Once upon a time there were three brothers. Once they ate a heart of a wolf. So they became strong, brave and fearless. Nobody wanted to deal with them. They were robbing caravans and nearby passengers. People were afraid of them and were calling brothers “wolf heart eaters”. Brothers settled down spring water near the road and began to live there. Then they had children. Thus, the village was formed and the name of village became Gurdlar, which in English means Wolves.
This is the legend about how our village was formed. Wolf was a totem of our past villagers. Now people call the village Kurtlar, but it was spelling mistake back in Soviet era and it remained after that, too.
Kurtlari village situates on the left bank of Khram River. Village is 20 kilometers away from Marneuli. Approximately 2000 people are living here. It is a small village, but for our villagers it is not small at all in the terms of history.
There is an ancient graveyard near to our village, people call it rams graveyard. This graveyard's history is going past to 10-11th century. Indeed until the present years there were many grave stones. But nowadays only one of them is remained. For our villagers it is a sacred place. Once some people wanted to cultivate soil there, but they found many flagstones there. And the elder villagers didn’t permit to continue cultivating process. After that people understand that it was a sacred graveyard and they decided not to repeat same mistake again.
There is another ancient graveyard in our village’s center, as well. Its history is going back centuries ago.
200-300 meters away from our village there is one hill, which is called Tora tepe, which in English means Born Hill. There is another legend about this hill, as well. Our villagers say that in the past there was a big battle in this place. Too big armies fought with each other. After the battle, survived soldiers poured soil with helmets on their dead friends and thus this hill had been created. This is the sacred place for villagers, too.
There is an old mosque in the center of our village, which is dating back to the middle of 19th century. Molla Osman grandfather got married in 1828, but his bride couldn’t give children to him. That is why Molla Osman went to the pilgrimage to Mecca in order to wish children from God. After his returning he built this mosque with the help of villagers.
For many decades people prayed here. However during Soviet times this mosque ceased its function. During Second World War mosque was converted to storehouse for Savkhoz. But when Soviet was collapsed our villagers restored the mosque, they added one minaret to mosque, as well. Nowadays our villagers prey in this place again.