Kurds descend from The Northern Kingdom

I used to flirt with more epic and sexy theories about the "Lost Tribes", but now I focus on who makes the most sense based on the DNA evidence.

The Kurds are among a few middle eastern Ethnic Groups who DNA has shown to be even closer related to The Jews then the Arabs.  And since I view even the Edomites as having bene absorbed into the Arab population that means they must be among those who descend from Deported Northern Israelites. 

1 Chronicles 5:26 refers to the Trans-Jordan Tribes being carried away by Assyria to Halah, Habor and Hara by the River Gozan.  2 Kings 17:6 and 18:11 also refer to those locations minus Hara but adds "Cities of the Medes" (some have argued it originally read "Mountains of Media", still implies the same general area) as being where the Captives of Samaria under King Hosea were taken.  Then 2 Kings 19:12 and Isaiah 37:12 mentions Gozan and Haran as among nations Assyria had destroyed previously.  From studying similar words in the Hebrew texts I think Hara is a shortened form of Haran, so it's like they're going full circle and being taken back to where Abraham was before he was called.

The River called Gozan in those verses is most likely the Khabur a significant tributary of the Euphrates that has tributaries of it's own, Guzana/Gozan is the name of an ancient city on that river who's remains are now called Tell Halaf, it may be a translation or scribal issue that switched the name of the river and city, or maybe they just were more interchangeable in Antiquity.  Edessa and Nisibis are both cities on rivers that are tributaries of this river as are many other important cities of Syrian and Turkish Kurdistan.  Antiochus Epiphanes renamed Edessa/Urfa as Callirrhoe or Antiochia on the Callirhoe, I'm not sure what exactly Callirhoe refers to here, but it could come from Halah given how Harran is similarly called Carrhae in Greek. 

Ancient Media meanwhile overlaps with modern Iranian Kurdistan, and the Kurdish Language is classified as a Northwestern Iranian language closely related to the Median Language (as are the Zaza-Gorani Languages spoken by some Kurds).  During classical Greco-Roman times this region included Corduene/Gordyene, Media Atropatene and Osroene, it's complicated however because multiple ethnic groups existed in those regions.

These were all territories at least partly under Assyrian Control in 740-720 BC, the more fanciful identifications for these places like Velikvosky's theories and those of British Israelism have Assyria somehow deporting Israelites to places Assyria never controlled.

The passages including Naphtali in the Captivity don't specifically refer to these locations,  But the Deuterocanonical book of Tobit gives us good reason to believe Naphtalite clans were actually living in the heart of Assyria itself (I know that the main protagonists of Tobit are in Media, but it established Ahkir an important Vizer of Assyria as their cousin), and 2 Kings 17:23 also refers to captives being taken to Assyria.  So I think they are the ancestors of first century Adiabene who's capital was Arbela and through them the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan who's chief city is Irbil.  

Corduene/Gordyene was inhabited by a people called the Carduchoi/Carduchi who are also popularly proposed to be ancestors of the Kurds.  There is a medieval Jewish legend that the Corduene were the result of Solomon marring some of his Jinn to 500 Jewish Women.  That is a weird legend which is certainly not correct, but it does show that ancient Jews thought of these people as in some way related to them.  It could partly have it's roots in 1 Kings 4's account of Solomon marrying two of his daughters to Northern Governors, one of them being governor of Naphtali.

A region in Media Atropatene called Cadusia may have also been named after Gad.  A city in northwestern Iran is called Zabad, possibly related to the Zabad of 1 Chronicles 7's Ephraimite Genealogy.  There is also a city in Iranian Kurdistan called Salmas who's name could be related to the Biblical name Salma or to Shillem a clan of Naphtali from Number 26:49 and Genesis 46:24.  Salmas first appears in the historical record right at the same time the Parthian Empire was conquered by the Sassanids.

The proper Kingdom of Media of classical antiquity didn't actually begin till just after when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered.  Deioces is the name given in Classical sources for it's first King, the dates work for this being a Median name given to King Hosea reigning in the region after his deportation.  

Historian	Herodotus	George Cameron	Edvin Grantovsky	Igor Diakonoff
Era	700-647 BC	728-675 BC[8]	672-640 BC	700-678 BC[5]

Deioces is also speculated to be the same person as Hushung in the Sahanameh, Hushung is a name that both phonetically and in meaning could be a poetic adaptation of the name of Hosea.  So Media Atropatene could be the Arsareth that II Esdras says King Hosea lead some of the exiles to.

Dejoces is a direct Paternal-ancestor of Astyages who's daughter was the mother of Cyrus.  Media Atropatene was the one former Persian territory not fully conquered by the Greeks under Alexander, it remained Semii-Independent till the 1st century when their Royal Family became the main Parthian Royal Family and through them of Armenia as well.

Of course contrary to Herodotus the Medes never had a centralized State, they were a decentralized confederations of tribes and cities of mostly Local Autonomy who only ever seemed to have a single King when they needed to unify for War.

Saladin was of Kurdish ancestry.

One controversial point of contention in Lost Tribes speculation in whether or not we should expect them to have been absorbed into other population so thoroughly they forget their Israelite Identity.  And I feel like maybe it depends which Tribe you're talking about.  Because it might worth noting that Manasseh means "forget" as explained in Genesis 41:51.

The Captivity recorded in 1 Kings 17 is of principally the City of Samaria.  But even that was only part of Western Manasseh.

The reason why many even who agree with me that not actually everyone was deported still assume this deportation probably includes some of Ephraim too or even was primarily of Ephraim is because people get confused about which tribal allotment Samaria was apart of.  Shechem was on the border of Ephraim and Manasseh, so cities north of Shechem like Samaria and Tirzah are Manasseh.   However because the mountain range both Shechem and Samaria are apart of gets called "Mount Ephraim" or "Mountains of Ephraim" people get confused.  It also doesn't help how both Samaria and Ephraim are used as poetically synymous with the entire Northern Kingdom.  

I suspect that after the fall of the House of Omri the Northern Kingdom was dominated by Manasseh.  Jeroboam and Baasha were the only Northern Royal Families who's Tribal affiliations were explicitly identified, my hunch about Omri is that he was a Danite.  Jehu rose to power in Gilead, Eastern Manasseh, and Menahem was from Tirzah, Hosea rebelling against the house that overthrew Menahem's house I see as circumstantial evidence he was related.  Menahem being called Son of Gadi in 2 Kings 15 could be because he descends from Gaddi the spy representing Manasseh in Numbers 13:10-11.

I think even some of the Manassites who never left the Land eventually forget who they were.  I think some of them became absorbed in the population of the Northern West Bank Palestinians, (like those of Jezreel aka Zir'in).  

That's not to say I don't think any Ephraimites could have been among the deported.  But I think the principal descendants of Ephraim are the Samaritans.