How Archaeologists in the 1930s Accidentally Preserved Yazidi Culture

Image Credentials: Image Title: How Archaeologists in the 1930s Accidentally Preserved Yazidi Culture  Source: (Sora.ChatGPT) Date: September 2025. Attribution: Created using AI-generated imagery (Sora.ChatGPT), this does not depict a real-world scene.

By Staff Writer | Open Chronicle with Agencies

In the 1930s, archaeologists excavating ancient Mesopotamian sites in northern Iraq formed an unexpected bond with the local Yazidi community, documenting their daily lives in a series of now-priceless photographs. Nearly a century later, these images have reemerged as a powerful testament to a culture nearly erased by genocide, offering hope and identity to a scattered people.

The black-and-white photographs were among some 2,000 images stored in the archives of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. They remained largely unnoticed until 2022, when doctoral student Marc Marin Webb spotted a photo of a Yazidi shrine, one that had been destroyed years earlier by Islamic State (IS) militants.

That discovery launched a painstaking effort to identify nearly 300 photos of Yazidi life, creating a visual archive of one of Iraq’s oldest and most persecuted religious minorities.

Iraq’s Yazidis rediscover lost history through photos found in a museum archive https://t.co/RPNpAHVtVc

— CTV News (@CTVNews) September 13, 2025

A Culture Under Attack

In 2014, IS militants swept through the Sinjar region, the ancestral homeland of the Yazidis, systematically killing thousands, enslaving women and children, and destroying religious and cultural sites. The United Nations later declared the campaign a genocide.

For Yazidis like Ansam Basher, now a teacher in England, the loss was deeply personal. “My albums, my childhood photos, all videos, my two brothers’ wedding videos and photos, everything disappeared,” she said.

So when Basher saw the Penn Museum photos—including images from her grandparents’ wedding in the early 1930s, she was overcome with emotion. “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.”

A Wedding Remembered

The wedding photos tell a vivid story: an elaborately dressed bride stands anxiously in her doorway, then travels with her dowry to her husband’s village before finally entering his family home as a crowd looks on.

Basher’s grandfather, Bashir Sadiq Rashid al-Rashidani, came from a prominent family and often hosted the Penn archaeology team at his café. He and his brother worked on the excavations, and he invited the Western researchers to his wedding. In return, they photographed the event and even lent the couple a car, likely the first time one was used in the town.

“I see my sister in black and white,” Basher remarked, noting the striking resemblance between her sister and their grandmother, Naama Sulayman.

Bringing the Archive Home

Marc Marin Webb, an architect from Barcelona, partnered with Nathaniel Brunt, a documentarian from Toronto, to share the archive with the Yazidi community. In April, they held exhibits in Sinjar during the Yazidi New Year—some outdoors, in the very locations depicted in the photos.

“These photographs present a very strong resistance against that act of destruction,” said Brunt, referring to the ISIS campaign of cultural erasure.

For many Yazidis, the images are more than historical records—they are proof of resilience. “It shows the world that we’re also people,” one local told Marin Webb.

A Legacy Preserved

Some of the photos were taken by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, the Penn archaeologist who led digs at Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa. For decades, the images lay dormant in museum storage—until now.

“A lot of these collections are sleeping until they get woken up by people like him,” said Alessandro Pezzati, the museum’s senior archivist, who helped identify the Yazidi photos.

Today, the archive stands as an act of restoration, not just of memory, but of dignity. For Ansam Basher and thousands of Yazidis in the diaspora, these images are a bridge to a past that ISIS tried to destroy—and a reminder that their history endures.