Tal Afar
Tal Afar[1] (Arabic: تَلْعَفَر, romanized: Talʿafar, IPA: [talˈʕafar] Turkish: Telafer) is a city in the Nineveh Governorate of northwestern Iraq, located 63 km (39 mi) west of Mosul,[2] 52 km (32 mi) east of Sinjar[2] and 200 km (120 mi) northwest of Kirkuk. Its local inhabitants are exclusively Turkmen.[3]
Tal Afar
تَلْعَفَر
History[edit]
Prehistory[edit]
10 kilometres (6.2 mi) southwest of the town of Tal Afar are the mounds of Yarim Tepe which yielded remains from the Halafian culture of the Hassuna, Halaf and Ubaid periods, between 7000 and 4500 BC.[6][7]
Ottoman Empire[edit]
The English traveller, archaeologist, and future diplomat Austen Henry Layard—one day to become the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire—wrote in his book 1867 book Nineveh and Its Remains:
Economy[edit]
In January 2007, the largest single employer in the city was the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, which had hired roughly 2,250 policemen. The second-largest employer was the United States government. The 101st Airborne 3rd Brigade was stationed at Tal Afar Airbase in 2003–04 and its 1st Battalion was stationed in the town proper.[75]
Landmarks[edit]
The Tal Afar Citadel, a ruined Ottoman fortress, is located in the center of the city.[76] Local history states that British administrators augmented the structure of the original fortress. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fortress was further augmented and made to house the city's mayoral, municipal and police headquarters. The neighborhood including and surrounding the fortress is known as Qalah or "Castle".
Large parts of the citadel were blown up by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in December 2014.[77]
Politics and government[edit]
Tal Afar's local government consists of a city council, local sheikhs and a mayor. The mayor is appointed by the council of sheikhs and confirmed by the provincial regional administrator. The mayor need not be originally from the city nor Iraqi Turkmen. The mayor from 2005 to 2008 was Najim Abdullah Abed al-Jabouri,[78] a Sunni Arab originally from Qayyarah.[79]
The Iraqi Turkmen demographic of Tal Afar and its geographic location have made it an important city in the argument for Iraqi federalism. Following a program of "Arabization" initiated by Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, large numbers of Sunni Arabs supportive of the Baathist government were moved into areas around Tal Afar. Geographically, the region the city is located in is a border area separating Kurdish lands to the north and Arab lands to the south in the Al Anbar governorate.