MODERN ASSYRIA. The greater part of the country which formed Assyria Proper is now under the nominal sway of the Turks, who compose a considerable proportion of the population of the towns and larger villages, filling nearly all public offices, and differing in nothing from other Osmanlis. The pasha of Mosul is nominated by the Porte, but is subject to the pasha of Baghdad; there is also a pasha at Solymaneah and Akra; a bey at Arbil, a mussellim at Kirkook, &c. But the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, and of the whole mountain-tract that here divides Turkey from Persia, are the Kurds, the Carduchii of the Greeks; from them a chain of these mountains was anciently called the Carduchian or Gordyean, and from them the country is now designated Kurdistan. Klaproth, in his Asia Polyglotta, derives the name from the Persian root kurd, i. e. strong, brave. They are still, as of old, a barbarous and warlike race, occasionally yielding a formal allegiance, on the west, to the Turks, and, on the east, to the Persians, but never wholly subdued; indeed, some of the more powerful tribes, such as the Hakary, have maintained an entire independence. Some of them are stationary in villages, while others roam far and wide, beyond the limits of their own country, as nomadic shepherds; but they are all more or less addicted to predatory habits, and are regarded with great dread by their more peaceful neighbours. They profess the faith of Islam, and are of the Soonce sect. See NINEVEH.