Arbil (Irbil, Arbel, Arwil, Hawler), in northeastern Iraq, is a very ancient city known in the classical era as Arbela. The modern city is situated mostly on a massive circular mound rising nearly 30 meters (98 feet) above the surrounding plain. The mound represents the accumulation of at least four thousand years of continuous urban settlement. A Jewish community seems to have existed in place since late Second Temple times.

 In the modern period the Jewish community in Arbil numbered two hundred families in 1827, eighty-one hundred people in 1847, four hundred i…