Arbil

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Arbil (Arabic: اربيل, arbīl; also written Erbil or Irbil), or Hewlêr (Kurdish), is one of the large cities in Iraq. The city lies eighty kilometres (fifty miles) east of Mosul (at 36.18 N 44.02 E). In 2005, its estimated population was 990,000 inhabitants. The city is the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Urban life at Arbil can be dated back to at least twenty-third century BCE. The city's archaeological museum contains only pre-Islamic objects. Arbil's name is thought to come from the Akkadian arba'ū ilū, meaning four gods. The city was a centre for the worship of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar. In classical times, the city was known by its Aramaic name, Arbela. The Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia in 331 BCE, took place about one hundred kilometres (eighty 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. However, Arbil remained an important provincial capital of Persia throughout the centuries and dynasties. Arbela served as the capital of the independent kingdom of Adiabene in the first century CE.

The modern town of Arbil stands on a tell topped by an Ottoman fort. During the mediaeval period, Arbil became a major trading centre on the route between Baghdad and Mosul, a role which it still plays today with important road and rail links to the outside world.

The parliament of the Kurdish Autonomous Region was established in Hewlêr/Arbil in 1970 after negotiations between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish militants, 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.

Arbil was fairly quiet during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Although the United States had originally intended to use Kurdish and Turkish territory to mount an invasion from the north, this fell through after permission was denied by the Turkish parliament. The city was the scene of rapturous celebrations on April 10, 2003 after the fall of Baghdad.

Since the overthrow of Saddam, only isolated, sporadic violence have hit Hewlêr/Arbil, unlike many other areas of Iraq. A bomb attack against a joint PUK/KDP gathering on February 1, 2004 killed 109 people and was blamed on the militant group Ansar al-Islam. Another bombing on May 4, 2005 killed 60 civilians. Despite these bombings, Kurdish leaders have used the relative calm to show how stable their region is.