page_title: Rawandiz
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Rawandiz / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Rowanduz Gorge near the city of Soran in the North of Iraq Deutsch: Rowanduz-Schlucht unweit der Stadt Soran in Irakisch-Kurdistan
context_page_description: Rawandiz is a city in Kurdistan Region, located in Erbil Governorate, close to the borders with Iran and Turkey, it is located 10 km to the east from Bekhal Waterfall. The district is 123 km from Erbil. The district is surrounded by mountains, Korek Mountain is to the south, Hindren Mountain to the north, Zozik Mountain to the west, and Bradasot Mountain to the east.
context_section_description: In the time of the Neo Assyrian Empire, from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC, the area lay on the trading route to Nineveh.
  In 1915, during the First World War, the town was occupied by the Russians and Assyrians.
  The Muslim population was massacred by the Russians and Assyrians, after Nikolai Baratov's Cossacks recaptured the town only 20 percent of the Kurdish population managed to survive.
  In 1922 the town was occupied by the Turks, until they were driven out at the end of the year.
  The British army occupied the town on 22 April 1923. The British decided to stay in place to await the arrival of a special commission to fix the border between Turkey and Iraq, believing that if they left the Turkish troops would return.
  Between 1928 and 1932 the British built a strategic road from Erbil, through Rawandiz, to the Iranian border near modern-day Piranshahr. The construction of the road was directed by the New Zealand engineer A. M. Hamilton.
  As of July 2007, Rawandiz was undergoing major reconstruction. The bazaar was being relocated to make room for a new road. In July 2011, in a response to a Turkish military offensive, local artists decided to paint the debris from the raids.
   In 1930, A. M. Hamilton noted: "it has always been a place of grim deeds and bloody retributions. Its greater and its lesser rulers alike have nearly all met with violent deaths and even today this reputation is being well earned". The anthropologist Edmund Leach went to Rawandiz in 1938, to study the Rawandiz Kurds, intending to make this the subject of his thesis. His field trip had to be aborted because of the Munich crisis, but he nevertheless published his monograph "Social and Economic Organization of the Rawandiz Kurds " two years later.
caption: Rowanduz Gorge near the city of Soran in the North of Iraq
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