Gertrude Bell, the renowned British archaeologist and Arabist who advised British governors in the region in the closing years of the British Mandate, was convinced that Zakho was the same place as the ancient town of Hasaniyeh. She also reported that one of the first Christian missionaries to the region, the
Dominican friar
Poldo Soldini, was buried there in 1779. His grave was still a
pilgrimage destination in the 1950s. Zakho was known to the
ancient Greeks. In 1844, the traveller
William Francis Ainsworth commented: "The appearance of Zakho in the present day coincides in a remarkable manner with what it was described to be in the time of
Xenophon." Zakho is a major marketplace with its goods and merchandise serving the Kurdish-controlled area and most of north and central Iraq. Writing in 1818, Campanile described the town as a great trading centre, famous for its
gallnuts as well as rice, oil, sesame, wax, lentils and many fruits. Hussein Beg led his forces against the rebels outside Zakho, defeated them, and entered the town without resistance, formally capturing it "in the name of His Majesty the Sultan". For this service, Hussein Beg was received in audience by the sultan and awarded the title of
kapi çuhadari (keeper of the official gate). Oil drilling began in 2005.
Islamic history In Islamic history it is perhaps best remembered as the location of the
Battle of the Zab between the
Umayyads and the
Abbasids. The river forms the approximate political boundary of
Kurdistan Regional Government area of Iraq today. Its sister, the Little (or Lower) Zab rises in north-western part of
Kurdistan province Iran, in the north of Piranshahr city and flows south-west through Iraq to join the Tigris north of the town of
Baiji. The Dukan Dam straddles the Little Zab some 150 miles upstream from its confluence with the Tigris River. Constructed between 1954 and 1959, the dam has a total discharge capability of 4,300 cms. The power station, constructed in 1979, holds five water turbines and provides 400 MW of electrical energy. In 1991, Zakho was occupied by the British and the Americans during the Gulf War in "
Operation Provide Comfort", to provide support to the Kurdish rebellion against the Iraqi government. Most of the inhabitants of the city had fled to the mountains. In the following years, the city came under the control of the
Kurdistan Autonomous Region and many of its
Kurdish citizens began to return to the city. The 27 February
1995 Zakho bombing killed over 50 people. When the
U.S. Army closed its
military base in Zakho in 1996, they evacuated several thousand
Kurds who had connections to the base and who feared reprisals. Many of them were given
asylum in the USA. According to
David McDowall, this constituted a sudden
brain drain, with Zakho losing many of its most educated citizens. In 2008 it was reported that the
Turkish Armed Forces maintained four bases in Zakho District, under an agreement concluded with the
Iraqi government in the 1990s. The
2011 Dohuk riots, which targeted
Yazidi- and
Assyrian-owned businesses, were sparked by Kurdish
Muslim clerics in the town.
Christianity Cathedral in Zakho. The city was the center of a
large Chaldean Catholic diocese up until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was divided into three dioceses: Amadia, Zakho, and
Akra-Zehbar. The Armenians of Zakho established their community after the
Armenian genocide, with the first Armenian church in the city being established in 1923.
Judaism Zakho was formerly known for its
synagogues and a large, ancient Jewish community. In the middle of the 19th century, Zakho became the chief spiritual center for the Jews of Kurdistan, and many sources refer to it as yerušalayim de-kurdistan 'the Jerusalem of Kurdistan.' The banks of the nearby
Khabur River are mentioned in the Bible as one of the places to which the Israelites were exiled (1 Chronicles, 5:26, 2 Kings 17:6, 2 Kings 18:11). The Jews spoke the
Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho and were also fluent in
Kurmanji, the language spoken by non-Jewish Kurds. Kurdish society was primarily a tribal one. The Jews of Zakho bore arms like Kurdish Muslims. There was an attack on the Jews in 1891, when one of the synagogues was burnt down. The troubles intensified in 1892. Most of the Jews relocated to Israel in the 1950s. While the Jews of Zakho were among the least literate in the
diaspora, they had a unique and rich oral tradition, known for its legends, epics and ballads, whose heroes came from both Jewish and Muslim traditions.{{cite journal |title= Changes in the oral tradition among the jews of kurdistan |publisher=Contemporary Jewry - Springer Netherlands|date=2008-10-09 ==Climate==