The Erbil Citadel is an oval mound in the centre of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, raised thirty metres above the city by six thousand years of mudbrick houses built on the rubble of the last, one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on Earth, and it is walked in a ring of lanes above a bazaar and a fountain square that wrap its foot. The mound is a tell, the layered debris of every town that stood here since the Chalcolithic, and its ancient name, Arbela, comes from the Akkadian Arba'ilu, the four gods, which the modern Kurdish name Hewlêr descends from by a reshuffling of the same sounds; the battle where Alexander broke the Persian empire in 331 BC is often called the Battle of Arbela, borrowing the city's name, though the fighting was some fifty kilometres away at Gaugamela. What stands on top now is Ottoman: a wall of houses ringing the rim, their backs forming the citadel's face, three quarters and a mosque inside, and the restored courtyard houses of the merchants, rebuilt around quiet stone courtyards with carved wooden ceilings, a textile museum among them.
When the citadel was cleared for restoration in 2007, about 840 families were moved out, but a single family was allowed to remain, so that the record of unbroken habitation would not be broken, and the restoration is still under way, with the southern gateway rebuilt as a grand stair. The way to see the mound is from its southern ramparts rather than the gate, leaning over the parapet where the vaulted Qaysari bazaar wraps its foot, an Ottoman market selling spices, gold and textiles under brick vaults, with the fountains of the square beyond and the teahouses where old men play backgammon; from the square the citadel is seen whole, a wall of ochre houses on a hill above the traffic. Erbil is a city that has never left its hill, and the hill is the city's own rubble.