Gurani, Hawrami

The Gurani people descend from ancient Iranian groups that occupied the plateau between Mesopotamia and Central Asia, and the Hawramis, one of its main branches, settled centuries ago in the mountainous region of Hewraman. Their geographic isolation, amid deep valleys and steep slopes, helped preserve a distinct language and customs even after the region was absorbed into the Persian empires and, later, divided by the modern borders between Iran and Iraq.

Throughout history, Hewraman was also an important religious center for local spiritual movements that used Gorani as a sacred language, which gave the Hawrami people a role as guardians of traditions dating back centuries before the arrival of Islam in the region.

Life in the mountainous region of Hewraman has always revolved around the land and livestock. Families grow cereals such as wheat and barley, along with rice, tobacco, and sugar beet in the more fertile valleys, and raise sheep, goats, donkeys, and mules. In summer, they move up with the animals to the high pastures, and in winter they come down to the lower plains in search of grazing land, a seasonal rhythm that shapes the calendar of entire villages.

The stone houses built in terraces on the steep slopes are a striking feature of the Hewraman landscape. Communal life revolves around the extended family and the village, with a strong attachment to ancestral land and a way of life that has largely resisted the urbanization that has transformed other regions of Iran and Iraq.

The Hawramis are today almost entirely Muslim, and Islam blends deeply with the people’s ethnic and regional identity. But Hewraman also holds an older religious layer: for generations, Gorani, the language of which Hawrami is a dialect, served as the sacred language of a local spiritual tradition that flourished precisely in these mountains, before being largely absorbed by the Islam that now predominates in the region.

This overlay of ancient religion and present day Islam makes Hawrami faith something more complex than simple religious adherence: it is part of a heritage spanning centuries that continues to shape how the community understands the sacred, oral tradition, and its place within the religious mosaic of Kurdistan.

Portions of the Bible have already been translated into Gurani, a significant step for a minority language considered endangered by Unesco. Even so, the reach of these portions is limited: most of the Christian message that reaches Iran and Iraq circulates in Persian or Sorani Kurdish, languages the Hawramis understand but that do not replace the impact of hearing the Word in their own language, the one used at home, in the mountains, and in the region’s oral traditions.

To be Hawrami is, in practice, to be Muslim: the Islamic faith is interwoven with clan and regional identity, and abandoning this heritage is seen as breaking with one’s own family and community. The isolation of the Hewraman mountains, far from the major urban centers where Iran’s small Christian minority lives, makes any contact with the gospel even rarer, since local Christians speak Persian rather than the language of this people’s heart.

Living in one of the most isolated regions of Kurdistan, the Hawramis face the challenges common to mountain communities: limited access to health services, economic opportunities restricted to farming and herding, and a language at risk of disappearing under the pressure of dominant national languages. Spiritually, the most urgent need is for the message of the gospel to reach them in a way that is understandable and accessible, in a region where there is practically no local Christian community or discipleship in their own language.