Qualla: Bakr Awa https://qualla.com/bakr-awa en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bakr Awa https://qualla.com/bakr-awa Bakr Awa: Introduction https://qualla.com/bakr-awa/ Photo credit Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Seventeen layers. That is how many distinct periods of occupation archaeologists have counted at Bakr Awa, a tell rising 40 meters above the Shahrizor Plain near Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan. From the bottom -- pottery shards of the Uruk period, the late fourth millennium BC, when the world's first cities were forming in southern Mesopotamia -- to the top, where people still live today, this single mound compresses more than five thousand years of human habitation into a column of earth and stone. The site consists of a central citadel measuring 277 by 216 meters, surrounded by a lower city extending 800 meters. It sits in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, not far from the headwaters of the Diyala River, at a crossroads where highland and lowland civilizations met, traded, and fought.

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Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/tn28-bakr-awa-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bakr Awa: Explorers, Trenches, and the Passage of Time https://qualla.com/bakr-awa/ Photo credit Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. The tell was first documented by British naval officer James Felix Jones in 1844, who described the prominent mound in detail during a regional survey. The first trench was dug by the geologist George Martin Lees sometime around the 1920s. In 1927, Ephraim Speiser visited as part...

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Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/tn28-bakr-awa-explorers-trenches-and-the-passage-of-time.mp3 0:06 2 full Bakr Awa: Tablets from Displaced Earth https://qualla.com/bakr-awa/ Photo credit Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Forty-one cuneiform tablets and fragments have been recovered from Bakr Awa across multiple excavation campaigns. Twenty-four were found during the Iraqi excavations; seventeen more surfaced during Belgian fieldwork in 2013 and 2014. None were found in their original context. Ins...

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Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/tn28-bakr-awa-tablets-from-displaced-earth.mp3 0:06 3 full Bakr Awa: Empires That Passed Through https://qualla.com/bakr-awa/ Photo credit Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. The seventeen citadel levels at Bakr Awa record the passage of empire after empire. During the Akkadian period, roughly 2350 to 2150 BC, the economy shifted from nomadic patterns toward more sedentary life, introducing pig and poultry breeding alongside wild animal hunting. Iron ...

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]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/tn28-bakr-awa-empires-that-passed-through.mp3 0:06 4 full Bakr Awa: The Wound of Looting https://qualla.com/bakr-awa/ Photo credit Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographs from November 2022 tell a grim story. The tell's surface and surrounding area are riddled with pits -- not archaeological trenches but the irregular, destructive holes left by illegal excavators. Looting at Bakr Awa has been heavy, particularly during periods of polit...

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]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/n/2/8/bakr-awa-wp/tn28-bakr-awa-the-wound-of-looting.mp3 0:06 5 full