Arbil

Arbil ھەولێر / Hewlêr/Hawler (Kurdish) اربيل (Arabic) ܐܪܒܝܠ (Syriac) Erbil (Turkish)
Arbil Arbil in Iraq.
Coordinates:
Country	Iraq
Governorate	Erbil
Settled	23rd century BC
Government
- Governor	Nawzad Hadi
Population (2009 Est.)
- Total	1 293 839 World Gazetteer
Time zone	GMT +3
- Summer (DST)	GMT +4 (UTC)

Arbil (also written Erbil or Irbil or Arbela) (Kurdish: ھەولێر, Hewlêr, anglicized Hawler; Arabic: اربيل‎, Syriac: ܐܪܒܝܠ, Arbel, Turkish: Erbil) is the fourth largest city in Iraq after Baghdad, Basra and Mosul.^[1] The city lies eighty kilometres (fifty miles) east of Mosul, and is the capital of Kurdistan Autonomous Region.

Urban life at Arbil can be dated back to at least the twenty-third century BC. The city has been under the rule of many regional powers during that time, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Sasanians, Arabs, and Ottomans. The city's archaeological museum contains only pre-Islamic artifacts.

Contents 1 Name 2 History 2.1 Ancient history 2.2 Christianity in Arbela 2.3 Medieval history 2.4 Modern history 3 Economy 4 Main sights 5 Famous people 6 Villages and towns 7 Gallery 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

Name

The name of Arbil or Arbela appears to be not Semitic origin. The initial ar element is a feature of a number of Hurrian place names. The name Arbil was mentioned in the Sumerian holy writings (about 2000 BC) as Urbilum, Urbelum or Urbillum^[2] and it may also be Sumerian in origin.

Later, Akkadians and Assyrians based on similarity and folk etymology rendered the name to mean four gods (arba'ū ilū).^[3] The city was a centre for the worship of the goddess Ishtar.

In classical times, the city was known by its Assyrian Aramaic name, Arbela. Another opinion states that the name of Arbela is composed from Sumerian language UR (town) + BELA (high) which means the City that located in the upper area; in Kurdistan there are some locations that have the same appellation: Akra (or Aqra, عقرة) which is believed also to have been composed from the Aramaic word for Soil or ܐܩܪܐ, Dei bala (high village/ده بالا ) (the old name of the Kurdish city of Ilam (Iran))

The Kurdish name for the city is Hawler meaning the place where sun is worshipped.^[4]

History

Ancient history

The neo-Sumerian ruler of Ur, Amar-Sin sacked Urbilum in his second year.

Over a millennium later, under the Median Empire, Cyaxares settled a number of Sagarthian tribes of Zagros in Arbela and Kirkuk, probably as a reward for their help in the capture of Nineveh. After revolts of Medes led by Phraortes king of Media (522-521 BC) were put down by Darius I of Persia, the Sagartians of Arbela rebelled against Darius continuing the Median revolts.

Darius sent an army led by a Median general named Takhmaspâda, and in the summer of 521 BC defeated Sagartians, led by Tritantaechmes (in Old Persian Ciçataxma), who claimed to be a descendant of the Great Median King Cyaxares. According to Darius, the rebellion of Arbela was the last revolt of Media which he put down. These incidents are carved on the Behistun Inscription.

The Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia in 331 BC, took place about one hundred kilometres (sixty miles) west of Arbil. After the battle, Darius managed to flee to the city, and, somewhat inaccurately, the confrontation is sometimes known as the Battle of Arbela.

The name Hewlêr, that is also used for this historic town of Mesopotamia by Kurdish inhabitants derives from Horlêr, meaning "Temple of the Sun" in the Kurdish language. This may have originated from the religions of Mithraism, Yazdanism and Zoroastrianism practiced by Kurds in which the sun and fire play a significant role (see also: Helios).

