Kurdish Culture - Cultural Heritage

Cultural Heritage

Kurdish cultural heritage is rooted in one of the world's oldest cultures. In parts of Arbil, Southern Syria and Western Iran, the Kurdish young men practice an old culture in which growing a mustache and beard at a young age to prove their loyalty as a man and respect to their elders. Over the past century, this culture has disappeared in most of the area. The Kurds were formerly considered sufficient to describe themselves as the descendants of the Carduchi, who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains in the 4th century BC. However, there is evidence of more ancient settlements in the region of Kurdistan. The earliest known evidence of a unified and distinct culture (and possibly, ethnicity) by people inhabiting the Kurdish mountains dates back to the Halaf culture of 6000 BC to 5400 BC. This was followed by the spread of the Ubaidian culture, which was a foreign introduction from Mesopotamia. In 1927, Ephraim Speiser discovered remains of ancient Halaf and Ubaid settlements in Tepe Gewre (Great Mound) 24 km northeast of Mosul. These settlements date back to between the 5th and 2nd millennium B.C., and include 24 levels of civilizations including Halaf and Ubaid. This site includes an acropolis with monumental remains and fine architecture. In their own histories, they are proud to mention the Hurrian period in the mid third millennium BC as the earliest well documented period. The 3rd millennium was the time of the Guti and Hattians. The 2nd and 1st millennium BC were the time of the Kassites, Mitanni, Mannai (Mannaeans), Urartu, and Mushku. All of these peoples shared a common identity and spoke one language or closely related languages or dialects. These groups are thought to have been non-Indo-Europeans, apart from the original Mitanni leadership. Kurds consider themselves to be Indo-European as well as descendants of the above groups. According to the Encyclopedia Kurdistanica, Kurds are the descendants of all those who have historically settled in Kurdistan, not of any one particular group. A people such as the Guti (Kurti), Mede, Mard, Carduchi(Gordyaei), Adiabene, Zila and Khaldi signify not the ancestor of the Kurds but only one ancestor. This heritage has been subject to injustices, neglect and repression, or has been eclipsed by other cultures. Important components of the original cultural heritage have disappeared or have been destroyed. There are numerous examples of how valuable or irreplaceable Kurdish physical heritage are endangered or destroyed, like the threat posed by the Illusi Dam in Turkey, where the oldest Kurdish city, Hasankeyf, soon is to be covered by water.