Kirkuk Citadel: A Historic Fortified Settlement in Iraq

Site at a Glance

Rating

★4.2

Popularity

Medium

Country

Iraq

Primary era

Early Modern

Eras represented

Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Modern

Civilizations

Assyrian, Ottoman, Seleucid

Site type

Military

Remains

Citadel

History

Kirkuk Citadel is a fortified settlement in Kirkuk, Iraq, whose earliest development is associated with Gutian or Assyrian activity by the second millennium BCE. Built on an artificial tell about 40 metres high, it became the historic core of the city and later developed into a densely inhabited center containing homes, markets, religious institutions, and schools.

Ancient origins and the Seleucid period

The citadel’s beginnings remain disputed. Fifty-one clay tablets found near the mound in 1923 indicate activity there by at least the second millennium BCE. Some interpretations connect its oldest layers with the Gutian people, while others attribute the construction of a defensive settlement to Ashurnasirpal II, a ninth-century BCE king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose state was known for military expansion and fortified urban centers. In this interpretation, the citadel formed part of a defensive line for Arrapha.

Between 319 and 311 BCE, or during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator, a strong rampart was built around the mound. Seleucus founded the dynasty that ruled much of the former eastern territory of Alexander the Great’s empire after its fragmentation. The rampart was described as having 72 towers, 72 streets, and two entrances.

A multicultural urban center

Over subsequent centuries, the citadel became the established center of Kirkuk. Its quarters included residences, markets, mosques, tombs, religious complexes, Sufi establishments, and places of Christian and Jewish worship. A Sufi establishment was a religious complex used for devotional practice and for lodging or teaching followers. Descriptions of the Ottoman-period population emphasize both its Jewish and Christian presence and its particularly Turcoman and religiously varied character.

The citadel’s religious life included traditions surrounding a sanctuary associated with the burial place of Daniel, a biblical prophet linked with wisdom and prophecy in Abrahamic religions. The sanctuary also became associated with the tombs of Hananiah and Azariah and continued as a place of pilgrimage and worship. The Red Church contained mosaic remains dating from before the Islamic conquest of Iraq in the seventh century. Timur, the Central Asian conqueror who founded the Timurid dynasty, is believed to have visited the citadel in 1393 during a military campaign.

Three principal neighborhoods organized the settlement: al-Maidan in the north, al-Qal’a in the center, and al-Hammam in the south. Mosques served as places of prayer and also hosted instruction in the Quran, Arabic, religious sciences, and some secular subjects.

Schools and Ottoman institutions

The first religious school in the citadel was established at the Great Mosque, also called Ulu Camii. Another operated at the sanctuary of the prophet Daniel. The number of schools grew during Seljuk Turcoman rule and under the Ottoman Empire, when local notables founded several institutions.

In 1657, the Ottoman district administrator Ghazi Shah Suwar founded the Shah Ghazi School within the Great Mosque. The al-Maidan School operated in Hassan Bakiz Mosque and was founded by the district administrator Hassan Pasha Farari. Hajj Mahmud al-Zadah restored it in 1790. Other schools included the Hajj Suleiman Agha School in the Hammam quarter, taught by Mulla Muhammad Effendi, and the al-Zadah School in the Maidan quarter, taught by Khidr Effendi. An Ottoman educational yearbook for 1903 lists 12 pupils at the first school and 11 at the second. Schools continued to be founded under the Iraqi government with the supervision of the Ministry of Education.

Destruction and heritage recognition

In 1990, Saddam Hussein, the president and leading figure of Iraq’s Ba’athist regime from 1979 to 2003, announced a campaign to beautify the walled citadel. The campaign was also connected with the regime’s Arabization policy. A cassette allegedly recorded in 1991 by Governor General Ali Hassan al-Majid described an intention to impose Arabization on Kirkuk’s Turcoman population and character, including the proposed renaming of the area as “Ta’mim.”

Iraqi authorities demolished much of the historic residential quarter in 1997 and 1998. Turcoman, Kurdish, and Chaldean residents who had lived there for generations were permanently displaced. Accounts refer to approximately 800 to 900 families and about 800 historic houses. In 1998, 250 million dinars were allocated for demolition under the supervision of General Iyad Futayyih, officially described as rubble removal and archaeological preservation.

Between 1998 and 2003, some surviving structures were renovated with unsuitable methods and materials. The citadel was not fully rebuilt or repopulated, and parts remained vulnerable to further deterioration from neglect by March 2025. The surviving citadel, its structures, and its historic urban fabric were added to Iraq’s UNESCO World Heritage tentative list in April 2021. The designation recognized the site’s historical importance, ancient urban fabric, and social value. Administration lies with Iraq’s Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities.