Erbil became, like Amida (Diyarbekr), part of the region disputed between Rome and Persia under the Sassanians. The kingdom of Adiabene (Greek form for Hadyab)(Kurdish form for "Hadhaban") had its center at Arbil, and the town and kingdom are known in Jewish Middle Eastern history for the conversion of the royal family to Judaism, although the general population remained eclectic but with a very strong Assyrian Christian presence.

Christianity in Arbela

Arbela was an early center of Assyrian Christianity. By AD 100 there was a bishop seated in the city. Most of the early bishops had Jewish names, suggesting that most of the early Christians in this city were converts from Judaism.^[5] The conversions worked both ways, with some early Assyrian Pagans and Christians converting to Judaism then back again.

The queen of Adiabene (which was a Neo Assyrian kingdom) adopted Judaism, however the majority population were ethnic Assyrians who began to adopt Christianity from the 1st Century AD, and the area became a Christian stronghold. It served as the seat of a Metropolitan of the Assyrian Church of the East.

From its Christian period come many church fathers and well-known authors in Syriac, the classical language off-shoot of Aramaic. The 13th century Syriac writer Gewargis Warda Arbillaya [from Arbil] identifies the Christian population of Arbil and neighboring areas as Assyrian in a prayer dedicated to the Rogation of the Ninevites.

Medieval history

Until the 10th century Arbil was mainly populated by Assyrians and Hadhabani (Adiabeni) Kurds who gradually migrated northward. In 1310 the Christian Assyrian population suffered a massacre by the Moslem Arabs;^[6] with the help of Kurds.^[7] Its Aramaic-speaking Assyrian population remained significant in size until destruction of the city by the forces of Timur in 1397.^[8] In the wake of Timur's raids, Arbil increasingly became a Muslim-dominated town. As is attested in the region in general, those who converted to Islam became enfolded into the ethnic Muslim culture of the region, whether Turkish, Arab, Persian or Kurdish.

However Assyrian Christianity remained in the area, and the Assyrians retained their distinct culture and Aramaic language. Arbil is also the birthplace of the famous Muslim historian and writer of 13th century, Ibn Khallikan. In the Middle Ages, Arbil was ruled successively by the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Buwayhids, the Seljuks and then by the Atabegs of Erbil (1131-1232), under whom it was a Turkmen state; they were in turn followed by the Ilkhanids, the Jalayirids, the Karakoyun and the Akkoyun.

Modern history

The modern town of Arbil stands on a tell topped by an Ottoman fort. During the Middle Ages, Arbil became a major trading centre on the route between Baghdad and Mosul, a role which it still plays today with important road links to the outside world. A population of Assyrian Christians (about 20,000) live mostly in suburbs such as Ankawa.

The parliament of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region was established in Erbil in 1970 after negotiations between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Mustafa Barzani, but was effectively controlled by Saddam Hussein until the Kurdish uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The legislature ceased to function effectively in the mid-1990s when fighting broke out between the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The city was captured by the KDP in 1996 with the assistance of the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. The PUK then established an alternative Kurdish government in Sulaimaniyah. KDP claimed that on March 1996 PUK asked for Iran's help to fight KDP. Considering this as a foreign attack on Iraq's soil, KDP asked the central Iraqi government for help.

While the forces of Saddam Hussein ransacked Arbil, many NGO's and international organizations fled. These same organizations were able, with the assistance of the United States and other countries, to accept many Kurds as refugees. Many bound for the US were first taken to Guam.

The Kurdish Parliament in Arbil reconvened after a peace agreement was signed between the Kurdish parties in 1997, but had no real power. The Kurdish government in Arbil had control only in the western and northern parts of the autonomous region.

During the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, a United States special forces task force was headquartered just outside of Arbil. The city was the scene of rapturous celebrations on April 10, 2003 after the fall of Baghdad.

