Kerkuk & Erbil in the NY times

Kirkuk

Daniel’s blue-tiled, double-domed shrine sits atop an ancient citadel in Kirkuk, dating to the Sumerian period nearly five millennia ago, even before Daniel saw the writing on the wall.

 

 

One of the sites claimed by tradition to be the burial place of the Old Testament Prophet Daniel.

The citadel looms over Kirkuk, a city deeply divided by Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds and Christians, though fewer and fewer.

Believers seeking answers to their prayers – marriage, pregnancy, a cure for illness – tie strips of cloth to the iron grate that surround Daniel’s tomb or toss money or trinkets inside.
The busiest day, even now, is Saturday, a lingering echo of the Jews who used to visit on the Sabbath, the tomb’s Muslim caretaker, told me. Iraq’s central place in the history of all three faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – is palpable at more than one site around the country.
Saddam Hussein’s regime, which was never kind to antiquities, cleared Kirkuk’s citadel of most of its inhabitants in the 1980’s and destroyed their homes as part of a reclamation project.

A ruined Chaldean church, on Kirkuk’s Citadel

Local officials managed to save some of them, mostly from the Ottoman era, as well as a 19th century Chaldean Catholic church, though it too has crumbled to ruins. From the city below echoes the cacophonic hammering of a copper market.
Now the local governor and officials from the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage plan to restore the place.
Work has begun on a few homes, as well as an ancient bazaar, though sufficient funds are lacking. Kirkuk may be a potential flashpoint in Iraq’s unfinished transition from dictatorship and war, but it is possible to at least envision a better future. Outside the citadel’s mosque, once an ancient Christian church, two soldiers improbably whipped cotton candy from a crude machine and offered it to visitors.
“People from all the world,” the local antiquities director, Ayad Tariq Hussein, said, “they have to see this place.”

Erbil

In the relative security of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region farther north, a more advanced, more ambitious project is under way.

 

The Citadel overlooking the Kurdish capital, Erbil

This is at Erbil’s citadel, with the support of the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO and restoration experts from Italy, France, the Czech Republic and other countries.
“This heritage is new to us,” said Pewist Lajlani, an engineer working to shore up the first 4 of 10 Ottoman-era houses, perched on the citadel’s precipice, “so we do it step by step.” All of Iraq’s ancient sites have suffered from time and weather, from dictatorial abuse, neglect and war. The existential threats facing them persist today. Looting remains a scourge, pillaging ancient sites before archeologists even have a chance to find and record the treasures buried within them.
Source: NY Times