Hakkâri

Hubushkia was an Iron Age kingdom located between the Urartian and Assyrian sphere of influence. The exact location of Hubushkia is unknown, but scholars suggests that the kingdom of Hubushkia was centred on the headwaters of the Great Zap River, in what is now Hakkâri Province in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey.[7][8] In its long history, the region has come under the rule of the Kardukh, Gutian, Kassite, Hurrian, Mitanni, Nairi, Assyrian, Urartian, Armenian, Median, and Persian civilizations.[9]

Thirteen Kurgan stelae, never before seen in Anatolia or the Near East, were found in 1998 in their original location at the centre of Hakkari. The stelae were carved on upright flagstone-like slabs measuring between 0.7 m to 3.10 m in height. The stones contain only one cut surface, upon which human figures are chiseled. The theme of each stele reveals the foreview of an upper human body. The legs are not represented. Eleven of the stelae depict naked warriors with daggers, spears, and axes—masculine symbols of war. They always hold a drinking vessel made of skin in both hands. Two stelae contain female figures without arms. The stelae may have been carved by different craftsmen using different techniques. Stylistic differences shift from bas relief to a more systematic linearity. The earliest stelae are in the style of bas relief while the latest ones are in a linear style. They were made during a period from the fifteenth century BC to the eleventh century BC in Hakkari. Stelae with this type of relief are not common in the ancient Near East however there are many close parallels between these and those produced by a variety of peoples from the Eurasian steppes between the third millennium BC and the eleventh century AD.[10]

About 20,000 to 30,000 Assyrians in the area were killed by the Ottoman army and local Kurdish tribes working in tandem[11] during the Assyrian Genocide.[12] The majority of the Assyrians affected by the massacres were adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East (often dubbed incorrectly Nestorian), who have originally inhabited the mountainous Hakkari and Barwari regions covering parts of the modern provinces of the Hakkâri, Şırnak and Van in Turkey and Dohuk in Iraq, with a population ranging between 75,000 and 150,000.[13][14] Most of these Assyrians were massacred during the Genocide of 1915. The rest endured two winter marches to Urmia in 1915 and to Hamadan in 1918. Many of them were relocated to refugee camps by the British in Baquba and later to Habbaniyah, and in 1921 some were enlisted in the pro-British Assyrian Levies which helped quell Kurdish revolts in the British Mandate of Mesopotamia.[15] Most Hakkari Assyrians were resettled after 1925 in a cluster of villages in northern Iraq.[16] Some of the villages where the Assyrians settled were leased directly by the government, while others belonged to Kurdish landlords who had the right to evict them at any time.[17]