Conny Waters – AncientPages.com  – Located in Zurkan village in the Sangasar district north of Sulaimani, the place has the biggest and heaviest headstones ever discovered in the Kurdistan Region.

The tallest headstones are two meters and 80 centimeters. It is important to stress that their height only includes the above-ground part of the headstone.

The tall ancient headstones at the Kela Mazin cemetery in the Kurdistan Region. Image credit: Goran Sabah Ghafour

The Kela Mazin Cemetery located in the Kurdistan Region has a history going back to the pre-Islamic period and features unique headstones.

“The headstones must have gone deep underground,” Farhad Nasir, a local archaeologist in Ranya, told Kurdistan 24.

“It is expected that the headstones go down at least a meter and half, making the total height almost five meters, the tallest headstones in this region. The headstones are also the heaviest in the Kurdistan Region, weighing six tons.

According to Nasir, these headstones are unique to this part of the world.

Image credit: Goran Sabah Ghafour

The old cemetery includes as many as 15 different types of tombs and headstones, and all of them date back to ancient and prehistoric times.

“To the best of my knowledge, I am not aware of the existence of these types of tombs anywhere else in the world,” said Fakhir Rashid, an archaeologist in Erbil.

Based on information coming from locals, the cemetery had about 50 tombs 30 years ago. Unfortunately, however, many of them have since collapsed or suffered damage, which is now incapable of being repaired.

No doubt, harsh weather in the region and natural factors such as erosion have significantly contributed to damage to the headstones, as have people touching them and mishandling them over the years, informed a Zurkan villager, adding that, unfortunately, ‘people don’t recognize the value of these headstones, and they touch them.’

As the result, many of them have been destroyed over the past 30 years.

Many believe that these headstones are very old, but there are no precise accounts confirming their exact date.

Image credit: Goran Sabah Ghafour

The next question is: Which culture do they belong to? That pivotal question has yet to be investigated.

“As archaeologists, we have so many unanswered questions about Kela Mazin,” said Rashid. “We need full-time researchers and archaeologists to explore, excavate, and conduct on-site research. But these things need funding and a budget. And unfortunately, the government has no plans to work on this important site so far.”

According to both experts, the headstones are approximately 3,000-years-old. However, there is also a certain dispute because others believe the headstones represent the tombs of the Prophet Mohammed’s followers. If that is the case, these headstones might only be a few hundred years old.

Interestingly, the archaeologist Farhad Nasir informed that replicas of these headstones have been located in another part of the Kurdistan Region.

“In Sangaw, Garmiyan area, there is another cemetery that has these kinds of headstones, making them specific to the Kurdistan Region,” he said.

Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer