Arbil Castle

The mud-brick citadel of Arbil rises on a mound at the center of the city's concentric street circles, and was, until recent construction began obstructing the view, a near constant reminder that Arbil has been here a long time.

Arbil may or may not be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world -- there are lots of run-down towns in the Middle East claiming that mantle -- but it was certainly here before Iraq ever was, before the Kurds, before Islam, before even monotheism arrived on the scene. I've been told that Arbil's name is derived from some ancient semitic word for the number four (in Arabic that's "Arbara" ) a reference either to a group of four pagan gods worshiped here, or to one four-headed god in the local pagan pantheon.

The secular but non-pagan Kurdish government has begun renovating the citadel, hauling out truckload after truckload of muck and midden that had accumulated over the years like a glacial moraine. An unfortunate side effect is that for perhaps the first time in its long history the ancient fortress is now uninhabited. The most recent residents -- many of whom were Kurdish refugees from one or another of the region's conflicts -- received compensation from the government for departing.

Even empty of living souls, the citadel is worth a visit if only to catch a glimpse of why Arbil is where it is. The city holds a commanding position just below the mountainous juncture of three historical hotspots: Turkey's Anatolian peninsula, the Persian plateau, and the Mesopotamian river valley that drops down to the south. Then as now, Arbil is a small city filled with people trying to survive great events.

The citadel also contains another reminder of the ebb and flow of culture: a museum devoted to preserving Kurdish tribal textiles, mainly rugs. It is the personal obsession of one Kurd, Lolan Mustefa, who began buying old Kurdish rugs in 1992 while he was living in Sweden. He started the museum three years ago as a way to house his collection, and hopefully as a center for encouraging a Kurdish weaving renaissance. He's been locating old looms, and hiring Kurdish weavers from Iran to make make the old Kurdish patterns once more.

Rug making culture disappeared in Kurdistan with the destruction of Kurdish nomadic herding life and the tribal women who wove. Thanks to war, genocide, war again, and the residue of war -- the high mountain grazing lands where Iran and Iraq fought in the 1980's are still littered with land mines -- there are just three fully nomadic tribes left in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Mustefa. And what war started, the modern economy will finish. In handful of years, he said, there will be no more nomads in the mountains of Iraq.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Arbil