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The Citadel under renovation: resurrecting Erbil’s architectural and archaeological heritage


 
The citadel in the Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government is an ancient elliptical-shaped ruins of a former city perched on a 30 metre high ridge. Its size and shape, as well as its height – as it looks down on the old part of the modern capital – is quite impressive. It is now a tourist attraction for both locals and visitors.
The citadel town of Erbil (Qala’t Erbil) is a major heritage site and feature of Erbil. Archaeologists date it at 3,000 years old (the Assyrian Period) while others date it at 6,000 years (the Neolithic to mid-Bronze Age). The pedestrian city mostly consisted of courtyard houses (about 500 of them) surrounded by a high perimeter wall. The wall alone is a continuous ring of about 100 houses. The only entrance is through an arched Grand Gate. Later (in the 1900s) there was a smaller gate, called the Harem Gate, on the eastern side for women and a vehicular gate on the northern side.

To access the citadel, walk to the centre of the old part of the city – still called the city centre – and walk up the wide sealed ramp toward the Grand Gate. The Grand Gate was an extremely large brick structure, located in the southern part of the citadel. It opened to an entrance passageway which branched to the west. In the main entrance, shops were located inside alcoves. East of the entrance was a courtyard. Further inside were administrative offices, and prison cells in the lower level. Currently there is a shop selling souvenirs and the Erbil Textile Museum with hand-woven Kurdish carpets. The museum is also interesting for its interior (the structure of its walls and the ceiling), as well as workshops on carpet-weaving. There is still a mosque on site with a beautiful tiled minaret.


 Before the Grand Gate is a huge statue of Mubarak Ahmad Ibn Al-Mustawfi, a former Erbil minister and historian, famed for his historical accounts of ancient times. Facing the city below is Shar Garden Square with its fountain and bazaars.
By about the 1930s the citadel was expanding which forced people out. They moved down to the lower town to build larger homes with gardens. Thereafter it physically deteriorated. In 2007 the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) evicted and compensated all remaining citizens in order to renovate the site, and established a High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization (HCECR).
The HCECR has undertaken the reconstruction of the Grand Gate and citadel based on old photographs and the memories of former inhabitants. The reconstruction is in cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

 Recently the citadel has been included as one of the 100 most endangered cultural sites in the world by the World Monument Fund in New York. Efforts are being made to have it included as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.

http://www.erbilcitadel.org






MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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