Today I went to a site I've always wanted to visit since I first saw it from a distance.... Arbela's (Erbil's ancient name) Citadel, located in the Suk (town center). The Citadel (an actual place of residence) is said to date back to 7000 B.C. and is still inhabited today, although just recently all but one family has been requested to move out. The reason is to restore it so its antiquity value will remain for years to come. I find that when I walk through these places you lose your sense of the past because it is so much older than my own country's history. I like nothing better than to walk the streets of these ancient places and think about the people who lived there. What was life like for them? Did they live in peace? Did the Kurds always live here or were there other tribes that walked those narrow walkways?
2 comments:
in the past if this great citadel didn't exists Today there was No Hawler..
wellcome To my Lovely City..
little kid from hawler..
The Citadel was a great draw for me too. I love this arial shot. I had never been to a tel before this one. To think that nearly 8000 years of civilization can be found in the layers underneath. I now live in one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth!
A for peace however, I don't think this place was always peaceful being a strategically placed city. IT was the near the battlegrounds for Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia... and it seems even the Assyrians, Kurds and Turkomens can't agree on the meaning of Erbil, Arbela, Hawler... Is Hawler adapted from Arbela which meant the 4 Gates of 4 Gods, or is it something to do with Helios, the sun, or the brave warrior soemthing-or-other?
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