TITLE:
Kar-daKI-ka 21st ce. B.C.E. Karda Land of Valiant Mountain People Central Zagros East Terminological Analysis
AUTHORS:
Ferdinand Hennerbichler
KEYWORDS:
Kurds, Kurdistan, Ancient Mesopotamia, Zagros Mountain Areas, Cuneiform Mesopotamian Terminology, Inter-Disciplinary Science of History
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.4 No.3,
August
28,
2014
ABSTRACT: The toponym “kar-daKI-ka” (“ma-da kar-daKI-ka”) means
land of “Karda”, which derives most likely out of Akkadian “qarda” (“qurda”) for
heroic, brave, valiant, and warlike (mountain) people. It was geographically located
in ancient heartlands of the Guti(ans) in central Zagros east areas in Northwest
Iran of today, and was documented in several late Sumerian UrIII sources at the
end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. from Girsu in south Mesopotamia. Origin
and ethnic affiliations of the inhabitants of the land of “Karda” are not known.
The term “kar-daKI-ka” was one of the oldest cuneiform expressions used
by Mesopotamians to denote various indigenous Zagros hilly/mountain nomads of multi-ethnical
origin in the North and the (North-)East, whom they regarded as warlike and also
as uncivilized because they were at the time mainly not urban organized in contrast
to lowland Mesopotamians. Available cuneiform sources indicated that
Mesopotamians saw “kar-daKI-ka” in consecutive connection with
Guti(ans): first, because of its location in the center of (former) dominating
Guti power coalitions in areas of central Zagros (east); second, because of the
image of its population as warlike, similar to Guti(ans) where (who) was (were)
portrayed by Mesopotamians; third, because of further suggesting that its
society(ies) could have been militarily orsganized, possibly migrating and
temporarily prevailing inter-regionally (across the Zagros); and last but not
least, because of its obvious geo-strategic importance even for far away late
UrIII leaders of south Mesopotamia, regardless whether or not they effectively
controlled the area which seems for the time in question unlikely.
Mesopotamians used to describe the inter-connected ancestral habitat of various
multi-ethnic Zagros mountain coalitions in a vague terminology, and in waxing
and waning concepts who were influenced by changing policies. They did not see regions
(lands) like “kar-daKI-ka” as isolated single ones in a far north-east
but embedded in an inter-regionally connected habitat of mountain nomad coalitions
stretching from the North to the North-East of Mesopotamia. They also used a good
number of different terms in particular assumed Sumerian “kur”-stem expressions
(who later prevailed) to characterize them accordingly. In linguistic terms, the
presumed Semitic (Akkadian) word-stem “kard-” (KI-ka”
is formally not identical with the presumably Sumerian rooted “kurd-” one (for Kurds,
land of Kurds). However, the content of both terms denoting (warlike) Zagros-Taurus
mountain populations of multi-ethnical origins seems to be strikingly similar. Therefore,
the explanation attempt of “kar-daKI-ka” as land of heroic, valiant,
and warlike indigenous central Zagros (east) inhabitants could indicate a local/
regional militarily organized autochthonous pre-IE (proto-non-Iranian) population,
and could even possibly point to ancient forefathers of Kurds in NW Iran of today,
interpreted as Zagros-Taurus mountaineers.