The Islamic Conquest of Kurdistan and the Age of Kurdish Resistance (637–905 CE)
- Sherko Sabir
- May 25
- 7 min read
Introduction
In 637 CE, the Arab-Muslim armies that had already shattered the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of Qadisiyyah swept northward into the Kurdish highlands. Within a few years, the territories that had been the frontier zone between Rome and Persia for centuries were absorbed into the rapidly expanding Islamic Caliphate. For the Kurdish tribes, this was a seismic transformation: the empires they had navigated between for generations were gone, replaced by a new power with a new religion and a new political order.
But submission to the Caliphate was never complete. Over the next two centuries, Kurdish resistance to Arab-Islamic rule erupted repeatedly — from local tribal uprisings to large-scale rebellions that drew in tens of thousands of fighters and connected Kurdish leaders to movements spanning from Azerbaijan to Byzantium. The period between the Islamic conquest and the rise of the first Kurdish dynasties in the tenth century is one of the most underexplored in Kurdish military history, but it contains episodes of resistance that deserve to be far better known.
Contents
The Arab Conquest of the Kurdish Highlands (637–641 CE)
The Kurdish tribes first came into contact with the advancing Muslim Arab armies during the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 CE. The Kurds had been an important element in the Sasanian Empire, providing military service and occupying strategically significant highland territories on the empire's western frontier. When the Arab armies shattered the Sasanian military at the Battle of Qadisiyyah in 637 and seized the capital Ctesiphon the following year, the Sasanian state began its final collapse.
Between 639 and 644, Kurdish tribes initially gave strong support to the Sasanians as they attempted to resist the Muslim advance. But as the scale of the Sasanian defeat became clear, Kurdish tribal leaders began to submit to Islam one by one, often bringing their entire tribal communities with them. This was pragmatic rather than sudden conversion: submission to the new power meant survival, while resistance against an unstoppable military force meant destruction.
However, not all Kurds submitted. Small communities in the most impenetrable mountain areas refused to accept Islam and maintained their pre-Islamic religious practices — Zoroastrian, Yazdani, and other indigenous highland traditions — for centuries after the conquest. Some of these communities persisted into the thirteenth century and beyond, occasionally raiding Muslim settlements from their mountain strongholds.
Early Kurdish Resistance to the Caliphate
Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, the Caliphate faced persistent low-level resistance from Kurdish highland communities. The pattern was familiar from every previous imperial power that had tried to control the Zagros: the lowland armies could dominate the plains and the major routes, but the mountain valleys were another matter. Kurdish tribes maintained de facto autonomy in the most remote areas, paying tribute when forced to and withdrawing into the highlands when the tax collectors came with soldiers.
The Arab geographers and historians of this period acknowledged the difficulty of controlling the Kurdish highlands. They described the terrain as inaccessible, the populations as warlike, and the costs of military expeditions into the mountains as prohibitive relative to the revenues that could be extracted. This was the same assessment that the Assyrians had made two thousand years earlier — and the Caliphate responded in much the same way, with periodic punitive raids interspersed with long periods of practical neglect.
Babak, the Khurramites, and the Kurdish Connection
The largest anti-Caliphate rebellion to involve Kurdish fighters was the revolt of Babak Khorramdin, which lasted from 816 to 837 CE. Babak led the Khurramite movement — a religious and political uprising rooted in pre-Islamic Iranian traditions that rejected Arab domination and the social order imposed by the Abbasid Caliphate. His rebellion was centred in Azerbaijan but drew support from highland populations across the Zagros range, including Kurdish tribes.
A Kurdish leader named Nasr (also known as Narseh or Ishmah al-Kurdi) was one of the most prominent commanders in the Khurramite movement. When the Abbasid armies under Caliph al-Mu’tasim defeated his forces in 833, the Muslim historian al-Tabari recorded that approximately 60,000 of his followers were killed. Nasr himself survived and led a group of Khurramite refugees across the frontier into the Byzantine Empire, where his story took a remarkable turn.
Babak himself was captured in 837 and executed with extraordinary brutality in Samarra in 838, his hands and legs struck off in the presence of the Caliph. He is said to have washed his face in his own blood so that the Caliph would not see him turn pale. The revolt had lasted twenty years, tied down major Abbasid armies, and demonstrated that the highland populations of the Zagros remained capable of sustained, large-scale resistance to Caliphal authority two centuries after the Islamic conquest.
Theophobos: The Kurdish Commander of Byzantium
The Kurdish leader Nasr, after fleeing to Byzantium with his Khurramite followers, converted to Christianity and took the Greek name Theophobos. His career in the Byzantine Empire is one of the most extraordinary episodes in Kurdish military history. He was raised to high rank, married into the imperial family of Emperor Theophilos, and given command of his fellow Khurramite refugees, who were settled in Anatolia as a military colony.
Theophobos served as a Byzantine military commander in the wars against the Abbasid Caliphate in 837–838 — meaning that this Kurdish warrior fought against the same power that had destroyed his forces in Iran, but now from the other side of the frontier. After the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Anzen, Theophobos’s own troops proclaimed him emperor. He did not pursue the claim but submitted peacefully to Theophilos. He was apparently pardoned, but in 842, as the emperor lay dying, Theophobos was executed to prevent him from challenging the succession of the young Michael III.
