Aims and objectives
Following the 1991 uprising in Kurdistan-Iraq, large public records from the Ottoman- to pre-1991- period were collected by local authorities in the city Sulaymaniyah. The records have political and socio-cultural significance; they concern ordinary people from Sulaymaniyah and the surrounding areas living under different regimes, including the late Ottoman Empire (1890–1918), the British colonial era (1918–1932) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq (1932–1958). As primary official and personal records of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq, these rare records without duplicate copies have survived attempts to destroy them. These documents of Kurdish history are located in a depot rented by the Zheen Center in Sulaimaniyah and kept in sacks and boxes which weight around 35 tons. A thorough look into these records is necessary to evaluate and survey the collection.
