Erbil (Hewlêr): The Ancient Capital of Kurdistan
- Hojîn Rostam
- 7 hours ago
- 8 min read
Introduction
Erbil, known to Kurds as Hewlêr and to the ancient world as Arbela, is the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and one of the strongest candidates for the title of the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. Its great oval citadel, a man-made mound built up over at least six thousand years of human settlement, still rises above the modern city like a stone island over the northern Mesopotamian plain.
This profile traces Erbil from its Sumerian and Assyrian origins, through its medieval golden age and its place in the Kurdish emirates, to its present role as the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government — and the symbolic centre of the 2017 independence referendum. It is the first entry in our geographic series on Greater Kurdistan, and a fitting one: few places carry as much continuous history.
Quick Facts
Common Name: Erbil (also Arbil, Irbil)
Kurdish Name: Hewlêr
Ancient Names: Arbela; Urbilum / Irbilum; Arba-ilu (“Four Gods”)
Region: Bashur (Southern Kurdistan)
Province / Governorate: Erbil Governorate
Current Administering Authority: Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) / Republic of Iraq
Approximate Population: City around 1.5 million; governorate around 2.9 million (2020 estimates)
Age of Settlement: Occupied since at least the 5th millennium BC; possibly earlier
Key Landmark: The Citadel of Erbil — UNESCO World Heritage Site (inscribed 2014)
Known For: Antiquity, the Citadel, Assyrian Arbela, the medieval Mawlid tradition, and as the KRG capital
Contents
Origins and Ancient History
Urban life at Erbil can be traced back roughly six thousand years. Pottery fragments found on the slopes of the citadel mound may date to the Neolithic period, while clear evidence of occupation appears in the Chalcolithic, with sherds resembling the Ubaid and Uruk pottery of wider Mesopotamia. The city enters written history around 2300 BC, when it appears in the archives of Ebla as Irbilum.
Erbil passed through the great early powers of Mesopotamia in turn. It lay under Sumerian influence from around 3000 BC, was absorbed into the Akkadian Empire, was briefly captured by the Gutian king Erridupizir around 2200 BC, and appears in the records of the Ur III period as Urbilum — a city important enough that King Shulgi recorded campaigning against it. The Akkadian form of the name, Arba-ilu, is usually translated as “Four Gods,” a hint at its early religious significance.
Arbela: An Assyrian Religious Capital
Under the Assyrians, Arbela became one of the most important religious centres of the empire. It was home to a major cult of Ishtar — the goddess of love and war — and Assyrian kings are recorded seeking divine guidance and oracles at her temple there. Ground-penetrating surveys beneath the citadel have detected large structures that some archaeologists believe may relate to this temple, though excavation is still in its early stages.
Arbela also gave its name to one of antiquity’s most famous battles. In 331 BC, Alexander the Great defeated the Persian king Darius III at Gaugamela, on the plain near the city; the engagement is often called the Battle of Arbela. According to ancient accounts, it was in the aftermath that Alexander assumed the title King of Asia. After the Assyrian and Persian eras, Erbil remained an important centre under the Sasanians and became a significant early Christian bishopric, a role it kept until around the 9th century, when the seat moved to Mosul.
Medieval Erbil: The Atabegs and the Mawlid
After the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, Erbil’s most celebrated medieval period came under the Begteginids, a Turcoman dynasty that rose to prominence in the 12th century under Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul. Its most famous ruler was Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri (1154–1233), a brother-in-law and trusted general of Saladin who commanded troops at the Battle of Hattin in 1187.
Gökböri governed Erbil from 1190 until his death and turned it into a flourishing city, building a lower town around the citadel along with hospitals, madrasas and Sufi lodges. He is best remembered for instituting the first grand public celebrations of the Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, with festivities that drew scholars and crowds from across the region. His Mudhafariya Minaret — often called the Choli Minaret — still stands in modern Erbil. When Gökböri died in 1233 without an heir, the city passed to the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir, and within a few years it faced the first of the Mongol assaults that swept the region. Erbil also produced notable scholars, including the great biographer Ibn Khallikan (1211–1282) and the historian Ibn al-Mustawfi (1169–1239), who wrote a four-volume history of the city.
The Kurdish Emirates and Ottoman Centuries
In the centuries that followed, Erbil and its surrounding district were drawn into the world of the Kurdish emirates. The Soran Emirate, one of the most important Kurdish principalities of the region, came to control Erbil. According to the Sharafnama tradition, after the Ottoman conquest of Baghdad in 1534 and the reorganisation that followed — during which the area was for a time granted to the Yazidi leader Hussein Beg Dasini — the Soran ruler Mir Sayf al-Din recovered Erbil and the hereditary Soran lands.
Under the Ottomans, Erbil settled into its role as a regional market town. The defensive walls of the citadel gave way to a continuous ring of tall house façades, and the distinctive fan-shaped street pattern visible today dates largely to this late Ottoman phase. The Qaysari Bazaar at the foot of the mound became, and remains, the commercial heart of the old city.
The Citadel of Erbil
The Citadel of Erbil is the city’s ancient core: an oval tell rising between roughly 25 and 32 metres above the plain, covering about 102,000 square metres, with a dense fabric of historic houses, a hammam, mosques and museums. It is this unbroken stack of settlement layers — one civilisation building directly on the ruins of the last — that underlies Erbil’s claim to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited site.
