Herki

The Herki (Harki) are a large Kurmanji-speaking Kurdish tribe of the mountain borderland where Iraq, Iran and Türkiye meet. Their largest section lives in Iraqi Kurdistan (Erbil and Duhok governorates, around Soran, Mergasur, Akre and Khabat), with others in West Azerbaijan in Iran and in Hakkari and Van in Türkiye; some call them the second-largest Kurdish tribe after the Jaff. By oral tradition they descend from three ancestors, giving the three branches Mendan, Sidan and Serhati, divided into clans such as the Liasi and Mam Musa, whose khans led the tribe; society was split into notable lineages (pisaqa) and commoners. The Herki were among the last great migratory tribes of Kurdistan: in the 19th century some 3,000 nomad households wintered in the lowlands of Mosul province and summered on the Iranian and Hakkari highlands. Ottoman and British records count about 18,000 nomads in 1872, 12,270 in 1905 and about 20,000 in 1921. The borders drawn after 1918 cut their migration routes, and Reza Shah, the Iraqi monarchy and Turkey all pushed them to settle. Herki fighters were Simko Shikak's most loyal allies in his revolt of 1918-22, and the tribe joined the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946.

Herki life was built on long seasonal migrations with sheep and goats between lowland winter quarters and high summer pastures, living in black goat-hair tents. The tribe was famous for fine woven textiles: early 20th-century Herki rugs are displayed in the Kurdish Textile Museum in the Erbil citadel. Herki men also carried goods by caravan between countries, and British officers of the 1910s noted them as brave and well armed. The Herki costume is recognised across Kurdistan and is worn at weddings and political events as a sign of Kurdish identity. Social life follows the clan and the authority of the khans, aghas and elders; among the Kurmanji tribes of Urmia a marriage within the tribe traditionally needed the chief's consent, a custom younger urban families are abandoning. Like other Kurmanji Kurds they dance the govend at weddings and keep Newroz as the great spring festival; hospitality and honour are central values.

The Herki are Sunni Muslims of the Shafi'i school, like most Kurmanji Kurds. Sufi orders, especially the Qadiri and Naqshbandi, and the sheikhly (sayyid) families attached to the tribes have long given spiritual guidance and mediated disputes. Folk practice includes vows and visits to the tombs of holy men, amulets against the evil eye and the spring festival of Newroz. Religion is bound up with Kurdish and tribal identity rather than with an Islamist politics; younger urban Herki are more secular in outlook. No organised Christian community is known among them.

The complete Bible is available in Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) in Latin script, with the Jesus Film, Global Recordings Network audio and Christian broadcasts and websites. Most Kurmanji Christian work is in Türkiye, northern Iraq and Europe, where small Kurmanji-speaking fellowships exist. No Herki-specific outreach is known, and in Iran the Herki live under laws that forbid evangelism.

Until the First World War the Herki migrated each year between winter quarters in the lowlands of Mosul province (Akre, Rawanduz, the Erbil plain) and summer pastures on the Hakkari mountains and the Iranian highlands west of Urmia, crossing what were then loose Ottoman-Persian frontiers. The borders fixed after 1918 and the 1920s, and the settlement campaigns of Reza Shah in Iran and of the Iraqi and Turkish states, broke the migration into separate national sections. In 1963 the Iranian Herki were still largely nomadic, summering on the highlands of Targavar and Dasht-e Bil and wintering in the lowlands of Targavar, Dasht-e Bil and Margavar. In Iraq the tribe remains a significant political force: in July 2025 Herki fighters clashed with Peshmerga in the Khabat area of Erbil after an attempt to arrest the tribal leader Khurshid Herki.