Iraq’s Yazidis rediscover lost history through photos found in a museum archive
PHILADELPHIA AP Archeologists studying ancient civilizations in northern Iraq during the s also befriended the nearby Yazidi area documenting their daily lives in photographs that were rediscovered after the Islamic State militant group devastated the tiny religious minority The black-and-white images ended up scattered among the or so photographs from the excavation kept at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology which led the ambitious dig One photo a Yazidi shrine caught the eye of Penn doctoral attendee Marc Marin Webb in nearly a decade after it was destroyed by IS extremists plundering the region Webb and others began scouring museum files and gathered almost photos to create a visual archive of the Yazidi people one of Iraq s oldest religious minorities The systematic attacks which the United Nations called a genocide killed thousands of Yazidis and sent thousands more into exile or sexual slavery It also destroyed much of their built heritage and cultural history and the small population has since become splintered around the world Ansam Basher now a facilitator in England was overwhelmed with emotion when she saw the photos particularly a batch from her grandparents wedding day in the early s No one would imagine that a person my age would lose their history because of the ISIS attack explained the -year-old using an acronym for the extremist group Basher s grandfather lived with her family while she was growing up in Bashiqa a town outside Mosul The city fell to IS in My albums my childhood photos all videos my two brothers wedding videos and photos disappeared And now to see that my grandfather and great-grandfather s photo all of a sudden just come to life again this is something I m really happy about she mentioned Everybody is A cache of cultural memory The archive documents Yazidi people places and traditions that IS sought to erase Marin Webb is working with Nathaniel Brunt a Toronto documentarian to share it with the public both through exhibits in the region and in digital form with the Yazidi diaspora When they came to Sinjar they went around and destroyed all the religious and heritage sites so these photographs in themselves present a very strong resistance against that act of destruction noted Brunt a postdoctoral pupil at the University of Victoria Libraries The city of Sinjar is the ancestral homeland of the Yazidis near the Syrian territory line The first exhibits took place in the region in April when Yazidis gather to celebrate the New Year Various were held outdoors in the very areas the photos documented nearly a century earlier It was perceived as a beautiful way to bring memory back a memory that was directly threatened through the ethnic cleansing campaign Marin Webb declared Basher s brother was visiting their hometown from Germany when he saw the exhibit and recognized his grandparents That helped the researchers fill in various blanks The wedding photos show an elaborately dressed bride as she stands anxiously in the doorway of her home proceeds with her dowry to her husband s village and at last enters his family home as a crowd looks on I see my sister in black and white stated Basher noting the similar green eyes and skin tone her sister shares with their grandmother Naama Sulayman Her grandfather Bashir Sadiq Rashid al-Rashidani came from a prominent family and often hosted the Penn archaeology crews at his cafe He and his brother like other local men also worked on the excavations prompting him to invite the westerners to his wedding They in turn took the photos and even lent the couple a car for the occasion the family announced Chosen of the photos were taken by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser the Penn Museum archaeologist who led excavations at two ancient Mesopotamian sites in the area Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa My grandfather used to talk a lot about that time mentioned Basher who uses a different spelling of the family surname than other relatives Her father Mohsin Bashir Sadiq a retired instructor now living in Cologne Germany believes the wedding was the first time anyone in the town used a car which he described as a model It can be seen at the back of the wedding procession Basher has shared the photos on social media to educate people about her homeland The idea or the picture they have in their mind about Iraq is so different from the reality she disclosed We ve been suffering a lot but we still have various history Unveiled photos history awakened Other photos in the collection show people at home at work at religious gatherings To Marin Webb an architect from Barcelona they show the Yazidis as they lived instead of equating them with the violence they later endured Locals who saw the exhibit communicated him it shows the world that we re also people An isolated minority the Yazidis have been persecuted for centuries A large number of Muslim sects consider them infidels countless Iraqis falsely see them as worshippers of Satan They speak Kurdish and their traditions are amalgamated borrowing from Christianity Islam and the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism Basher is grateful the photos remained safe if largely out of sight at the museum all this time Alessandro Pezzati the museum s senior archivist was one of several people who helped Marin Webb comb through the files to identify them A lot of these collections are sleeping until they get woken up by people like him Pezzati noted Source
