Sinjar Mountains

The Sinjar Mountains (Kurdish: چیایێ شنگالێ, romanized: Çîyayê Şengalê, Arabic: جبل سنجار, romanized: Jabal Sinjār, Syriac: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܫܝܓܪ, romanized: Ṭura d'Shingar), is a 100-kilometre-long (62 mi) mountain range that runs east to west, rising above the surrounding alluvial steppe plains in northwestern Iraq to an elevation of 1,463 meters (4,800 ft). The highest segment of these mountains, about 75 km (47 mi) long, lies in the Nineveh Governorate. The western and lower segment of these mountains lies in Syria and is about 25 km (16 mi) long. The city of Sinjar is just south of the range. These mountains are regarded as sacred by the local Yazidis.

The Sinjar Mountains are a breached anticlinal structure. These mountains consist of an asymmetrical, doubly plunging anticline, which is called the "Sinjar Anticline", with a steep northern limb, gentle southern limb and a northerly vergence. The northern side of the anticline is normally faulted, which results in the repetition of the sequence of sedimentary strata exposed in it. The deeply eroded Sinjar Anticline exposes a number of sedimentary formations ranging from Late Cretaceous to Early Neogene in age. The Late Cretaceous Shiranish Formation outcrops within the middle of the Sinjar Mountains. The flanks of this mountain range consist of outward dipping strata of the Sinjar and Aliji formations (Paleocene to Early Eocene); Jaddala Formation (Middle to Late Eocene); Serikagne Formation (Early Miocene); and Jeribe Formation (Early Miocene). The Sinjar Mountains are surrounded by exposures of Middle and Late Miocene sedimentary strata

The mountain is a groundwater recharge area and should have good quality water, although away from the mountain groundwater quality is poor. Quantities are sufficient for agricultural and stock use.

Sinjarite, a hygroscopic calcium chloride formed as soft pink mineral, was discovered in braided wadi fill, in limestone exposures near Sinjar.

The Sinjar mountains already appear in the records from second and third millennium BCE under the name Saggar, which was also applied to a deity associated with the same area. In that period, the range was viewed as a source of basalt, as well as various nuts, especially pistachios, as evidenced by texts from Mari and Mesopotamia.

The mountains primarily served as the border frontiers of empires throughout its history; it served as a battlefield between the Assyrians and the Hittite Empire, and was later occupied by the Parthians in 538 BC. The Roman Empire in turn occupied the mountains from the Parthians in 115 AD. From 363 AD, as a result of the Byzantine–Sasanian wars, the mountains lay on the Persian side of the frontier between the two empires. This Persian influence lasted for at least two hundred years and led to the introduction of Zoroastrianism in the region. In the 4th century, Christian influences on the mountains became well established, with Sinjar being part of the Nestorian Christian diocese of Nusaybin. Starting in the late 5th century, the mountains became an abode of the Banu Taghlib, an Arab tribe.

The region was conquered by the Arab Muslim general Iyad ibn Ghanm during the early Muslim conquests in the 630s–640s and came under Islamic rule, forming part of the Diyar Rabi'a district of the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) province. The Christian inhabitants were allowed to practice their faith in exchange for payment of a poll tax. The late 7th-century Syriac work, the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, which was written in Sinjar, indicates Christian culture in the area declined during the first decades of Muslim rule. The 9th-century Syriac patriarch Dionysius I Telmaharoyo records that a certain Atiq, possibly a Kharijite, raised a rebellion against the Umayyads in the Sinjar Mountains. The medieval Arabic historian al-Mas'udi notes that a Kharijite sub-sect, the Ibadis, had a presence in the area.

The Hamdanid dynasty, a branch of the Banu Taghlib, took over Sinjar in 970. Toward the end of the century, Diyar Rabi'a was conquered by another Arab dynasty, the Uqaylids, who likely built the original citadel of Sinjar. During this century, Yazidis are known to have inhabited the Sinjar Mountains, and since the 12th century, the area around the mountains have been mainly inhabited by Yazidis who venerate them and consider the highest to be the place where Noah's Ark settled after the biblical flood. The Yazidis have historically used the mountains as a place of refuge and escape during periods of persecution. Gertrude Bell wrote, in the 1920s: "Until a couple of years ago the Yezidis were ceaselessly at war with the Arabs, Turks, and with everybody else."