The story of Theophobos illustrates the extraordinary reach of Kurdish military influence in this period. A Kurdish tribal leader from the Zagros mountains rose to become one of the most powerful military commanders in the Byzantine Empire, married into the imperial family, and was briefly proclaimed emperor. No other period of Kurdish history produced anything quite like it.
The Dasini Uprising and the Revolt of Mir Jafar (838 CE)
The year 838 saw further Kurdish uprisings within the Caliphate itself. A Kurdish leader named Mir Jafar, based in Mosul, revolted against Caliph al-Mu’tasim. The Caliph dispatched his commander Itakh to suppress the revolt. Itakh defeated Mir Jafar’s forces and executed many of the Kurdish fighters — a brutal suppression that was part of a broader pattern of Abbasid military expeditions against Kurdish tribal resistance in northern Mesopotamia.
In the same period, between 838 and 841, the Dasini tribes — Kurdish tribal groups associated with the Lalish and Shekhan region of what is now the Duhok Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq — mounted their own uprising against Caliphal authority. The Dasini resistance is significant because the Dasini tribes maintained strong connections to pre-Islamic Kurdish religious traditions and would later become closely associated with the Yezidi faith. Their uprising was both political and cultural: a refusal to accept the full authority of the Islamic state over communities that had never entirely submitted to the new religious order.
The Pattern of Resistance
The two centuries between the Islamic conquest and the rise of the first Kurdish dynasties established a pattern that would define Kurdish political history for the next millennium. The Caliphate, like every empire before it, found that it could conquer the lowlands of Kurdistan but not permanently subdue the highlands. Kurdish leaders adopted Islam when it suited them and rebelled when opportunity or necessity demanded. Some, like Theophobos, found careers in rival empires. Others, like Mir Jafar and the Dasini chiefs, fought and died in their own mountains.
By the late ninth century, the weakening Abbasid Caliphate could no longer sustain the military effort needed to keep the Kurdish highlands under control. The result was the emergence of the first Kurdish dynasties — the Aishanids, Hasanwayhids, and Annazids — who would establish autonomous Kurdish states in the power vacuum of the declining Caliphate. The resistance of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries made that political emergence possible.
Legacy
The Islamic conquest marked the end of the ancient world in Kurdistan and the beginning of the medieval. But the fundamental dynamics did not change. The mountains still provided shelter. The passes still provided defensive positions. The tribal structure still allowed for rapid mobilisation and equally rapid dispersal. And the same question that had defined Kurdish military history since the Assyrian campaigns in Zamua — can an empire permanently control a highland people who refuse to be controlled? — received the same answer it always had: no.
Key Events and Timeline
637 CE — Arab-Muslim armies defeat the Sasanians at Qadisiyyah; Kurdish tribes first encounter the advancing Caliphate
639–644 CE — Kurdish tribes initially support Sasanian resistance; gradually submit to Islam as the Sasanian Empire collapses
816–837 CE — Babak Khorramdin leads the Khurramite rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate; Kurdish fighters participate
833 CE — Kurdish leader Nasr (Theophobos) defeated by Abbasid forces; flees with followers to the Byzantine Empire
837–838 CE — Theophobos serves as Byzantine military commander against the Abbasids; briefly proclaimed emperor after the Battle of Anzen
838 CE — Babak captured and executed in Samarra; Mir Jafar revolts in Mosul and is crushed by the Abbasid commander Itakh
838–841 CE — Dasini tribal uprising in the Lalish/Shekhan region against Caliphal authority
842 CE — Theophobos executed by the dying Emperor Theophilos to prevent a succession challenge
905 CE — Major Abbasid expedition against southern Kurdish tribes; fortress of Sermaj captured near Behistun
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the Kurds first encounter Islam?
The Kurdish tribes first came into contact with Muslim Arab armies during the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 CE. Kurdish tribes initially supported the Sasanian resistance against the Arab advance, but as the Sasanian Empire collapsed between 639 and 644, Kurdish tribal leaders gradually submitted to Islam.
Who was Theophobos?
Theophobos was a Kurdish leader originally named Nasr (or Narseh) who fought in the Khurramite rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. After his forces were defeated in 833, he fled to the Byzantine Empire, converted to Christianity, married into the imperial family, and became a high-ranking military commander. He was briefly proclaimed emperor by his troops before being executed in 842.
Did all Kurds accept Islam?
No. While the majority of Kurdish tribes eventually converted to Islam, small communities in the most remote mountain areas maintained pre-Islamic religious traditions for centuries after the conquest. Some of these communities, including groups later associated with the Yezidi faith, resisted Islamic authority and occasionally clashed with Muslim settlements well into the medieval period.
References and Further Reading
Wikipedia — Spread of Islam among Kurds
Wikipedia — Babak Khorramdin Revolt
Greek City Times — Theophobos: The Kurdish 'Emperor' of Byzantium, 2023
Al-Tabari — History of the Prophets and Kings (accounts of Kurdish resistance and the Khurramite wars)
New Lines Magazine — The Untold History of Turkish-Kurdish Alliances, 2024
Wikipedia — Arab Conquest of Mesopotamia
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