Şengal... From eradication to victory of will -1

NEWS DESK / ALAN ROJ

Şengal, the beautiful city in the history

Şengal, the mountain with stones, water, trees and that it is surrounded with plain and river and Şengal whose name was mentioned in the ancient and the holy books, the kings and empires’ letters, the writings of each historian who has passed through the area during the ages and in the pieces of news of battle and peace was not forgettable and marginalized culturally and socially to this extent except when the Iraqi recent and national states have been formed by the colonization and the escalation of the national mentality in the result of their oppressive and denying system that serves the foreign colonialism.     

Şengal is considered the mother of the historic story and event in the Kurdish culture and civilization over the history as it was sought to in each event happened. It was always the support and shelter of Kurdistan peoples; Kurds, Syriacs and Armenians, while the policy of the frequent extermination over the eras at the hands of the invaders has hid much of which and that are still aiming at eliminating it, and if it is possible, they would have eliminated and obliterated the high mountain that separates between the desert and the areas of Botan Island. 

Şengal in history

As for the human settlement at this prominent point, it goes back to more than 11,000 years, especially in the southern area of Şengal Mountain according to archeologists, and most of the theories about its populations indicate that they were of Zagros origins; then, it was the continuation of Tal Halaf’s culture (Kurds’ ancestors) that was established on the banks of Khabur River in Rojava-North Syria 6,000 years B.C. The scientists confirmed that a rural stable life was existed on the edges of Şengal Mountain greatly.  

Many empires flowed in succession to Şengal most of which are Assyrian, Mede, Mitani, Houaria and Roman as they used to play an important political, military and economic role at each epoch of the history of the successive civilizations as it was a strategic point that links between Syria and Iraq, and dominates all the commercial roads between the two areas.   

Ashraf Moses al-Ayobi made it a capital of himself for Şengal to witness architectural, economic, and cultural prosperity at that time. It also has become an independent kingdom or an independent country’s center for several periods before the Islamic era. 

Şengal that has been burnt 

It is mentioned in the news and Kurdish ancient folkloric songs the sentence, “Şengal that was burnt,” and this event has been printed in the memory of the Kurds because of wars and atrocities that Şengal witnessed over ages. Şengal has been destroyed and burnt several times as it has been firstly burnt at the hands of the Persians and Greeks in Shapur covenant in 260 AD and Hormuz II covenant in 302-309 AD. The bloodiest war was between the Persians and Greeks on Şengal land in 348 as the Greeks were defeated, and Shapur II committed a terrible massacre against its people to kill most of them and take some of them to Persia.         

Then, it was burnt and looted in the era of the Khwarizmi in 628 AH, it was followed by the Mugal’s attacks in 633 AH on Kurdistan and the area to burn, kill and displace its people several times. After that, it was repeated in the Ottoman covenant. Then, in the covenant of Saddam’s dictatorship, and the last attack against the city was at the hands of IS terrorists in 3-8-2018 as they displaced thousands of its people, burnt most of the city and destroyed its historical monuments. 

In the Ottoman era

The era of the Ottoman sultans is considered one of the bloodiest periods experienced by the Kurdish community, especially Şengal and the Yazidis. That area that was disobedient to its sultans and rejecting dependence. The most important thing is that during the Ottoman period, their sultans fought the Kurds under the pretext of religion. They aimed to change the religion of Yazidis by force and spread Islam among them. They committed the most heinous massacres in areas such as Welat, Sheikh, Khalta and the Yazidi Şengal.

The Kurds and Yazidi historians in particular confirm that most of the massacres and mass murders that committed against the Yezidi, Syriac and Armenian communities in Kurdistan in general were in the Ottoman period, and most of them are documented in the folkloric and historical songs and epics of Şengal.

What Şengal is characterized with?

Because of the abundance of its historical events and the storms of grief or joy, Şengal and its mountains are characterized that each point of them is known of having a name and a story, whether a cave, plain, mount, valley, the angle and the square of the mountain or village, spring and trees. There is no forgotten or undated place without a story even a simplified piece of land in a corner of them.

So that, if you pass on the foot of the mountain, you will meet several large trees on both sides of the road in Serdashti area known as the holy Qawala trees, and they are a religious class that tour the Yezidi villages coming from Lalish (the center of the Yazidi worship in Sheikhan province in Dohuk governorate) to solve the social problems and narrate to their society religious sermons and teachings that carry some sacred things as a tradition as these trees were a place for people to gather around and receive the teachings of Lalish about their religion.

In addition, its history has the story of Noah's Ark which tried to anchor before it descended on Judy and that was mentioned in the heavenly books. It also embraces the greatest epic in the history of Kurdish literature about love and the exploits of the Kurdish people, and it is the epic of Darwishi Afadi and Adula.

It is characterized by its pure atmosphere and its unique and picturesque views over the whole area of ​​the Euphrates and the plains of Botan Island, in addition to its fame with the cultivation of figs, chromium and distinctive Şengali tobacco, not to mention the dozens of shrines and Lalishi historical domes scattered throughout the mountain and its surrounding villages.

The demographic change in Şengal and Arabizing it over history

Like all Kurdish areas in the four parts, it has suffered from Arabization and demographic change since two centuries to this day. The demographic change began with the Ottomans' control of Şengal in 1516 as Şengal gained the largest part of their tyranny. The Ottomans fought the Yazidis strongly for Islamizing them. After which in 1879, it was broke-up of Botan Island and related to Mosul state.

In the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the twentieth century migrations of some clans in the Arabian Peninsula and especially from Najd and Hijaz began to settle in Rabia and the surrounding of Şengal Mount which had been emptied because of the Ottoman siege and attacks and the withdrawal of its people to the mountain.

After ending the conflict between the British and the French on Şengal in 1921, following the last to Iraq under the control of the British Mandate and establishing the Iraqi national state in 1932, 90% of Şengal area has been related to Mosul state and a small part remained in Rojava, North Syria.

Then, the process of amputating Şengal and distributing its villages and agricultural lands on the Arab desert-like areas such as Baaj, Kairouan and Tel Afar provinces and housing Arabs in areas where the Yezidi Kurds abandoned towards the mountain began, but the great Arabization was during Saddam era in the seventies of the last century when they settled the Arabs by force in the city of Şengal, emptied the mountain and burnt more than 150 villages, destroyed them and gathered their people in industrial housing gatherings north and south of the mountain. They also changed the names in each area.

D.H

ANHA