Iraq’s Yazidis rediscover lost history through photos found in a museum archive
September 13, 2025
A University of Pennsylvania researcher is leading an effort to connect photos taken of the Yazidi population in northern Iraq in the 1930s with descendants who lost much of their history in the 2014 Islamic State attacks. Penn doctoral student Marc Marin Webb and others have built an archive of nearly 300 photos taken by Penn Museum archaeologists in the 1930s. They are now sharing them with the Yazidi community to help them reclaim their heritage. Ansam Basher, now a teacher in England, says she was “overcome with emotion” seeing photos of her grandparents on their wedding day.
