According to the
Yazidi tradition, the ruler (Mîr) of Harîr was Pîr Hesinmeman (Pir Hassan ibn Mam), who was one of the close companions of
Sheikh Adi and is considered Pîr of forty Pîrs (
Pîrê çil Pîra) and head of the
Pîr caste. Initially, upon hearing about Sheikh Adi's arrival, Pîr Hesinmeman declared a war on him with his 700 riders and decided to banish him. But when he came to
Lalish and saw the dervish dressed in the garment, i.e. Sheikh Adi, he had a vision, after which he left worldly life and became a disciple of Sheikh Adi. The settlement of
Salahaddin (Pirmam), where the residence of
Masoud Barzani is situated, is believed to have been the ancestral estate of Pir Hassan ibn Mam. Harir is mentioned by
Evliya Çelebi in
Seyahatnâme in the 17th century as part of
Kurdistan. The district was ruled by
Mir Xanzad of the
Soran Emirate during the reign of the
Ottoman Sultan Murad IV (). The town was rebuilt in 1928 by
Assyrian refugees, all of whom were adherents of the
Church of the East and were originally from
Shemsdin in the
Hakkari mountains in
Turkey, after they had departed the refugee camp at
Baqubah in the aftermath of the
Assyrian genocide in the
First World War. The church of
Mar Yohanna was built soon after. By 1938, Harir was inhabited by 485 Assyrians in 78 families. The town was destroyed and its population displaced by pro-government militia, who settled at Harir, in 1963 during the
First Iraqi–Kurdish War, prior to which there were over 90 Assyrian households. The discovery of a mass grave, in which 37 Assyrians from Harir were buried, was announced by
Kurdistan Regional Government's Minister of Human Rights on 18 February 2006. A
concentration camp was later established at Harir by the
Iraqi government and used to intern over 300 Kurdish families of the
Barzani tribe from the village of Argush who were forcibly deported there on 26 June 1978. Amidst the
2003 invasion of Iraq, over one thousand paratroopers of the
US 173rd Airborne Brigade landed at the
airfield at Harir via airdrop on 26 March as part of
Operation Northern Delay. ==Notable people==