Soran Hamarash, The Lost and Untold History of the Kurds: Rediscovering the Beginning of the Western Civilisation and the Origin of the Indo-European Languages, ca. 10000 BC – 1300 CE (Silemanî, 2022)

After the First World War, academic study of the Middle East relied mainly on Greek and biblical sources. But those sources excluded or minimized Kurds. Kurds were not acknowledged in map-drawing because policy makers consult historians, and historians had a poor understanding of reality. This bias has led to unjust policies toward the Kurds and distorted scholarship on Kurdish history.

For example, says the current academic view says Kurds were nomadic until 800-900 years ago, but the Kurds wrote their history during the ninth century. The academic view claims that Sorani was not a written language until 300 years ago. But there is a poem in Sorani written 900 years ago.  Every day, new manuscripts appear that disprove conventional knowledge. The “cradle of civilization” was Kurdistan, the land that hosted the stories of Abraham and Noah. This book is an attempt to correct the bias and place the study of Kurdistan in its proper context.  

Watch an interview with Soran Hamarash, conducted by the Washington Kurdish Institute, here.

The book’s thesis that Kurdish is a modern form of ancient Sumerian has been challenged by scholars including Michael Gunter.