A map of memory
Cities & Regions
From ancient Hewlêr to defiant Kobanê, ten cities map the geography of the Kurds. Click any pin to enter its world.
Featured cities
Featured cities
Afrîn
The Kurdish olive region of northwestern Syria. Afrîn winds between green hills covered by a million olive trees, each one descended from the planting of a Kurdish grandfather centuries ago. It was the safe Kurdish haven of Syria until March 2018, when Turkish forces and allied militias entered and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Population · 200,000
Amed (Diyarbakır)
The throbbing heart of northern Kurdistan and its spiritual capital. Amed looks down on the Tigris from a basalt plateau, ringed by a black stone wall that is, after the Great Wall of China, the longest in the world. The city is nicknamed the Black Lily, so much do its walls and terraces — built from black basalt — make of it a sombre kind of beauty.
Population · 1,700,000
Hewlêr (Erbil)
The capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the jewel of its broad plain. At its heart rises the Citadel, perched on an artificial mound that has accumulated six thousand years of continuous habitation upon itself — few cities on earth can contest its claim to be the oldest. Today Hewlêr is a modern capital of glass towers and shopping malls, yet the call to prayer from the citadel mosque still reminds you that history lies beneath your feet.
Population · 1,500,000
Kobanê
The city that stopped the advance of ISIS and rewrote the modern Kurdish dictionary of heroism. Kobanê — also called Ayn al-Arab — stood firm for five unbroken months in 2014–2015 against the most violent ISIS assault, when its forces were nothing but Kurdish volunteers and women fighters. They saved it from annihilation and gave hope back to all the peoples of the region.
Population · 100,000
Mahabad
The city that ruled Kurdistan for eleven months and founded the first Kurdish republic in modern history. Mahabad, in Iranian Kurdistan, carries symbolic weight far above its size: from its house was raised the first Kurdistan flag, here the first Kurdish president was hanged by a shah, and on its memory poets wrote the greatest poems of betrayed freedom.
Population · 200,000
Silêmanî (Sulaymaniyah)
The undisputed cultural capital of the Kurds. Silêmanî does not have thousands of years like Hewlêr; it is only two-hundred-and-forty years old. Yet those two-and-a-half centuries produced the greatest of modern Kurdish poetry, the first Kurdish newspapers, the most prominent Kurdish politicians, and the fiercest popular resistance to every dictatorship that ever ruled Iraq. It is the city of mountains, books, cafés, and poets.
Population · 800,000
All cities
All cities
Duhok
A mountain city in northern Iraq, the capital of Kurdish Behdînan. It sleeps between green peaks; the Duhok river runs through its streets.
Population · 350,000
Qamişlo
The largest Kurdish city in northeastern Syria, today capital of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Population · 200,000
Sine (Sanandaj)
Capital of the Iranian Kurdistan province and centre of Sunni Kurds in Iran, capital of classical music and the tanbur.
Population · 400,000
Wan (Van)
A sea city on the shore of the largest lake in Turkey, capital of northeastern Kurdistan.
Population · 500,000