Silêmanî

Unusually for the region, Silêmanî is a planned young city: the Baban princes moved their court here from Qelaçolan and named it for Silêman Paşa. Within a generation its court poets — Nalî, Salim, Kurdî — had made the local dialect a literary language, the Soranî that later became the tongue of Kurdish administration and schooling in Iraq. The city led revolts against Ottoman and British rule (Şêx Mehmûd Berzencî proclaimed his kingdom here in the 1920s), endured the worst of the Ba'ath decades, and rose in the 1991 uprising.

A UNESCO Creative City of Literature (2019), Silêmanî lives on poetry readings, publishing houses, galleries and the region's liveliest music scene. The Amna Suraka prison-museum keeps the memory of Ba'ath terror; the Slemani Museum holds treasures from Jarmo to the Islamic era; and the city's cafés claim, with some justice, to run on debate.

Hot dry summers in the high 30s and cold, wet winters with snow most years — the mountain rim gives the city about 650 mm of rain, double that of the plains.

Places in Silêmanî

• Emna Sûreke — The Ba'ath security headquarters — 'Red Security' — left bullet-scarred and turned into a museum of the Anfal years, with a hall of mirrors bearing one shard for each victim.
• Mûzexaneya Silêmanî — Iraq's second museum after Baghdad — Paleolithic tools from the Zagros caves, Mesopotamian statuary and gold, and rescued cuneiform tablets.
• Mizgewtî Gewre — The bazaar-quarter mosque founded with the city itself in the 1780s; its courtyard and blue-tiled dome anchor the oldest streets of Silêmanî.