Plants used in Iraqi traditional medicine in Erbil - Kurdistan region

Naqishbandi, Alaadin M.

doi:10.15218/zjms.2014.0038

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Ethnobotanical field surveys in Kurdistan have mainly addressed medicinal plants and quite exclusively in North Kurdistan (Turkey) and within Zaza-speaking areas in Turkey [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], while in the Iraqi and Iranian portions of Kurdistan only the traditional medicinal plant knowledge of healers, herbal drug sellers, and dye plant traders have been sometimes evaluated [17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The spring has arrived: traditional wild vegetables gathered by Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haqq) and Sunni Muslims in Western Hawraman, SE Kurdistan (Iraq)

Pieroni

Ahmed

Zahir³

2016

Acta Soc Bot Pol

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Kurdistan represents a crucial region in the Middle East for understanding patterns of human evolution in the use of food plants and especially wild vegetables as well as for assessing the influences of the major, surrounding bio-cultural macro-area.In this research, an ethnobotanical filed study focusing on wild vegetables traditionally gathered and consumed during the spring was conducted in a few villages of the Western Hawraman area, in South Kurdistan (Iraq), both among Sunni Muslims and Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haqq), the latter of which represent followers of a tiny, threatened, ancient monotheistic religion.Through interviews with 25 elderly informants, the folk uses of 34 botanical and mycological taxa were recorded. A few of the recorded species have never, or very rarely, been described in the ethnobotanical literature of the Middle East and for some of them (most notably Allium koelzii, Bongardia chrysogonum, Dorema aucheri, and Johrenia aromatica) their sensory chemistry and nutraceutical properties are largely unknown. No differences were found between the folk taxa mentioned by Sunni Muslims and those reported by Yarsanis.The high cultural value and consumption of raw young shoots of Imperata cylindrica should be further investigated considering the history of the development of agriculture in the area, as explanations for the domestication of wild grasses have never considered the hypothesis of gastronomic appreciation of their young aerial parts.Moreover, some of the most mentioned vegetables are also considered food-medicines.A comparison with all the pre-existing food ethnobotanical literature of the Middle East shows that the most culturally salient wild vegetables recorded in the Hawraman area are shared with Arabic, Turkish, Caucasian, and especially Persian food heritages.These findings suggest that investigating the ethnobiology of Kurdistan is more than ever urgent in order to document folk plant uses at a crucial crossroad of historical and cultural trajectories in the Middle East.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The spring has arrived: traditional wild vegetables gathered by Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haqq) and Sunni Muslims in Western Hawraman, SE Kurdistan (Iraq)

Pieroni

Ahmed

Zahir³

2016

Acta Soc Bot Pol

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“…diuretic. [35] The tuber part of C. rotundus is one of the oldest known medicinal plants used for the treatment of dysmenorrhoeal and menstrual irregularities. [36] The present study was designed to determine the in vitro efficacy of C. rotundus rhizomestubers extracts against viability of E.granulosus protoscoleces and to investigate the morphological alteration that induced by this plants extracts using light and scanning electron microscope.…”

Section: Cyperus Rotundusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficacy of Cyperus Rotundus Rhizomes-Tubers Extracts Against Protoscoleces of Echinococcus Granulosus

Shnawa¹

2017

WJPR

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“…The Qaysari bazaar, located in the centre of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, has 21 herbalist shops trading natural medicinal products [ 4 ]. Thirty-two plants belonging to 23 families are used by traditional healers in the Erbil region to treat various diseases [ 5 ], whereas sixty-six plants, belonging to sixty-three genera within thirty-four plant families, are used for treating ninety-nine different types of ailments and diseases in the Province of Sulaymaniyah [ 6 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This finding can be due to the abundance of these diseases among the Kurdish people, and/or to the broad applicability of these terms, as they can also include reduction of cholesterol level, abdominal pain, flatulence, colic, etc. Other diseases cured by using plants are related to the circulatory and respiratory systems, the urogenital and the metabolic systems, including diabetes, various types of inflammation and infection, skin burns, and liver problems [ 4 , 5 , 6 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phytochemistry of Verbascum Species Growing in Iraqi Kurdistan and Bioactive Iridoids from the Flowers of Verbascum calvum

Amin

Hussain

Gilardoni

et al. 2020

Plants

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Traditional medicine is still widely practiced in Iraqi Kurdistan, especially by people living in villages on mountainous regions; medicinal plants are also sold in the markets of the large towns, such as at Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. About a dozen of Verbascum species (Scrophulariaceae) are commonly employed in the Kurdish traditional medicine, especially for treating burns and other skin diseases. However, the isolation of bioactive secondary metabolites from these plants has not been the subject of intense scientific investigations in Iraq. Therefore, the information reported in the literature about the species growing in Kurdistan has been summarized in the first part of this paper, although investigations have been performed on vegetable samples collected in neighbouring countries, such as Turkey and Iran. In the second part of the work, we have investigated, for the first time, the contents of a methanol and a hydromethanol extract of V. calvum flowers. The extracts exhibited weak antimicrobial activities, whereas the methanol extract showed significant antiproliferative effects against an A549 lung cancer cell line. Moreover, both extracts exhibited a significant dose-dependent free radical scavenging action against the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical, comparable to that of ascorbic acid. In the subsequent phytochemical study, a high phenolic content was determined in both extracts by the Folin–Ciocalteu assay and medium-pressure liquid chromatographic (MPLC) separation led to the isolation of iridoid glucosides ajugol and aucubin from the methanol extract. In conclusion, the high anti-inflammatory effects of aucubin and the remarkable antioxidant (antiradical) properties of the extracts give scientific support to the traditional use of V. calvum flowers for the preparation in Kurdistan of remedies to cure skin burns and inflammations.

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Plants used in Iraqi traditional medicine in Erbil - Kurdistan region

Cited by 15 publications

References 8 publications

The spring has arrived: traditional wild vegetables gathered by Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haqq) and Sunni Muslims in Western Hawraman, SE Kurdistan (Iraq)

The spring has arrived: traditional wild vegetables gathered by Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haqq) and Sunni Muslims in Western Hawraman, SE Kurdistan (Iraq)

Efficacy of Cyperus Rotundus Rhizomes-Tubers Extracts Against Protoscoleces of Echinococcus Granulosus

Phytochemistry of Verbascum Species Growing in Iraqi Kurdistan and Bioactive Iridoids from the Flowers of Verbascum calvum

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