Erbil
— the mound that has held a city since before counting.
Not only on a wall.
“The citadel sits about thirty metres above the surrounding plain, a tell built by people living one atop the next for six thousand years. The ring of brick houses along the rim looks down across the bazaar and the modern boulevards that pinwheel out from it. Tea glasses come small and strong, the call to prayer carries across the Qaysari market, and the long Kurdish summer keeps the stone warm into the evening. The city stays old the way an inhabited place stays old, by not stopping. from the studio
Erbil, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Erbil, called Hewlêr in Kurdish, is the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, on the plain between the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab tributaries of the Tigris. The metropolitan population reaches roughly 1.6 million, making it the fifth-largest city in Iraq. The Citadel of Erbil, a 30-metre tell at the city's centre, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014 as one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites on earth. The city radiates outward from the citadel in a roughly circular plan that traces the older ring road and bazaar.
The citadel mound is built of the collected remains of every settlement that stood on the site, layered for at least six thousand years and likely longer. The surviving 19th and early-20th-century houses along the rim form an almost unbroken brick wall, their backs to the plain. The Mudhafaria Minaret, built in the late 12th century by the atabeg Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri, stands a short distance west of the citadel and survives at about 36 metres. The bazaar at the citadel's southern foot, the Qaysari, has held the same trade pattern for centuries.
Summers run long and dry, with daytime temperatures regularly above 40°C from June into September; winters are short, cool, and occasionally snowy on the surrounding plain. Newroz, the Kurdish new year on 21 March, fills the city with fires lit on the hills and a public holiday that marks the start of spring. The clearest light for photographers comes in late March through May, after the rains and before the heat closes the streets in the middle of the day. Autumn into November gives the second-best window.