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Kurdish Jews (, "'''Jews of Kurdistan '''") are the ancient Jew ish communities inhabiting the region today known as Kurdistan , roughly covering parts of Iraq , Iran , Armenia , and Syria . Their garb and culture is similar to neighbouring Muslim Kurds . There is some evidence of very old bonds between Jewish People and Kurds. Tradition holds that Jews first arrived in the area of modern Kurdistan after being captured by the Assyrian Empire in Judah and relocated back to the capital of Assyria . The illustrious royal house of Adiabene , with Arbil ( Arbala in Aramaic , Hewlêr in Kurdish ) as its capital, was converted to Judaism in the course of the 1st century BC, along with, it appears, a large number of Kurdish citizens in the kingdom (see Irbil/Arbil in Encyclopaedia Judaica ). The name of the king Monobazes (related etymologically to the name of the ancient Mannaeans), his queen Helena, and his son and successor Izates (derived from yazata, "angel"), are preserved as the first proselytes of this royal house. (See "Brauer E., The Jews of Kurdistan, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1993" ,"Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 5th CD. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968,VI.412" and {Link without Title} ). Rabbi ) from burning down. In another source, it is said that, "Asenath Barzani in sixteenth-century Kurdistan supplicates the Torah sages of Amadiya so she can support the yeshiva her husband established in Mosul until her young son could take over"(see {Link without Title} ). The tombs of Biblical prophets like Nahum in Alikush, Jonah in Nabi Yunis (ancient Nineveh), Daniel in Kirkuk , and several caves reportedly visited by Elijah are among the most important Jewish shrines in Kurdistan and are venerated by all Jews today. {Link without Title} . The Jews of Kurdistan lived—until their immigration to Israel in the early 1950s—as a closed ethnic isolate, mostly in northern Iraq and Iran and in eastern Turkey. According to an old tradition, the Jews of Kurdistan are descendants of the Ten Tribes from the time of the Assyrian exile in 723 B.C. (Roth C, Encyclopedia Judaica. Keter, Jerusalem, pp 1296–1299,1972). SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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