Remains

Kirkuk Citadel occupies an artificial tell on a plateau across or near the Khasa River. The raised settlement covers about 170 Iraqi dunams, approximately 42.5 hectares. Its physical fabric developed above successive urban layers and was historically connected with the plain below, where markets and trade grew beside the river. The citadel’s modern walls are attributed to the Ottoman period, while surviving or documented buildings date from the fourteenth through nineteenth centuries.

Walls, gates, and urban fabric

Citadel gates

Four gates are recorded in the fortified settlement. Halwajilar and Yedi Kizlar stood on the eastern side, while Topkapi and Tashkapi opened to the west. These entrances formed part of the citadel’s connection with its surrounding urban landscape.

Historic houses

The residential quarter was arranged in interconnected units. One house type used delicate marble columns and doorways and windows framed in marble. Another included a passage, reception room, hiding place, and kiosk. The House of the Bride contained a small balcony and a rectangular room. Across these surviving house types, arches, vaulted spaces, plasterwork, geometric ornament, and balconies overlooked a bazaar building with three shop rooms. Nine isolated monuments and nine small houses regarded as valuable were reported to remain after the late twentieth-century destruction and renovation.

River bridge

A bridge of short-span masonry arches connected the citadel historically with the plain below. Built during the Ottoman or Turkish period, it remained standing despite repeated flooding and formed part of the surviving infrastructure associated with the riverine setting.

Islamic religious buildings

Mosque of the Prophet Daniel

The Mosque of the Prophet Daniel was built over a tomb traditionally believed by some to contain Daniel’s body. The building is described as having passed through earlier religious uses as a synagogue and then a Christian church before becoming a mosque. Inside are tombs attributed to Daniel and his companions Hananiah and Azariah, each covered by one of two blue domes. A cemetery beside the shrine contains graves of people who wished to be buried near it.

The mosque covers about 400 square metres, and its prayer hall can accommodate more than 150 worshippers. Its surviving features include two domes, a historic brick minaret, and arches and vaults resting on an octagonal base beside the minaret. The arches have been attributed stylistically to the late Mongol or early Timurid period, around the fifteenth century. The minaret has been described as Ottoman-period and also as originating near the end of the Mongol period.

Al-Ariyyan Mosque

Al-Ariyyan Mosque stands in the former al-Hammam quarter and dates from the eighteenth century. A stone fixed in the entrance bears a date inscription. The mihrab, the prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca, has multicolored floral and geometric decoration. Earlier floral designs and a Quranic inscription were revealed beneath later decoration. The plaster-and-stone pulpit carries geometric ornament, including six-pointed stars within foliate frames, and the mosque has two domes of different sizes.

Great Mosque

Ulu Camii, or the Great Mosque, was also known as the Mosque of the Virgin Mary and served as one of the citadel’s principal mosques. Its rectangular plan included a blue dome and four arcades supported by piers linked by semicircular arches. Surviving elements include pointed vaults and the base of a minaret on the eastern side. Islamic prayers, including weekly Friday prayers, continue to be held there.

Medieval mausoleum

Blue Dome

The Blue Dome, also called Gok Kunbet, is a mausoleum with a courtyard enclosed by arcades that originally belonged to a traditional house. It was built in 1361 during the Jalayirid Sultanate, a fourteenth-century dynasty that ruled parts of Iraq and western Iran after the weakening of Mongol authority. The principal structure is octagonal and made of mudbrick, with brick panels decorating its facades.

The mausoleum is dedicated to a woman who died in 1361. A pyramid-shaped dome added during restoration in the 1980s was later removed and replaced by the present blue dome. It stands near the northern gate and is also described as being in the northwestern part of the citadel, within walking distance of Topkapi Gate. Some inhabitants formerly believed that its decorative tiles were green, but surviving fragments identified them as blue, leading to the additional name Green Dome.

Chaldean Christian remains

Umm al-Ahzan Cathedral

Umm al-Ahzan Cathedral is a nineteenth-century Chaldean cathedral built during the time of Patriarch Joseph VI Audo. Chaldean Christians belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Christian church historically associated with Mesopotamia. The cathedral was consecrated in 1862 as the church of the Mother of Sorrows, also called Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. It was built to move Chaldean Christian activities from Koria to the citadel, where a Christian population lived within the tell.

The cathedral is now in ruins. Climatic variation, humidity, unsuitable cement, and the weight of a heavy vault carried on five pillars had already damaged its construction. An effort ordered by Patriarch Raphael Rabban to consolidate the building in 1961 did not succeed. Documents and objects once kept in the cathedral are displayed at the archdiocesan museum.