'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎348r] (698/862)

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PORTS AND INLAND TOWNS
of Eski Kifri (Kingerban station) and the remains of an ancient city where
Arsacid, Sassanid, and early Islamic relics have been found. There are
coal workings near the village of Komar Daghi about 2 miles east of Kifri,
and the neighbouring hills are rich in salt and sulphur.
Communications. Eski Kifri station is on the metre-gauge Baghdad-
Kirkuk line (Rly. 2). Kifri is a route centre for minor unmetalled roads
and tracks leading west and south to the Baghdad-Jaloula-Kirkuk road,
and north-north-east to Qaradagh and Sulaimaniya.
Kirkuk. 35 0 28' N., 44° 24' E.; alt. c. 1,000 feet. Pop. 40,000. Liwa cap.
H.Q. Eastern Army Command and Army divisional H.Q. Rainfall
station (I.P.C., and Rlys.).
Kirkuk lies on both banks of the Qadha Chai in a wide fertile basin
beneath the Kani Domlan range. The principal element of the population
is Turkoman, though Arabic and Kurdish are both spoken. The town is
the seat of a Chaldean archbishop and there are also Gregorian Armenians,
Syrians, and numerous Jews.
History
The town of Arrapha existed here in the earliest historical times and was
a dependency of the Assyrian Empire, but as Corcura it was of very minor
importance in Parthian times. Later it became an important see of the
Eastern Church in Sassanid and Abbasid times and loomed large in martyr-
ology. A mound, the scene of martyrdom, outside the town, is named after
the chief Sassanid persecutor of the Christians, Tamazgird of the time of
Yazdagird I. The foundation of Turkoman Kirkuk belongs to the period
of the post-Abbasid invasions. It was a fine city by the sixteenth century
and was occupied by the Persian Safawids in 1624-1625 and again a few
years later. Up to the eighteenth century it was largely independent of the
Vali of Baghdad and was the capital of the so-called Sanjaq of Shahrizor,
but was loyal to the Turks and stood out against the renewed Persian
menace of Nadir Quli in 1732. The plain of Leilan to the south-east was
the scene of a battle in which Othman the Lame was defeated by him in
I 733 * Ten years later Nadir Quli subdued the town in spite of gallant
resistance. From the end of the eighteenth century it began to decline,
and it was further reduced by plague in 1830. Its history has been that of
a trading town and of a garrison city from which sallies were undertaken
into the Kurdish mountains to the east. The British occupied Kirkuk first
in May 1918. In recent years the development by the I.P.C. of the Kirkuk
oilfields (p. 494) has greatly increased the importance of Kirkuk, though
the number of persons engaged in the business is relatively small.
General Description (photos. 29, 206)
The town is divided in two by the broad pebbly bed of the river, which is
crossed by a stone bridge of fifteen arches. The core of the old town on the
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