Akre

Akre is a city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, set among the hill country of Duhok and Nineveh. Its long urban existence reaches back to the seventh century BC. From 612 to 550 BC the Medes ruled the town during a period remembered as its golden age. In 115 CE, Emperor Trajan brought it under Roman control and erected a victory statue, which inhabitants soon removed.

From the tenth century Akre was a fief of the Kurdish Humaydi tribe. Yaqut al-Hamawi therefore recorded the name Aqr al-Humaydiya. In 1133 Imad al-Din Zengi of the Zengid dynasty invaded and destroyed its wall. The fourteenth-century writer Shihab al-Umari later noted the Yazidi Dasni tribe in the area. These accounts show a fortified town whose population and rulers changed repeatedly while it remained a center of upland exchange.

As the Principality of Bitlis declined between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Bahdinan took Akre and its surroundings. Bahdinan's rule brought cultural and economic development, new construction and a rebuilt wall faced with alabaster. Soran campaigns later weakened the town before Emir Muhammad Kor captured it in 1833. Christians, Jews and Muslims formed parts of its urban society. Newroz celebrations link this fortified past and Akre's role among Kurdish political centers to an enduring calendar of seasonal renewal. Commerce persisted.