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil, unlike many other areas of Iraq. Parallel bomb attacks against Eid celebrations (those celebrations were arranged by the PUK and KDP) killed 109 people on February 1, 2004. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in solidarity with the Kurdish Islamist faction Ansar al-Islam. Another bombing on May 4, 2005 killed 60 civilians. Despite these bombings the population generally feels safe.

The new Iraqi constitution of 2005, explicitly recognizes the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the two parallel administrations, in January 2006, signed an agreement to unify the administration of the entire Kurdish region under a new multi-party government in Arbil. In May 2006 the unitary government of the Kurdistan region was formally presented.^[9]

Economy

Erbil International Airport was opened in autumn of 2005. It has scheduled flights to a number of airports in the Middle East and to Vienna via Austrian Airlines 5 flights weekly to more than 130 destinations world wide. Royal Jordanian flies in from Amman and Kurdistan Airlines flies to many locations across the Middle East. On 16 September 2009 weekly flights began operating between Erbil and Oslo, Norway. Viking Airlines launched flight between Erbil and Athens, Greece. Lufthansa began flying to Erbil from Frankfurt.

The KRG built a new $500 million airport adjacent to the existing terminal, which has the capacity to accept the largest aircraft in the world, including the Russian Antonov 225 cargo plane and the American C-5 Galaxy. The new airport has the fourth largest runway in the world and the lowest fuel prices in the region. The new Erbil International Airport opened its doors in 2010.

At this moment Arbil or Erbil is going under a economic boom with many modern and tall buildings under construction but also health care, education, jobs are all widely improved.

Main sights

The Citadel of Arbil is a tell or occupied mound, in the historical heart of Arbil. It has been claimed that the site is the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world.^[10] The earliest evidence for occupation of the citadel mound dates to the 5th millennium BC, and possibly earlier. It appears for the first time in historical sources during the Ur III period, and gained particular importance during the Neo-Assyrian period. During the Sassanian period and the Abbasid Caliphate, Arbil was an important centre for Christianity. After the Mongols captured the citadel in 1258, the importance of Arbil declined. During the 20th century, the urban structure was significantly modified, as a result of which a number of houses and public buildings were destroyed. In 2007, the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization (HCECR) was established to oversee the restoration of the citadel. In the same year, all inhabitants, except one family, were evicted from the citadel as part of a large restoration project. Since then, archaeological research and restoration works have been carried out at and around the tell by various international teams and in cooperation with local specialists. The government plans to have 50 families live in the citadel once it is renovated.

The buildings on top of the tell stretch over a roughly oval area of 430 by 340 metres (1,410 × 1,120 ft) occupying 102,000 square metres (1,100,000 sq ft). The only religious structure that currently survives is the Mulla Afandi Mosque. The mound rises between 25 and 32 metres (82 and 105 ft) from the surrounding plain. When it was fully occupied, the citadel was divided in three districts or mahallas: from east to west the Serai, the Takya and the Topkhana. The Serai was occupied by notable families; the Takya district was named after the homes of dervishes, which are called takyas; and the Topkhana district housed craftsmen and farmers.

Other sights include Mudhafaria Minaret, Mound of Qalich Agha, Qaysari Bazaars and Citadel of Khanzad.

Famous people

• Ihsan Dogramaci, (1915–2010), Turkish pediatric physician
• Ibn Khallikan (1211–1282)
• Abdulla Pashew (1946–)

Villages and towns

• Sidekan
• Armota

Gallery

The Mudhafaria Minaret at Minare Park, Arbil.	Remains of a mountain-top villa once used by Saddam Hussein, located just outside of Arbil.	Chaldean Church in Arbil.	Construction of the new EIA terminal as of Nov 14, 2007. The Kurdistan Regional Government is investing more than $300 million in the expansion of the Erbil International Airport.
City Park, a newly constructed park infront of the Citadel of Arbil.

See also

• Air Kurdistan, an airline that operates out of the city
• Cities of the ancient Near East

References

External links

• Livius.org: Arbela
• The Kurdish Globe - English-language news.
• GOVERNORATE - ERBIL