Urban Context

Historical Evolution

The citadel town of Erbil occupies an elliptical-shaped mound about 30 meters high above the natural ground level of the city below. Its long diameter is about 430 meters and its short diameter is about 340 meters. Its overall area is slightly more than 10 hectares (102,000 square meters). It is surrounded by a steep earthen mound in all directions which made it very difficult for any attacker to scale it. The town is largely occupied by traditional courtyard houses reached through a labyrinth of narrow alleyways. The houses that are built on the perimeter are contiguous and form a solid wall very similar to fortified citadels of medieval times.

The earliest scaled cadastral map of the citadel town goes back to 1920 and shows all urban features including plots and alleyways but not buildings.

However, some vertical and oblique photographs were taken of the citadel during the early decades of the 20th Century help identify many urban features. Another scaled map published by the British Army in 1944 shows the citadel and the rest of the lower city in outline only gives an accurate record of the extent of Erbil’s status then.

Later on, numerous accurate surveys and maps were made by municipal authorities. In 1971, a study of the citadel was prepared by Iraq Consult, which is an Iraqi firm of architects and planners, included an updated map. It showed, for the first time, the vehicular road running from the northern gate to the south one with a round-about in the middle. This road, which was opened in 1960, was an unfortunate municipal decision that caused a major disruption to the physical historic fabric and cut the town into two separated parts.

The road required the demolition of more than 60 traditional houses including the highly interesting Yaqub Agha houses, Mulla Rasoul mosque, and Erbil School, to name but a few. Fortunately, it just managed to avoid the historic hammam. The road provided unrestricted access for private cars to penetrate the wider alleyways causing serious environmental damage.

Recently, the high Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization (HCECR) together with “UNESCO” embarked on a comprehensive effort to document the existing situation and prepare an updated survey base-map for the whole town. This would include, among other things, identifying the physical and structural condition of all buildings, their architectural and historic value, age, building materials, original owners, and potential for restoration and future use.

Urban Form

The overall form of the citadel town is circular but more elliptical to be precise. It rises some 30 meters above the ground level of the lower city and is made up mostly of inward looking courtyard houses with few public buildings. Because of its imposing height, yellow-ochre color, and the solid perimeter wall, the town is perhaps one of the most dramatic visual experiences in the Middle East.

Originally, the town was reached only through a ramp on its southern slope that led to a huge and arched gateway. From this gate steps led to a small open square which, in turn, led to four main alleyways which branched in all directions like a tree. The town is not very large by comparison with other medieval towns in the region and elsewhere and one can easily walk its whole length and breadth in less than half an hour.

Urban Growth

A more logical deduction for the evolution of the urban growth of the town is, however, that earliest settlements started first on the southern part of the town near the south gate and around the perimeter in order to close any gap in the outside wall. The town then grew in all directions, slowly and gradually, until it was all filled at a certain time in history.
It is interesting to note that the citadel town has no fortified wall with towers like other citadels. Instead, the contiguous houses that occupied the external perimeter of the mound had massive walls that rose to a formidable height. Any windows or openings on these external walls were placed on upper floors only. In other words, there was no wall as such. The town was not inside the wall and the outer wall of perimeter houses was the wall.

Another probability is that there could have been a thick wall that surrounded the town originally as is the case with most medieval towns. In other words, there could have been a town inside the area surrounded by an external and independent wall, and that the perimeter houses that exist today were built on the lower section of the original wall-say sometime during the 18th Century or even slightly earlier. In fact some historical accounts refer to a wall with towers. Again, only through detailed archaeological excavations that this puzzle could be solved.

Alleyways

The pedestrian alleyways, which ranged in width from 1 to 2.5 meters, penetrated throughout the town like the twigs of a tree. One dead-end alley was only 60 centimeters wide. Even the smallest plot of land had to have some access to an alleyway. Major alleyways acted as distributors and continued to penetrate the residential quarters for more than 300 meters until they intersected another major alleyway. In contrast, smaller ones that branched off major ones were much shorter in length averaging between 50 and 100 meters in length. Dead-end alleys, or cul-de-sacs, were even shorter and averaged no more than 30-50 meters in length.

The narrow section of these alleyways was such that they were mostly shaded during sunny days thereby providing a comfortable and cool passage to pedestrians during hot summer time. The proportion of width to height was sometimes more than 1: 6. Houses of the traditional style never had large windows on their external alleyway walls. For reasons of privacy, only small ventilator openings were placed at high levels of these walls. There were also few windows on upper floors- unlike many traditional Arab and Islamic towns where many projecting \”Shanashils\” or \”Mashrabiyas\” distinguish upper floors and overlook alleyways. Thus, the appearance of these alleys was largely of solid brick walls punctuated occasionally by colorful doors.

