Syrian Kurdistan

Syrian Kurdistan is a region in northern Syria where Kurds form the majority. It is surrounding three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the northeast. Syrian Kurdistan is often called Western Kurdistan or Rojava, one of the four "Lesser Kurdistans" that comprise "Greater Kurdistan", alongside Iranian Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish immigration into Syria Kurds, widely considered to be the largest stateless ethnic group, are an Iranic ethnic group inhabiting a mountainous region known as Kurdistan that spans parts of several sovereign states in Western Asia, primarily southeastern Turkey, parts of northern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. Although Kurdish origins and migration remain the subject of scholarly investigation and controversy, and several different groups throughout history have lived in Kurdistan, Kurds are traditionally considered to have descended from Indo-European tribes migrating westward toward Iran in the middle of the second millennium BCE. In antiquity, Kurdistan was ruled, in turn, by the Assyrian, Median, Greek, Roman, and Persian empires. After the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE, Kurdish tribes in Upper Mesopotamia and western Iran resisted advancing Muslim armies, but ultimately most Kurds converted to the Shafi'ite school of Sunni Islam. Kurdish cultural and political power re-emerged over the next three centuries, as Kurds in Kurdistan lived semi-autonomously within the Islamic caliphates. The decline of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 10th century led to the rise of Kurdish dynasties, including the Ayyubids (1171–1260). Since the 11th century, the medieval Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers in the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range has been known as the "Fortress of the Kurds" or "Castle of the Kurds". The founder of the Ayyubids, Saladin, famous for unifying Muslims and recapturing Jerusalem from Crusaders in 1187, expanded his empire into Syria and beyond.