In 2014, UNESCO inscribed the Citadel on the World Heritage List. To protect and study the mound, most resident families were relocated from 2005 onward and a major restoration programme began in 2010 with UNESCO support; the citadel is largely uninhabited today while that work continues. The site is widely promoted as a symbol of Kurdish heritage and identity, and is the single most recognisable landmark in Bashur.
Modern Erbil: Capital of the Kurdistan Region
Today Erbil is the capital and largest city of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, with a city population of roughly 1.5 million and a governorate population of around 2.9 million. It is the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Kurdistan Parliament, and the principal stronghold of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). After decades of conflict and the trauma of the Anfal campaign, the city has grown rapidly, with new highways, universities and an international airport.
Erbil also became a place of refuge. During the war against the Islamic State from 2014, large numbers of displaced Iraqis — including many Yazidis and Christians fleeing the Nineveh Plains and Sinjar — sought safety in and around the city, and the Kurdistan Region positioned itself as a relative haven for minorities in a region torn by war.
The 2017 Independence Referendum
On 25 September 2017, Erbil was the centre of the most significant modern episode in the Kurdistan Region’s push for statehood: an independence referendum held across the KRI and Kurdish-controlled disputed areas. Around 3.3 million people voted, with reported turnout near 72 percent and roughly 92.7 percent voting in favour of independence.
The vote was opposed by Baghdad and by neighbouring Turkey and Iran, and Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. In the weeks that followed, Iraqi federal forces moved into Kirkuk and other disputed territories that Kurdish forces had held since the war against ISIS, and the Kurdistan Region lost a large share of the territory it then controlled. President Masoud Barzani resigned at the end of October 2017. Since then, relations between Erbil and Baghdad — over budgets, oil revenue and civil-service salaries — have remained a defining and often tense feature of Kurdish politics.
Timeline of Key Events
c. 5000 BC — Earliest clear evidence of settlement on the citadel mound.
c. 2300 BC — Erbil appears in the Ebla archives as Irbilum.
c. 2200 BC — Captured by the Gutian king Erridupizir.
331 BC — Battle of Gaugamela (Arbela); Alexander defeats Darius III nearby.
7th century AD — Muslim conquest; Erbil had been a major Christian bishopric.
1190–1233 — Reign of Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri; medieval golden age and the first grand public Mawlid.
1233 — Gökböri dies without an heir; city passes to the Abbasid caliph.
1534 onward — Ottoman reorganisation; the Kurdish Soran Emirate later controls Erbil.
2014 — The Citadel of Erbil is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
25 September 2017 — Kurdistan independence referendum centred on Erbil; about 92.7% vote yes.
October 2017 — Iraqi forces retake disputed areas; Barzani resigns.
Debates and Misconceptions
Two points deserve careful wording. First, the claim that Erbil is the “oldest continuously inhabited city in the world” is widely repeated and well supported by the depth of the citadel’s archaeology, but it is a claim shared by several ancient cities and is difficult to prove absolutely; it is best described as one of the oldest, with strong evidence. Second, Erbil’s history is genuinely multi-ethnic. Its most famous medieval dynasty, the Begteginids, was Turcoman rather than Kurdish, and the city has been home to Assyrians, Arabs, Turkmen, Christians and others across its history. Erbil sits firmly within the Kurdish heartland and is the Kurdish regional capital, but its past belongs to many peoples — a complexity worth preserving rather than flattening.
Legacy and Significance
Erbil’s significance is twofold. As an archaeological site, it offers an almost unbroken record of urban life stretching back to the dawn of cities, crowned by a citadel now recognised by UNESCO. As a modern capital, it is the political and economic centre of the most autonomous Kurdish self-government in the world today. The two roles reinforce each other: the ancient mound gives the modern Kurdish project a powerful claim to deep historical roots, while the city’s present status keeps that ancient heritage in the global eye.
Related Places and Topics
Sulaymaniyah — the cultural and literary capital of Bashur. Duhok — the third great city of the Kurdistan Region. The Soran Emirate and its capital Rawandiz. The Citadel of Erbil and the Mudhafariya (Choli) Minaret. The 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum. Kirkuk and the disputed territories. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Erbil?
Erbil (Hewlêr) is the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, in the region Kurds call Bashur, or Southern Kurdistan. It lies on the northern Mesopotamian plain between the Great and Little Zab rivers, within sight of the Zagros Mountains.
Is Erbil really the oldest city in the world?
It is one of the strongest candidates. The citadel mound shows continuous settlement going back at least six thousand years, and it is often called the oldest continuously inhabited site in the world. Because several ancient cities make similar claims, it is most accurate to call Erbil one of the oldest, supported by exceptional archaeological evidence.
Why is Erbil important to Kurds?
Erbil is the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Kurdistan Parliament, making it the political heart of the most autonomous Kurdish region in the world. Its ancient citadel is also a powerful symbol of Kurdish heritage and historical continuity.
What is the Citadel of Erbil?
It is the fortified ancient core of the city, built on a tell that has accumulated over millennia of habitation. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014 and is the most recognisable landmark in the Kurdistan Region.
References and Further Reading
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