The tree-like pattern of the pedestrian alleyway system was a logical functional solution to the circulation of human movement. All alleyways started naturally from the main gateway and fanned in all directions. The gateway was the only entry and the only exit for the whole population of the town. Of course it may be argued that other alternative circulation patterns could have been employed. For example, from the entry gateway a series of circular and concentric alleys could have been adopted which would have served access to all parts of the town too.

The labyrinthine nature of the winding alleys and irregular shapes of the plots were the inevitable result of incremental and haphazard growth due to the lack of any predetermined master plan. Each family built wherever it could if one assumes that, originally and very long time ago; the land was not owned by anybody in particular. Thus, the size of the plot was determined by the financial capability of the builder and not by any other consideration. Poor families chose smaller plots and richer families chose larger plots on which to build their houses. After the plot was built the property became \’owned\’ by the builder. After that the property became defined and ownership could be transferred from one owner to another without any change to the shape of the plot.

Perimeter Wall

The outer wall of the citadel town is perhaps its single most important feature and is one of the most impressive found anywhere. It is this perimeter wall which surrounds the town that gives it its fortified look and dominates the modern City of Erbil. The wall is a continuous ring of about a hundred houses of various vintages.

Perimeter houses, that are houses built on the outer edge of the top of the mound, are structurally the most vulnerable. Some of the houses have collapsed over the last 50 years either due to subsidence or underground water seeping from leaking piped and sewerage. Obviously, the collapse of an outer house creates a gap and endangers adjacent houses. A house collapsed as recently as 2006.

Houses built on the outer perimeter of the mound had to face the structural challenge of stabilizing the foundations of their outer wall. Therefore, retaining walls that tapered from some 1.7 to 1.2 meters were employed. Some larger houses of notable families had semi-circular buttresses or protruding brick features that had recessed arches and also used as terraces.

Architectural Heritage

Architectural Heritage

The citadel town of Erbil represents a distinct urban entity and should be treated as such. It is not simply an agglomeration of a number of houses and other buildings located within a complex system of narrow alleyways. The citadel town is the unique heritage of human experience and genius of thousands of years. It tells the story of how hundreds of past generations interacted with their natural environment and how they developed their way of life based on their cultural norms and values.

Therefore, any attempt to conserve and develop this citadel should deal with it not as the sum of individual parts but as a total environment. There are so many lessons, both historical and architectural, that can be learned from this town. Its remaining buildings, houses, and urban spaces and features, represent an extremely valuable and irreplaceable cultural resource that should not be allowed to disappear forever.

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

The existing fabric today consists of about 250 buildings most of which are courtyard houses from early 19th century.. In fact, there is no accurate survey or official record which ascertain the true age of all existing buildings.

The oldest surviving building is the Qala’ Hammam which is thought to have been built in 1775. Some existing houses have dates inscribed on them in Hijra Calendar as AH1311 which is equal to AD1893. Another house had a dated inscription of AH 1321 which is equal to AD1903. It is almost certain that there are older houses particularly on the south eastern side of the citadel. This means that there has been a continuous process of rebuilding over hundreds of years.

Houses were built over and over again and again on top of existing foundations, semi basements or even some walls. In other words, the citadel’s fabric has been regenerating itself continuously. It is a great pity indeed that older buildings that belonged to the 16th and 15th Centuries or beyond could not survive this process.

Today, there are some 90 or so houses which have original and authentic architectural qualities that merit their restoration to their original state. Also, the perimeter wall must be maintained and restored because it represents an entity by itself. The mosque and hammam are still there but also need some restoration and enhancement.

However, most of the remaining houses have been left to either decay to a very serious extent or have been changed or added to so much that it makes it difficult to justify restoring them as they are. Should such houses be demolished and rebuilt as something else, or should they be restored as they were? Therefore, any future conservation and revitalization plan for the citadel must face this very challenging question that will prove to be the essential key to its success or otherwise.

Houses

Before the advent of modernization since the 1930s of the last century, the citadel consisted largely of traditional courtyard houses- just over 500 in all. Of these there were some 30 or so large palace-like houses that were mostly located on the peripheral wall but some were inside the town proper. Medium-sized houses numbered about 120, while smaller houses of poorer families numbered about 350.

All these houses, large and small, had open courtyards and were constructed in brickwork. They used timber joists for roofing and brick vaults for roofing semi-basements. The inside walls were plastered in “juss” and had numerous niches and shelves, often decorated with colorful patterns and features. Ceilings were often paneled with wooden planks and painted in bright colors and floral decorations. In simpler houses and rooms ceilings were left to expose tree trunks and matting.

