Amedi

 

Ever since I arrived in Kurdistan, friends and co-workers urged me to try to make it

to Amedi. Having seen pictures like the above, there wasn't much persuasion needed. It looked like something out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a fortress town atop a cliff. Your mind's eye takes you to massive medieval clashes, hot oil poured on invaders and trebuchet's launching fireballs into the night. Leastwise, mine did.

I was finally able to go in April. We'd turned northeast just before hitting Duhok, one of the three main cities in Kurdistan. We were heading into the mountains. There is a stark beauty to the rock-strewn hills covered at these lower levels by scrub and a few hard-scrabble goats. The weight of traveling around these parts comes from the knowledge that so much that is fundamental to the way billions of people live today began here. While strolling through a ruined fort in southern Kurdistan one day, a local pointed up to three shark-toothed peaks. "That's where Noah's Ark landed," he said, quite matter-of-factly; the Garden of Eden was close to current-day Basra. Yes, it's the kind of place where biblical things happened, the kind of place where things happened thousands of years ago, the sort of place you don't just drive through and think, yeah, this is pretty. 

Judaism came to these parts 2,500 years ago; Yazidism began here 1,000 years ago; Mandaeism, Zoroastrianism, even Christianity were practiced here before Islam.

A ruined Madrassa at the foot of Amedi.

In fact, the three wise men are said to have headed out on their long trek to pay tribute to the newborn Jesus from Amedi. So, as we drove through the valley along the Great Zab river your thoughts are religious - be you spiritual or not. And you think of all the conflict, of all the violence, of all the massacres brought about by those differing religions, the ethnicities, the politics. In fact, the mountains by Amedi, just a few kilometers from the Turkish border, are regularly shelled even today as the Turks try to root out members of the PKK - a U.S.-designated terrorist organization seeking an autonomous Kurdish region of its own.  

Unlike other fascinating places we were able to see in Iraqi Kurdistan, there is some tourism infrastructure on the road at the foothills of Amedi. It is geared mainly towards visitors from Iraq. Restaurants and shops selling the ubiquitous pink elephants are perched on the road across the river from Amedi. In the time of COVID, though, these were all empty.

Amedi.

I first caught sight of Amedi as we headed out of the river-forged valley and up onto a mountain overlooking the high plains. It took my breath away, protected by a ring of snow-capped mountains like a Kurdish Shangri-La. That view is one that I will take with me to my quiet moments, wherever in the world I may be.

And the history of the ancient Assyrian town was, indeed, turbulent. Founded before 3,000 BC, Amedi or Amediya was bandied about from one marauding empire to the next, including the Arabs and the Kurdish Badinans. Many of the names of the other key players meant nothing to me, so deep is the history and so shallow my reading.

Unprotected ruins.

Amedi was once a famous seat of scientific learning, with deep reciprocal relations with ancient institutions as far-flung as Cairo.  Hundreds of years ago. The main seat of learning, the 16th Century Qubahan Madrasa, now lies in ruins by the riverbanks below Amedi, engraved bricks just lying around, the whole site slowly becoming overgrown, yet another what-could-have-been in a country full of broken down signs of its previous greatness. But still to this day, being from Amedi bestows a certain presumption of learning and class on the native, I was told. By an Amediyan, of course.

The tomb of Ezekiel.

The other remarkable thing about Amedi - leastwise by today's fractious standards - is that it was an inclusive community, made up of large Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populations. That, too, is gone now. It had a thriving Jewish community until the late 1940s. Most Jews were either expelled, smuggled out during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, or left "voluntarily;" having come to Babylon in 600 B.C., today there are fewer than a hundred Jews left in all of Iraq. Still, to this day, the locals in Amedi still tend to a tomb believed to be that of Ezekiel. It is a point of pride that they are the caretakers of such an ancient legacy. I have seen video of some of the local elders recalling their Jewish friends from childhood. It is a profoundly heavy absence.

The Great Mosque of Amadiya.

The Great Mosque was built in the 12th Century on the site of the church of St. George which, in turn, was built on the site of a temple to earlier pagan Gods. One church remains in Amedi, but it has no priest. Amedi today is like many other Kurdish towns, its historic roads and alleyways replaced by the more utile concrete buildings. 

The ruins of a madrasa at the foot of Amedi and rooms with views at the top.

What does remain in this town of 11,000 sitting at almost 4,000 feet elevation, is  Badinan Gate. Perched on the western part of town, it remains one of its most beautiful features, complete with a sculpted Kurdish sun. Originally one of two gates along with the Zebar, Badinan is the only one remains. It was probably built over three stages, beginning in the 12th Century and is currently slated for renovation thanks to the U.S. Consulate in Erbil.

The now-gone Zebar gate.

Who knows what the future holds for this part of the world? Today it seems as fraught with tinderbox potential as always, though the Kurds are enjoying perhaps their longest period of peace.

 

The tomb of Sultan Wali of Badinan.

Perhaps one day it will be safe enough for long-term investment into a tourist infrastructure that could lure enough foreign investors to pay for it. This ancient part of the world holds such intrigue, such fascination for so many. My favorite childhood adventure writer, Karl Mai, wrote a book called "Durchs Wilde Kurdistan" - Through the Wilds of Kurdistan. I was reading that while I was still in Erbil. Lo and behold, part of the book takes place in Amedi.

Karl Mai never traveled to the region. Like so many, he had to use his imagination to visit. Hopefully a time will come when amazing places like Amedi can be more widely accessible. The history of this place is truly unique.