Cultural Landscape of Hawraman/Uramanat
The remote mountain landscape of Khoraman/Ulamanat bears witness to the traditional culture of the Khorami people, an agro-pastoral Kurdish tribe that has inhabited the region since around 3000 BC. Located in the heart of the Zagros Mountains in Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces on the western border of Iran, the property consists of two parts: the central eastern valley (Zhaverud and Takht in Kurdistan province); and the western valley (Lahun in Kermanshah province). Over thousands of years, human settlement patterns in these two valleys have adapted to the rugged mountain environment. Tiered steep slope planning and architecture, gardening on dry stone terraces, livestock raising and seasonal vertical migration characterize the local culture and life of the semi-nomadic Khorami people, who inhabit both lowlands and highlands at different seasons of the year. Their uninterrupted presence in the landscape is also marked by extraordinary biodiversity and endemism, as evidenced by stone tools, caves and rock shelters, earthen mounds, remains of permanent and temporary settlements, as well as workshops, cemeteries, roads, villages, castles, etc. The 12 villages at the site demonstrate how the Hawrami people have responded over thousands of years to the scarcity of productive land in their mountainous environment.