Erbil

• 1. Introduction

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  Erbil has been continuously inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, making it one of the oldest living cities on earth. Known to the ancient Sumerians as Urbilum, to Greek and Latin writers as Arbela, and today also called Hawler by its Kurdish-speaking residents, this city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has changed hands under more than a dozen empires and kingdoms. It has been a religious crossroads, a battlefield, a refuge, and a capital. What forces kept this city alive through Assyrian conquests, Mongol sieges, Ottoman rule, and modern warfare? And what does it look like today, nearly seven thousand years after the first settlers arrived on its ancient mound?

• 2. Names Across Millennia

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  Sumerian scribes recorded this city as Urbilum in the archives of the kingdom of Ebla, noting two journeys to it by a messenger around 2300 BC. The name travelled through languages the way the city travelled through empires. Assyrian speakers called it Arbailu; Old Persian rendered that as Arbairā; Greek writers heard it as Arbela; the Ottoman Turkish form became Erbil, which is the official English translation used today. The Kurdish name Hawler stands alongside Erbil in everyday use. Each name is a kind of fossil, preserving the linguistic trace of a people who once held the city or lived within it. The earliest literary reference of all comes from King Shulgi of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who mentioned Urbilum in his own records, anchoring the city's documented existence to one of Mesopotamia's most celebrated royal dynasties.

• 3. The Ancient Citadel

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  Rising between 25 and 32 metres above the surrounding plain, the Citadel of Erbil is a tell, meaning a mound formed by centuries of human occupation layered on top of one another. Its buildings spread across a roughly oval area of 430 by 340 metres, covering about 102,000 square metres in total. The earliest evidence of occupation on the mound reaches back to the fifth millennium BC, possibly earlier. During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which ran from the tenth to the seventh centuries BC, the citadel gained particular importance, and a chamber tomb from that period has been excavated just to the west, in the Ary Kon quarter. When the Citadel was fully occupied it was divided into three districts called mahallas: the Serai, home to notable families; the Takya, named for the residences of Sufi dervishes; and the Topkhana, where craftsmen and farmers lived. A hammam, or bathhouse, built in 1775 still stands near the mosque inside the citadel. In 2007, all inhabitants except one family were evicted as part of a restoration project overseen by the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization. The Citadel was inscribed on the World Heritage List on the 21st of June 2014. The government plans to eventually house 50 families there once renovation is complete.

• 4. Empires and Conquests

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  Erridupizir, king of the Gutian kingdom, captured the city in 2150 BC, one of the first recorded conquests in its long history. The Neo-Sumerian ruler Amar-Sin sacked Urbilum around 1975 BC. From the late 2nd millennium BC onward, the city fell under Assyrian control and was absorbed in turn by the Median Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Armenian Empire, and the Parthian Empire. The Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia, took place approximately 100 km west of Erbil according to Urbano Monti's world map. Darius fled to Erbil after the battle. The confrontation is sometimes called the Battle of Arbela, though that name is not precisely accurate. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, the city passed to the Seleucid Empire. During the Parthian period it became the capital of the state of Adiabene, a tributary kingdom whose royal family famously converted to Judaism, most notably Queen Helena of Adiabene. By the time of the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, the city had passed through dozens more rulers. The Mongols first attacked Erbil in 1237, plundering the lower town. After the fall of Baghdad to Hülegü and the Mongols in 1258, the citadel held out until a six-month siege forced its surrender. On the 1st of July 1310, Ilkhanate troops and Kurdish tribesmen broke through the citadel's defences and massacred its defenders. The city's Assyrian population remained significant nonetheless until Timur's forces destroyed much of it in 1397.

• 5. Faith and Conversion

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  In ancient times the patron deity of Erbil was Ishtar of Arbela, one of the most powerful figures in the Mesopotamian religious pantheon. The city's populace began converting from that ancient religion to Christianity between the first and fourth centuries AD. Pkidha is traditionally recorded as its first bishop, around 104 AD. Adiabene in Arbela became a centre of eastern Syriac Christianity and served as the seat of a Metropolitan of the Assyrian Church of the East. From this period came many church fathers and well-known authors writing in Aramaic. The ancient Mesopotamian religion did not disappear entirely until the tenth century AD. A Jewish community also existed in the city, thought by some scholars to be descended from converts rather than ethnic Jews, though the names of the early bishops suggest Eastern Aramaic and Jewish biblical origins rather than Jewish ethnic descent. From the mid-seventh century onward, Muslim peoples, predominantly Arabs and Turkic groups, gradually settled in the region following the Muslim conquest of Persia. In 2015, the Assyrian Church of the East moved its global seat from Chicago to Erbil, returning the city to a role of ecclesiastical importance it had held for more than a thousand years.

• 6. Modern Erbil

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  The parliament of Iraqi Kurdistan was established in Erbil in 1970 after negotiations between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Mustafa Barzani. It was effectively controlled by Saddam Hussein until the Kurdish uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Fighting between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan paralysed the legislature in the mid-1990s. The KDP captured the city in 1996 with assistance from Saddam Hussein's government after claiming the rival PUK had sought Iranian support. A peace agreement in 1997 allowed the Kurdish Parliament to reconvene, though with limited authority. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a United States special forces task force was headquartered just outside the city, and celebrations broke out on the 10th of April 2003 after the fall of the Ba'ath regime. Violence followed in the years after: parallel bomb attacks targeting Eid celebrations in February 2004 killed 117 people, with Ansar al-Sunnah claiming responsibility. A suicide bombing in May 2005 killed 60 civilians and injured 150 others outside a police recruiting centre. The city absorbed waves of displaced people from subsequent conflicts; by 2020 it was estimated that 450,000 refugees had settled in the Erbil metropolitan area since 2003. Erbil International Airport, opened in 2005, became one of Iraq's busiest airports, though it was briefly closed to international flights in September 2017 following the Kurdish independence vote and did not reopen until March 2018.

• 7. The City Today

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  The 36-metre Mudhafaria Minaret, built in the late 12th century by Gökböri, the Governor of Erbil under Saladin, still stands in Minaret Park several blocks from the citadel. Gökböri, one of Saladin's leading generals, had entered Saladin's service without war and married his sister. The local football club, Erbil Soccer Club, plays at Franso Hariri Stadium, named after the assassinated Assyrian politician and former governor Franso Hariri. The club has won three Iraqi national league titles and reached the AFC Final twice, losing both times. Erbil was designated the Arab Tourism Capital for 2014 by the Arab Council of Tourism. Between 2007 and 2009, the General Directorate of Urban Planning developed an urban master plan for the city, but rapid population growth and investment from Turkey and Gulf countries made it unsustainable; a new plan extending to 2050 was developed in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, with JICA delivering its final proposal in October 2024. On the 30th of October 2025, KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani officially inaugurated the Erbil Green Belt Project, a large-scale initiative launched that month to encircle the city with trees and vegetation, aiming to combat deforestation and improve urban life for a city that has stood, under one name or another, since before the Sumerians first wrote it down.