Duhok Governorate in the context of "Şırnak Province"

Yazidis, also spelled Yezidis (/jəˈziːdiz/ ; Êzidî), are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, with small numbers living in Armenia and Georgia. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok.

There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnoreligious group or a religious sub-group of the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group. Yazidism is the ethnic religion of the Yazidi people. It is monotheistic in nature and syncretic. Having its origin from Adawiyya Sufi order, which blended Sufi Sunni Islam, a local Kurdish veneration of Yazid ibn Mu'awiya and Umayyad dynasty, and local Kurdish peasant belief of pre-Zoroastrian Iranic faith. By the 15th century, Yazidism developed into a distinct religion separate from Islam.

The Kurdistan Region (KRI) is a semi-autonomous federal region of the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority governorates of Arab-majority Iraq: Erbil Governorate, Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. It is located in northern Iraq, which shares borders with Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Syria to the west.

It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government (in Erbil) and the Government of Iraq (in Baghdad) to the present day. The Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil, the capital of KRI.

The Bassetki Statue is a monument from the Akkadian period (2350–2100 BCE) in Mesopotamia. It was discovered in 1974 during road construction near the site of the village Bassetki (located near the road between Duhok and Zakho Duhok Governorate, northern Iraq) for military purposes. The pedestal contains an inscription in Akkadian, indicating that the statue once stood in the doorway of a palace of the Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin (reigned c. 2254–2218 BCE).

The statue consists of a seated naked man on a round base. The upper body and the head of the figure have been broken off. It was cast from 98.2% pure copper using the lost-wax process. The statue's base is a diameter of 67 centimetres (26 in) and is 25 centimetres (9.8 in) high. The preserved part of the figure itself is 18 centimetres (7.1 in) high. The statue weighs 150 kilograms (330 lb).

Duhok (Kurdish: دهۆک, romanized: Dihok; Arabic: دهوك, romanized: Dohūk; Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܘܗܕܪܐ, romanized: Beth Nohadra, Lishanid Noshan: דוהוך, romanized: Dohok) is a city in Kurdistan Region, Iraq and the capital city of Duhok Governorate.

The Simele massacre (Syriac: ܦܪܲܡܬܵܐ ܕܣܸܡܹܠܹܐ, romanized: Premta d'Simele, Arabic: مذبحة سميل, romanized: maḏbaḥat Simīl), also known as the Assyrian affair, was a massacre committed by the Kingdom of Iraq under the leadership of Kurdish army general Bakr Sidqi. The massacre was committed against the Assyrian population of Iraq in and around the village of Simele in August 1933.

Although primarily known for the attacks in the village of Simele, 54 villages in total are said to have been targeted during the four day period of the massacre, primarily in the Zakho and Simele Districts which are now in the modern Duhok Governorate. The legacy of the massacre is known partly for imprinting the memory of persecution on modern Assyrian identity, while also being regarded as the turning point for the Assyrian naming dispute due to the responses of the Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Orthodox churches. Raphael Lemkin's coining of the term genocide was influenced by the events of the massacre.