An interest in Erbil: A Story to Tell

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”

Marcus Garvey

I hold a PhD degree in Architecture and Urban Design from the UK that focused to reveal the hidden face of Erbil and explore the change and persistence aspects of its historic centre. Some of my friends and relatives have kept asking me the same question of why I have chosen Erbil city to study and not chosen, for example, Baghdad my birth place or Amedi the birth place of my mother or even, the beautiful city I have worked in, Duhok. Therefore, I decided to write my answer in an article to explain why I have chosen and been focusing on this significant city....

A long evolution preceded the writing of my PhD thesis in Nottingham. My ideas arose from two separate sources; an early interest in theology, history and archaeology and a passion for architecture, urban design, and the way cities evolve and change. Together, they led me to focus on Erbil. My mixed ethnicity; half Arab and half Kurdish; my childhood and early adult life in Baghdad and my work in Kurdistan affected me profoundly, as did the mysterious history of Erbil. It challenged my approach when I came to study the city, forcing me to abandon the conventional notion of what such an examination should be, insisting instead that I delve deep into its past, to identify its roots and its essence.

As with other Iraqi cities, each city in Iraqi Kurdistan has a story to tell about its specific history, nature and characteristic buildings. At the same time, however, they are also unified by a common Kurdish culture that reflects both unity and the variety. I consider myself lucky because my dual ethnicity opened up opportunities for me to visit different cities and know different cultures in this region.

My interest in Erbil, which developed from my first three visits was, to some degree, fostered by my father Dr Wissam Al-Hashimi (1942-2005), a prominent geologist, and petroleum expert, with an interest in different areas of Iraq, including Erbil, with its ancient citadel hill. This nurtured my curiosity, which grew when I first visited Erbil in the summer of 2003, following the war in Iraq. My mother and I travelled from Baghdad to Erbil to see my sister who, when married, lived there. My first impression was of a ‘Sleeping City’. The streets appeared unusually quiet, uninteresting and monotonous. There were a few new buildings and some pre-and post-1980 government buildings set near a dull-brown citadel located on a hill in the city centre; they reflected the standardised Iraqi identity. At that time, I saw no noticeable signs of anything that would attract visitors to the city other than the citadel, an iconic landmark in the centre of Erbil. In that period, the situation in Arab Iraqi cities was worsening and progress in construction, in both; the Kurdistan Region and the rest part of Iraq, was very slow. In 2005, the political situation deteriorated, culminating with my father’s kidnap and murder by terrorists in Baghdad.

From 2004 to 2007, I lived in Bahrain, but on a second visit to Erbil in 2006, I had noticed some changes in building styles and way of life. Deciding to return to work in Iraq, I chose to stay in the Kurdistan Region, my mother’s birthplace, which was when I made my third visit. I worked in Duhok (a city with beautiful natural surroundings and is mountainous along the Tigris River) and visited my sister in Erbil from time to time. While being there, I could visually monitor the changes and admire the remarkable efforts made by the government of the Kurdistan Region to improve it. On each trip, I saw new buildings, new additions and changes in lifestyle that indirectly affected the image of the old city. On one occasion, I passed its bazar and I found it interesting. It was different from other bazars/suqs in Kurdistan; reminding me of the Baghdad suqs and other cities in the region. Its covered paths and intervening alleyways left me even more curious about Erbil and its old urban patterns. This area and the citadel, reflect the city’s long history and gives it a significant importance, despite the neglect.

During my PhD journey and aside from its remarkable history that has thousands of years, I have come across information that makes me more connected to this city and this information belonging to the Atabeg period (12-13th centuries CE). At that period, Erbil had a city wall and gates; the eastern gate was called Farah gate Bab Al-Farah. For me this was a beautiful coincidence, however, I do not believe in coincidence as I do believe that things happen for reasons, and for me, choosing Erbil to study was a divine plan.

I lived in Iraq, Kurdistan, for almost three years and noted, both its powerful history and the suppression endured by its people. Unfortunately, the Kurds in general, have suffered oppression and injustice from different powers throughout their history. The British political officer, Sir William Rupert Hay (1893-1962), who served in Kurdistan-Iraq in 1919 and 1920, highlights in his book ‘Two Years in Kurdistan’ the oppression that Kurds faced and the ignorance of the wider world about them. Hay (1921, p. 35) states that:

"Even though the Kurds are one of the most virile races in existence, that they occupy a very large portion of the Middle East, and that they are of the same Aryan stock as ourselves, the public at home know practically nothing about them, and there must be many who before the war had never even heard their name".

This suppression impacted greatly on the development of Kurdish cities, the life style and their urban environment. For example, when the famous Iraqi architect Mohamed Makiya (1914-2015), who was studying at the University of Liverpool in the 1940s, asked the Iraqi Ministry of Knowledge to provide him with necessary urban maps of the Kurdistan region his request, but was rejected. He later chose to study the urban environment of the city of Liverpool (Abdulla 2014, p. 6). In 1956, the famous architect Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914-1975) was commissioned by the government of Iraq to develop and create a master plan proposal for some Iraqi cities; one of which was Erbil. Doxiadis highlighted the fact that Erbil was ignored, and described it as ‘A Dead City’ (Doxiadis 1958, pp. 16-17). This clearly indicates that, before and during the 1950s, ancient Iraqi cities were neglected. All these matters encouraged me to aim, from the beginning of my PhD, to identify ways of preserving the particularity of the historical places of any community, my priority being Kurdistan.

Aside from any contribution to knowledge; my work may add to an appreciation of the culture of my ancestors who suffered and sacrificed themselves to preserve their community and identity.

This was my story with Erbil – Arbela and I hope my work (that needed from me to travel to different countries like Greece, Turkey in addition to Iraq and the UK to collect the scattered information about the city in general and its historic city centre in particular) would add something to the architecture history, urban design and archaeology area as well as its culture.

Farah, Nottingham

2016

REFERENCE:

Doxiadis Associates, 1958. Ekistic Analysis of the Town of Arbil - DA Projects: Iraq V.128- Reports R-QBP (July-December1958). Archive files 24002, Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives, hosted at the Benaki Museum, Athens.

Hay, W.R., 1921. Two years in Kurdistan: experiences of a political officer, 1918-1920. 1st ed. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.

Abdulla, F., 2014. Khawater Alsineen. Almada [online]. 4 January, p.6. Available via: Almada Supplements [Accessed 4 February 2015].