Road through Kurdistan

This book, which was published in 1937, is perhaps a strange choice for a list of this kind. However, Road through Kurdistan provides fascinating insights into many aspects of Iraqi social and political history in the 1930s. The author, Archibald Milne Hamilton, was a civil engineer from New Zealand who was commissioned to build a strategically important road through Southern Kurdistan, stretching from Erbil, through Rowanduz, and ending at the Iranian border. The road was constructed between 1928 and 1932 and subsequently became known as the Hamilton Road. The book is interesting from an engineering perspective, as the road was… show more.

I journeyed along what is now known as the Hamilton Road with this book by my side. A civil engineer born in New Zealand, Hamilton traveled to Kurdistan in 1928 to build a road through the impossibly beautiful mountains of northern Iraq. He spent four years in the region, and his book describes not only the immense engineering obstacles he encountered, but also the tough, resilient, fiercely independent Kurds he met—people whose spirit still lives on in the region today. The stunning landscape he describes—especially lovely in the spring, when the mountains are covered with wildflowers—also remains little changed.