Hewlêr
هەولێر
Erbil · Capital of the Kurdistan Region. The citadel city — inhabited for perhaps six thousand years.
- Region
- Başûr
- English name
- Erbil
- Kurdish name
- Hewlêr
- Sorani name
- هەولێر
- Population
- ≈ 1,500,000 (2023, city and inner districts)
- Elevation
- 420 m
- Founded/origin
- Settled since at least the Chalcolithic era; named in cuneiform records as Urbilum more than 4,200 years ago — the citadel counts among the longest continuously inhabited places on Earth.
Ancient Arbela was a holy city of the goddess Ishtar and gave its name to the battle of Gaugamela fought on the plains nearby (331 BC). Under its 12th–13th-century Begteginid emirs — above all Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri, Saladin's brother-in-law — it flourished as a court city famous for its public festivals. In 1992 the parliament of the Kurdistan Region convened here, and since then Hewlêr has grown from a provincial town into a capital of glass towers ringing the ancient mound.
All roads in Hewlêr run to the citadel and the fountain square at its foot, with the covered Qeyserî bazaar selling everything from honey to klash shoes. The citadel joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2014; the city mixes Kurdish dialects, Turkmen and Chaldean-Assyrian quarters (Ankawa), and the region's newest cafés and universities.
Hot semi-arid: scorching, bone-dry summers that often pass 43 °C, and short mild winters when nearly all of the year's ~400 mm of rain falls.
Places in Hewlêr
- Qelata Hewlêrê — A fortified tell rising 30 m above the city, occupied for millennia and ringed by a continuous 19th-century façade. UNESCO World Heritage since 2014.
- Minareya Çolî — The 36-metre brick minaret raised by emir Gökböri around 1200, leaning gently in its park west of the citadel — the city's oldest standing monument.
- Bazara Qeyserî — The covered market at the citadel's southern gate, rebuilt many times on an old plan — tea houses, gold rows and spice alleys under one roof.