Written in 1597. Sung for four thousand years.
Kurdish history survived in manuscripts, in songs and in the land itself. Tevn gathers all three — and lets you read, hear and explore them.
Every age, a thread.
The whole of Kurdish history on one woven band, dyed in kilim colours. Pull a thread — the slide below opens that age.
Woven timeline · 2300 BC → today
Every age carried the flame.
Scroll down to move sideways through time.
The lives, and how they connect.
Pick a name to grow its tree: family, allies, rivals, places, realms and the works that remember them, every tie quoted from a post. A face with a number has ties of its own; pick it to follow the thread across the archive.
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Dig into Hewlêr Citadel.
People have lived on this mound for more than six thousand years. Drag the slider down to dig through its layers.
Rugs of Kurdistan.
Kurdish weaving carries its own alphabet of motifs. Pick one, give the loom a name, and it knots you a rug from the bottom up, row by row, the way a rug is woven.
Every name knots its own rug, with the abrash and the dark overcast sides of the description quoted below.
Real rugs, twelve motifs and every city woven, on the Rugs page →
Among the finest slit-tapestry kilims, often with a herati lattice field.
Famously heavy, dense rugs, packed so tight the trade calls them iron rugs.
Diamond grids with a latch-hooked figure in every lozenge.
Madder-red (rûnas) kilims, often two panels seamed down the middle.
Tales, told in panels.
An illuminated reading mode for myths and legends — traditional folklore and new stories, always labelled.
Shahmaran
Queen of the serpentsHalf woman, half serpent: the queen of the snakes in her hidden kingdom under the earth.
Read Shahmaran’s whole entry on the Culture page →Some histories were sung.
Recordings of the dengbêj tradition: the great epics first, then the songs posted in the archive's Dengbêj thread and the masters. Press play to listen, or open the Dengbêj page for every recording.
Where is Kurdistan?
The outline of the 1946 Kurdish League map, split into Bakur, Başûr, Rojhilat and Rojava. Every pin opens an entry.