Most houses had two floors and a flat roof. The entrance from the alleyway led to an open courtyard from which one either went down to a semi-basement level or walked up to an upper floor. Often, semi-basements were lower than courtyard level by about 1 to 1.5 meters, while upper floors were usually higher than courtyard level by about the same amount. The difference in levels allowed the insertion of windows for the lower semi-basement level.

More often than not, houses had a raised terrace with arches (Arcade) or with columns (Colonnade, or Tarma) overlooking the courtyard and act as an intermediate space to upper floor rooms. The terrace is reached directly through steps from the courtyard. Behind the arcade or colonnade, which is placed on one or two sides of the courtyard, the main rooms of the house are located. These rooms, which are directly accessed from the terrace, are usually planned with their longitudinal axis perpendicular to the terrace. They also received their natural daylight and ventilation through several windows facing the terrace. In case of perimeter houses, they also had windows overlooking the town below.

Arcaded terraces usually have three or more round or pointed arches resting on round or square columns. Often, these arcades were built in stone and sometimes covered with grey color marble from Mosul. Colonnaded terraces, on the other hand, had wooden columns often crowned with elaborate “Muqarnased” capitals not unlike their counterparts in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

Courtyards were usually planned to be geometric in shape- either square or rectangle. This contrasts sharply with the shape of the land plot which was nearly always highly irregular with no right angles. This suggests that the designer, often the master mason “Usta” himself, arranged the spatial organization of the plan after first deciding the shape, size, and place of the courtyard. However, in very small plots it was not possible to achieve a regular shape for the courtyard.

For example, if the plot had a narrow frontage and was long in depth then he would logically opt for a long rectangular courtyard along its axis. If, on the other hand, the plot was square in overall shape he would choose to start with a square courtyard. Because most plots were irregular symmetrical plans were not possible and perhaps undesirable.

This also meant that the entrance to the house had to be on one side of the frontage and rarely in the middle. Ideally, the entrance was usually a “broken” arrangement to provide added privacy. This meant that when the entrance door was opened no outsider or passerby could see the courtyard and the people inside. In addition, a small water closet (toilet) was often provided near the entrance for guests.

Citadel & the City

History

The Citadel town of Erbil lies in the middle of the greater city of Erbil, the Capital City of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. and is about 350 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, 80 kilometers southeast of Mosul, and 96 kilometers northwest of Sulaimaniya

Urban Form

The overall form of the citadel town is circular but more elliptical to be precise. It rises some 30 meters above the ground level of the lower city . Its long diameter is about 430 meters and its short diameter is about 340 meters. Its overall area is slightly more than 10 hectares (102,000 square meters). It is surrounded by a steep earthen mound in all directions which made it very difficult for any attacker to scale it. The town is largely occupied by traditional courtyard houses and with few public buildings reached through a labyrinth of narrow alleyways. The houses that are built on the perimeter are contiguous and form a solid wall very similar to fortified citadels of medieval times.. Because of its imposing height, yellow-ochre color, and the solid perimeter wall, the town is perhaps one of the most dramatic visual experiences in the Middle East. read more..

Architectural Heritage

The citadel town of Erbil represents a distinct urban entity and should be treated as such. It is not simply an agglomeration of a number of houses and other buildings located within a complex system of narrow alleyways. The citadel town is the unique heritage of human experience and genius of thousands of years. It tells the story of how hundreds of past generations interacted with their natural environment and how they developed their way of life based on their cultural norms and values. Therefore, any attempt to conserve and develop this citadel should deal with it not as the sum of individual parts but as a total environment. There are so many lessons, both historical and architectural, that can be learned from this town. Its remaining buildings, houses, and urban spaces and features, represent an extremely valuable and irreplaceable cultural resource that should not be allowed to disappear forever. Recently, the citadel town has been included as one of the 100 most endangered cultural sites in the world by the World Monument Fund (WMF) in New York. Efforts are also being made to have it included as one of UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. Before the advent of modernization since the 1930s of the last century, the citadel consisted largely of traditional courtyard houses- just over 500 in all. Of these there were some 30 or so large palace-like houses that were mostly located on the peripheral wall but some were inside the town proper. The outer wall of the citadel town is perhaps its single most important feature and is one of the most impressive found anywhere. It is this perimeter wall which surrounds the town that gives it its fortified look and dominates the modern City of Erbil. The wall is a continuous ring of about a hundred houses of various vintages. read more..