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Erbil Cemetery, Iraq

Description

Jewish Community:

   
      Erbil, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, is one of the oldest continuously habited cities in history. Much of the city is located on a massive circular mound rising nearly 100 feet above the surrounding ground.² Surrounded by a wall with nineteenth-century facadees, it has the appearance of a fortress. This citadel is at the center of a rapdily developing city that fans out around it. Jews have lived in Erbil since the late Second Temple times. Approximately 2,000 resided in the city at the time of mass emigration to Israel in 1951-53.³     

      Most of the Jews in Erbil spoke Arabic while the rest spoke Neo-Aramaic. Most of the Neo-Aramaic speakers came from the surrounding countryside where the language was more common, although there was a high level of bilingualism among Jews.⁴ The traveler Judah al-Harizi mentioned poets and noblemen among the Jewish community in the thirteenth century. He reported that the city had two synagogues, one with a column that may have been very old. During that era, the Jews were oppressed by their non-Jewish neighbors and the Ottoman garrison. However, they maintained close ties with other
Jewish communnities, such as Baghdad and Jerusalem. Many of Erbil's Jews also believed strongly in Zionism, which was an integral part of
their Jewish identity.⁵    

 
     According to a 1934 traveler's report, the approximately 180 Jewish children in town attended a Jewish school until age eight before attending a secular government school. Jews worked as craftsmen, dyers, builders, shoemakers, porters, and merchants, but few were wealthy. They had their own market near the Jewish residential neighborhood.⁶ Jews in Erbil made their one-story houses with baked brick using a construction style that did not differ from the homes of Muslims.⁷ For Kurdish Jews, the synagogue was a place to gather for divine worship rather than a community house; men were more likely to gather at
a home. The Slotet Qal'a (Citadel Synagogue) of Old Arbil is said to have been built in the sixteenth century. Only parts of the building
have survived although it has been restored a number of times.⁸

Kurdish Jewish Cemtery Rites:

   Cemeteries are usually located outside the town. Coffins are not used in Kurdish burial; instead, the body is laid on a bier made of two parallel poles fastened together with rope. The best clothes or wedding clothes of the deceased are placed on the bier. After the procession, the bier is placed away from the grave and seven circumambulations are performed. The chief gravedigger and his deputy then step into the grave and lower the body into it with feet facing toward Jerusalem. Cut boards are laid at the steps beginning at the head, and everyone present recites a verse three times and throws a handful of earth into the grave at each word. The Hashkava (“laying to rest”) is recited and the mourners throw a tuft of grass over their shoulder. The bier must be removed before anyone leaves the cemetery.⁹ A rite unique to the Jewish community in earlier eras (13th century?) included the sacrifice of animals on the tombs of righteous persons in times of drought.¹⁰           

Arbil, Iraq

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