Medieval Antiquities West of Mosul

Abstract

The territory west of Mosul, which includes the strange isolated mountain range of Jebel Sinjar, has always been somewhat off the beaten track. Under the Ottoman Empire it was the theatre of the dissidences of the Yazidi Kurds and the Shammar Arabs against the Turks. At the present day it is still remote, being left aside by the newly developed motor routes, though it is skirted by the Mosul-Tall Kochek highway connecting Baghdad with Stambul and Europe; this is shortly to be replaced by an extension of the railway. In the winter of 1907 Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld, proceeding from Buseirah on the Euphrates to Mosul, passed through the town of Balad Sinjar, where they spent two days, made measured drawings of the shrine of Sittna Zenab and the minaret of Kutb ad-Dīn and collected some inscriptions. Then they went on to Mosul, covering eighty-five miles in three days' riding, which gave them little opportunity to leave the road. Nevertheless, their Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris Gebiet of 1911 is still the only archaeological survey of the district.