kurdish culture until today. It forms the substructure for every aspects of Kurdish existence, from their native religion to their art, their social organization, women's status, and even the form of their militia warfare.

Medes, Scythians and Sagarthians are just the better-known clans of the Indo- European-speaking Aryans who settled in Kurdistan. By about 2,600 years ago, the Medes had already set up an empire that included all Kurdistan and vast territories far beyond. Medeans were followed by scores of other kingdoms and city-states--all dominated by Aryan aristocracies and a populace that was becoming Indo-European, Kurdish speakers if not so already.By the advent of the classical era in 300 BC. Kurds were already experiencing massive population movements that resulted in settlement and domination of many neighboring regions. Important Kurdish polities of this time were all by-products of these movements. The Zelan Kurdish clan of Commagene (Adyaman area), for example, spread to establish in addition to the Zelanid dynasty of Commagene, the Zelanid kingdom of Cappadocia and the Zelanid empire of Pontus-all in Anatolia. These became Roman vassals by the end of the Ist century BC. In the east the Kurdish kingdoms of Gordyene, Cortea, Media, Kirm, and Adiabene had, by the 1st century BC, become confederate members of the Parthian Federation.

While all larger Kurdish Kingdoms of the west gradually lost their existence to the Romans, in the east they survived into the 3rd century AD and the advent of the Sasanian Persian empire. The last major Kurdish dynasty, the Kayosids, fell in AD 380. Smaller Kurdish principalities (called the Kohyar, "mountain administrators") however, preserved their autonomous existence into the 7th century and the coming of Islam.

Several socio-economic revolutions in the garb of religious movements emerged in Kurdistan at this time, many due to the exploitation by central governments, some due to natural disasters. These continued as underground movement into the Islamic era, bursting forth periodically to demand social reforms. The Mazdakite and Khurramite movements are best-known among these.

The eclipse of the Sasanian and Byzantine power by the Muslim caliphate, and its own subsequent weakening, permitted the Kurdish principalities and "mountain administrators" to set up new, independent states. The Shaddadids of the Caucasus and Armenia, the Rawadids/Rawandids of Azerbaijan, the Marwandis of eastern Anatolia; the Hasanwayhids, Fadhilwayhids, and Ayyarids of the central Zagros and the Shabankara of Fars and Kirman are some of the medieval Kurdish dynasties.

The Ayyubids stand out from these by the vastness of their domain. From their capital at Cairo they ruled territories of eastern Libya, Egypt, Yemen, western Arabia, Syria, the Holy Lands, Armenia and much of Kurdistan. As the custodians of Islam's holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the Ayyubids were instrumental in the defeat and expulsion of the Crusaders from the Holy Land.

With the 12th and 13th centuries the Turkic nomads arrived in the area who in time politically dominated vast segments of the Middle East. Most independent Kurdish states succumbed to various Turkic kingdoms and empires. Kurdish principalities, however, survived and continued with their autonomous existence until the 17th century. Intermittently, these would rule independently when local empires weakened or collapsed.

The advent of the Safavid and Ottoman empires in the area and their division of Kurdistan into two uneven imperial dependencies was on a par with the practice of the preceding few centuries. Their introduction of artillery and scorched-earth policy into Kurdistan, however, was a new, and devastating development.

In the course of the 16th to 18th centuries, vast portions of Kurdistan were systematically devastated and large numbers of Kurds were deported to far corners of the Safavid and Ottoman empires. The magnitude of death and destruction wrought on Kurdistan unified its people in their call to rid the land of these foreign vandals. The lasting mutual suffenng awakened in Kurds a community feeling--nationalism, that called for a unified Kurdish state and fostering of Kurdish culture and language. Thus the historian Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi wrote the first pan-Kurdish history the Sharafnama in 1597, as Ahmad Khani composed the national epic of Mem-o-Zin in 1695, which called for a Kurdish state to fend for its people. Kurdish nationalism was born.

For one last time a large Kurdish kingdom--the Zand, was born in 1750. Like the medieval Ayyubids, however, the Zands set up their capital and kingdom outside Kurdistan, and pursued no policies aimed at unification of the Kurdish nation. By 1867, the very last autonomous Kurdish principalities were being systematically eradicated by the Ottoman and Persian governments that ruled Kurdistan. They now ruled directly, via governors, all Kurdish provinces. The situation further deteriorated after the end of the WWI and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The Treaty of Sèvres (signed August 10, 1921) anticipated an independent Kurdish state to cover large portions of the former Ottoman Kurdistan. Unimpressed by the Kurds' many bloody uprisings for independence, France and Britain divided up Ottoman Kurdistan between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The Treaty of Lausanne (signed June 24, 1923) formalized this division. Kurds of Persia/Iran, meanwhile, were kept where they were by Tehran.

Drawing of well-guarded state boundaries dividing Kurdistan has, since 1921, a Micted Kurdish society with such a degree of fragmentation, that its impact is tearing apart the Kurds' unity as a nation. The 1920s saw the setting up of Kurdish Autonomous Province (the "Red Kurdistan") in Soviet Azerbaijan. It was disbanded in 1929. In 1945, Kurds set up a Kurdish republic at Mahabad in the Soviet, occupied zone in Iran. It lasted one year, until it was reoccupied by the Iranian army.

Since 1970s, the Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed an official autonomous status in a portion of that state's Kurdistan. By the end of 1991, they had become all but independent from Iraq. By 1995, however, the Kurdish government in Hewlêr was at the verge of political suicide due to the outbreak of factional fighting between various Kurdish warlords.

Since 1987 the Kurds in Turkey by themselves constituting a majority of all Kurds have waged a war of national liberation against Ankara's 70 years of heavy handed suppression of any vestige of the Kurdish identity and its rich and ancient culture. The massive uprising had by 1995 propelled Turkey into a state of civil war. The burgeoning and youthful Kurdish population in Turkey, is now demanding absolute equality with the Turkish component in that state, and failing that, full independence.

In the Caucasus, the fledgling Armenian Republic, in the course of 1992-94 wiped out the entire Kurdish community of the former "Red Kurdistan." Having ethnically "cleansed" it, Armenia has effectively annexed Red Kurdistan's territory that forms the land bridge between the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia proper.

thesunchild

5th February 2013 - 08:49 AM

What the f**k? Are you (partly) Turkmen (Turkish)...

Turks are ALTAIC Mongoloid people. They have got very broad faces, the structure of their body is very mongoloid. There's also too much mongoloid admixture in their DNA. Their disgusting and fugly language is not native to West Asia, but to the ALTAI region. Disgusting subhuman Turks are from the ALTAI, period!

And Zaza are not Kurdish? :stunned: Guess what? You're NOT Kurdish!


And back on track:

Of course the Medes were the invaders of South Mesopotamia. I never claimed that the our mighty ancestors the Medes were from Mesopotamian. Assyrians/Akkadians/Chaldeans/Babylonians that lived in Southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Central and South Iraq) described them as the intruders from the North and NorthEast. And on the NorthEast side of South Mesopotamia begin the Zagros mountains. This was and is the homeland of the Medes.

So the homeland of the Medes is not Mesopotamia, but the Zagros Mountains, mountainous area under the Caspian Sea on the Iranian Plateau.





You're just a child that has absolute no knowledge on history. You know NOTHING about the Medes. My advice to you: just to shut the f*ck up about Kurdish history. Don't spread anti-Kurdish nonsense (propaganda). You're twisting the facts. I'm tired of you!