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Irbil, Iraqi-Kurdistan

Irbil, Iraq

Irbil (alternate spellings include: Arbil, Arbel, Arwil, Erbil, Hawler), is a located in northeastern Iraq, situated on a massive circular mound rising nearly 30 meters (98 feet) above the surrounding plain, which represents the accumulation of at least four thousand years of continuous urban settlement. A Jewish community seems to have existed in place since late Second Temple times.1  In the modern period, the Jewish community in Irbil numbered two hundred families in 1827, eighty-one hundred people in 1847, and approximately two thousand at the time of the mass emigration to Israel together with the rest of Iraqi Jewry in 1951-53. 2


 

Description

Over the course of its’ history, travelers who have visited Irbil, such as Judah al-Ḥarīzī (ca. 1216) and Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī (16th century), provide some glimpses of its Jewish life. Irbil had two synagogues, one with a column that may have been very old.3 The local Jews were oppressed by their non-Jewish neighbors and by the Turkish (Ottoman) garrison. The travelers mention unique local Jewish customs, such as sacrificing animals on the tombs of righteous persons in times of drought. They also report that the city’s Jews maintained intense ties with other Jewish communities, such as Baghdad and Jerusalem. According to a traveler’s report in 1934, the town’s 180 Jewish children attended Jewish school up to age eight, and then attended a secular government school.4 Jews worked as craftsmen, dyers, builders, shoemakers, porters, and merchants, and had their own market situated near the Jewish residential neighborhood.5

Irbil, Iraqi-Kurdistan

Irbil, Iraq

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Sources

Sabar, Yona.  Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. s.v. "Arbil." Accessed June 20, 2014 http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/arbil-COM_0011600


[1] Sabar, Yona. Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. s.v. "Arbil." (Accessed June 20, 2014) http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/arbil-COM_0011600


[2] Ibid.


[3] Ibid.


[4] Ibid.


[5] Ibid.