Long before the name "Kurd" appeared in any chronicle, the mountains of the Zagros were already a battlefield. For more than two thousand years before the Common Era, highland peoples — Lullubi, Gutians, and later the Medes — fought wars against the most powerful empires of the ancient world. They raided Akkadian supply lines, conquered Sumerian cities, resisted Assyrian campaigns, and eventually brought down the Assyrian Empire itself. These were not Kurdish wars in the mo