Erbil
Erbil, also called Hawler, is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the capital of the Erbil Governorate. Erbil is described as the region's cultural, economic, industrial, educational and medical hub.
Erbil is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Human settlement at Erbil may be dated back to the 5th millennium BC. At the heart of the city is the ancient Citadel of Erbil and Mudhafaria Minaret. The earliest historical reference to the region dates to the Third Dynasty of Ur of Sumer, when King Shulgi mentioned the city of Urbilum. The city was later conquered by the Assyrians.
In the 3rd millennium BC, Erbil was an independent power in its area. It was conquered for a time by the Gutians. Beginning in the late 2nd millennium BC, it came under Assyrian control. Subsequent to this, it was part of the geopolitical province of Assyria under several empires in turn, including the Median Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, Macedonian Empire, Seleucid Empire, Armenian Empire, Parthian Empire, Roman Assyria and Sasanian Empire, as well as being the capital of the tributary state of Adiabene between the mid-second century BC and early 2nd century AD. In ancient times the patron deity of the city was Ishtar of Arbela.
Following the Muslim conquest of Persia, the region no longer remained united, and during the Middle Ages, the city came to be ruled by the Seljuk and Ottoman empires.
Erbil's archaeological museum houses a large collection of pre-Islamic artifacts, particularly the art of Mesopotamia, and is a centre for archaeological projects in the area. The city was designated as the Arab Tourism Capital 2014 by the Arab Council of Tourism. In July 2014, the Citadel of Erbil was inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
Names
Erbil is the romanization of the city's Ottoman Turkish name اربيل, still used as the city's name in official English translation. The Modern Standard Arabic form of the name is Arbīl. In classical antiquity, it was known as Arbela in Latin and in Greek, derived from Old Persian Arbairā, from Assyrian Arbaʾilu, from Sumerian Urbilum.Archaeology
In 2006 a small excavation was conducted by Karel Novacek of the University of West Bohemia. While the citadel remains were of the Ottoman Period a field survey of the western slope of the tell found a few pottery shards from the Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age with more numerous finds from the Late Bronze to Iron Ages and from the Hellenistic, Arsacid, Sassanid Periods. Being so heavily occupied, the site has never been properly excavated. In 2013 a team from the Sapienza University of Rome conducted some ground penetrating radar work on the center of the citadel. Starting in 2014 an Iraqi-led excavation began on a citadel location where the collapse of a modern building provided an opportunity for excavation. Historical aerial photographs and ground survey have also begun on the lower city.The wider plain around Erbil has a number of promising archaeological sites, most notably Tell Baqrta. The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey began in 2012. The survey combines satellite imagery and field work to determine the development and archaeology of the plain around Erbil. Tell Baqrta is a very large, 80 hectare, site which dates back to the Early Bronze Age.
History
Neolithic
Erbil was among the earliest regions of agricultural settlement during the Neolithic period, marking a significant stage in the development of human civilization in Mesopotamia.Bronze Age
Early Bronze
The region in which Erbil lies was largely under Sumerian domination from.With the rise of the Akkadian Empire all of the Akkadian Semites and Sumerians of Mesopotamia were united under one rule. Erridupizir, king of the kingdom of Gutium, captured the city in 2150 BC.
The first mention of Erbil in literary sources comes from the archives of the kingdom of Ebla. They record two journeys to Erbil by a messenger from Ebla around 2300 BFC.
The Neo-Sumerian ruler of Ur, Amar-Sin, sacked Urbilum in his second year, c. 1975 BC.
Middle Bronze
In the centuries after the fall of the Ur III empire Erbil became a power in its area. It was conquered by Shamsi-Adad I during his short lived Upper Mesopotamian Kingdom, becoming independent after its fall.Late Bronze
By the time of the Middle Assyrian Empire Erbil was within the Assyrian zone of control.Iron Age
The region fell under the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The city then changed hands a number of times including the Persian, Greek, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid rule.Under the Medes, Cyaxares might have settled a number of people from the ancient Iranian tribe of Sagartians in the Assyrian cities of Arbela and Arrapha, probably as a reward for their help in the capture of Nineveh. According to Classical authors, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great occupied Assyria in 547 BC and established it as an Achaemenid military protectorate state called in Old Persian Aθurā , with Babylon as the capital.
The Medes, and with them the Sagarthians, were to revolt against Darius I of Persia in 522 BC, but this revolt was firmly put down by the army which Darius sent out under the leadership of General Takhmaspada the following year. The events are depicted in the Behistun Inscription which stands today in the mountains of Iran's Kermanshah province.
The Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia, took place in 331 BC approximately west of Erbil according to Urbano Monti's world map. After the battle, Darius managed to flee to the city. Subsequently, Arbela was part of Alexander's Empire. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, Arbela became part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire.
Erbil became part of the region disputed between Rome and Persia under the Sasanids. During the Parthian era to early Sassanian era, Erbil became the capital of the state of Adiabene. The town and kingdom are known in Jewish history for the conversion of the royal family, notably Queen Helena of Adiabene, to Judaism.
Its populace then gradually converted from the ancient Mesopotamian religion between the first and fourth centuries to Christianity, with Pkidha traditionally becoming its first bishop around 104 AD. The ancient Mesopotamian religion did not die out entirely in the region until the tenth century AD. There also existed a Christian community thought to be converts from Judaism. The Adiabene in Arbela became a centre of eastern Syriac Christianity until late in the Middle Ages.
Medieval history
As many of the Assyrians who had converted to Christianity adopted Biblical names, most of the early bishops had Eastern Aramaic or Jewish/Biblical names, which does not suggest that many of the early Christians in this city were converts from Judaism. It served as the seat of a Metropolitan of the Assyrian Church of the East. From the city's Christian period come many church fathers and well-known authors in Aramaic.Following the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Sassanian province of Naxwardašīragān and later Garamig ud Nodardashiragan, of which Erbil made part of, was dissolved, and from the mid-seventh century AD the region saw a gradual influx of Muslim peoples, predominantly Arabs and Turkic peoples.
The most notable Kurdish tribe in the region was the Hadhabani, of which several individuals also acted as governors for the city from the late tenth century until the 12th century when it was conquered by the Zengids and its governorship given to the Turkic Begtegenids, of whom the most notable was Gökböri, who retained the city during the Ayyubid era. Yaqut al-Hamawi further describes Erbil as being mostly Kurdish-populated in the 13th century.
File:Siège d'Irbil 1258-1259.jpeg|thumb|left|Siege of Erbil by the Ilkhanid Mongols in 1258–59 depicted in the Jami' al-tawarikh by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division Orientale
When the Mongols invaded the Near East in the 13th century, they attacked Arbil for the first time in 1237. They plundered the lower town but had to retreat before an approaching Caliphate army and had to put off the capture of the citadel. After the fall of Baghdad to Hülegü and the Mongols in 1258, the last Begtegenid ruler surrendered to the Mongols, claiming the Kurdish garrison of the city would follow suit; they refused this however, therefore the Mongols returned to Arbil and were able to capture the citadel after a siege lasting six months. Hülegü then appointed a Christian Assyrian governor to the town, and the Syriac Orthodox Church was allowed to build a church.
As time passed, sustained persecutions of Christians, Jews and Buddhists throughout the Ilkhanate began in earnest in 1295 under the rule of Oïrat amir Nauruz, which affected the indigenous Christian Assyrians greatly. This manifested early on in the reign of the Ilkhan Ghazan. In 1297, after Ghazan had felt strong enough to overcome Nauruz's influence, he put a stop to the persecutions.
During the reign of the Ilkhan Öljeitü, the Assyrian inhabitants retreated to the citadel to escape persecution. In the Spring of 1310, the Malek of the region attempted to seize it from them with the help of the Kurds. Despite the Turkic bishop Mar Yahballaha's best efforts to avert the impending doom, the citadel was at last taken after a siege by Ilkhanate troops and Kurdish tribesmen on 1 July 1310, and all the defenders were massacred, including many of the Assyrian inhabitants of the lower town.
However, the city's Assyrian population remained numerically significant until the destruction of the city by the forces of Timur in 1397.
In the Middle Ages, Erbil was ruled successively by the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Buwayhids, the Seljuks and then the Turkmen Begtegīnid Emirs of Erbil, most notably Gökböri, one of Saladin's leading generals; they were in turn followed by the Ilkhanids, the Jalayirids, the Kara Koyunlu, the Timurids and the Ak Koyunlu. Erbil was the birthplace of the famous 12th and 13th century Kurdish historians and writers Ibn Khallikan and Ibn al-Mustawfi. After the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, Erbil came under the Soran emirate. In the 18th century Baban Emirate took the city but it was retaken by Soran ruler Mir Muhammed Kor in 1822. The Soran emirate continued ruling over Erbil until it was taken by the Ottomans in 1851. Erbil became a part of the Mosul vilayet in Ottoman Empire until World War I, when the Ottomans and their Kurdish and Turkmen allies were defeated by the British Empire.