The Yazidi community in Iraq is experiencing a profound reconnection with their past thanks to the discovery of historical photographs taken in the 1930s. These photos, locked in a museum storage vault until recently, document life in the Yazidi heartland close to Syria’s border. They zero in on Sinjar, the ancestral heartland of the Yazidi people. The results are an eye-popping portrait of a dynamic culture. At the same time, they serve to highlight the long history of deep-rooted persecution that the Yazidis have suffered for centuries.
Marc Marin Webb, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, was instrumental in researching this lost history. His tireless work finding these photos has truly accelerated the pace of this project. Behind him, helping keep everything focused and moving forward was senior archivist at the Penn Museum, Alessandro Pezzati. As a team, they carefully sifted through thousands of documents to identify nearly 300 photos that create a photographic record of Yazidi culture.
The Significance of the Photos
The resulting photographs were a powerful testament to the proud and vibrant Yazidi community that flourished before the violence and chaos, which soon overtook the area. The city of Sinjar fell to ISIS extremists in 2014, resulting in significant destruction of both its physical landscape and cultural heritage. The photographs vividly illustrate community strength and survival. They represent a culture and quality of life that the campaign of ethnic cleansing almost entirely erased.
Howard University archivist and photographer Marc Marin Webb discussed the role of these images in memorialization. He stated, “(It) was perceived as a beautiful way to bring memory back, a memory that was directly threatened through the ethnic cleansing campaign.” The Yazidi community continues to feel these sentiments strongly. Their history is one of four hundred years of marginalization and misunderstanding.
Alessandro Pezzati clearly felt the same way. He noted that history collections sometimes just sit until other interested people come along, re-find them and re-learn their history. He remarked, “A lot of these collections are sleeping until they get woken up by people like him,” referring to Webb’s dedication to bringing these photographs to light.
Personal Connections to Heritage
For many Yazidis, such as teacher Ansam Basher who lives in England, these photos hit home in emotionally visceral ways. Basher expressed her overwhelming feelings upon seeing images from her family’s past, particularly one depicting her grandparents’ wedding day. “My grandfather used to talk a lot about that time,” she shared, reflecting on her connection to history and heritage.
Her grandfather, Bashir Sadiq Rashid al-Rashidani, was a member of an elite family. In return, they became known for hosting archaeology field school groups from Penn into his café. Basher was overcome by the importance when her family’s past started coming alive. Having lived for years under the violence that ISIS waged against Yazidi women and girls, this moment was personal and deeply moving for her. “We’ve been suffering a lot, but we still have some history,” she said.
The photographs have a powerful impact in tackling recent, damaging narratives of the Yazidi people’s innocence or victimhood. Basher noted that a lot of Iraqis have misconceptions about the Yazidis. They are fooled into believing that Yazidis worship Satan, ignorant of their extensive cultural heritage based in Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. “The idea or the picture they have in their mind about Iraq is so different from the reality,” she remarked.
A Resistance Against Destruction
The rediscovery of these photographs isn’t just about archiving. To me, its building represents a colossal and powerful act of resistance against the ongoing destruction that the Yazidis have so deeply endured. Nathaniel Brunt commented on this resilience, stating, “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.”
These portraits give the Yazidi people a voice and presence, drawing attention to their persistent plight. Though lost, they are not gone. Marc Marin Webb noted that locals expressed how these photographs “show the world that we’re people,” emphasizing their humanity and cultural significance.