Despite Erbil’s rapid recent expansion, the city’s urban core dates back to its Ottoman period, when the city first experienced a building boom that created the city’s main central market, the Qaysiri, whose vaulted ceiling still stands today. Nonetheless, Erbil's Ottoman-era heritage has always been influenced by local materials and tastes. 

Nestled in the plains of northern Iraq, Erbil is one of the oldest continually inhabited areas in the world. Historically, it acted as both a gateway and a buffer between Mesopotamia and Iran.

Within this continuity, though, Erbil has also experienced a constant state of flux. Situated in a fertile plain, Erbil is a palimpsest bearing the mark of empires. Erbil’s name changed as it passed from one to the next, known for instance as Urbelum during the Akkadian period in 2334 BC, likely a pre-Semitic term possibly meaning "high city." Some mistakenly thought the city meant “city of four gods,” but this was later found to be a misunderstanding of its phonetic spelling in Akkadian. In Aramaic, the name changed to Arbela, and Arbairaa in Persian. Possibly influenced by the city’s Jewish residents, who referred to it as Avler, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region is now referred to as Hawler in Kurdish. 

The city has undergone swift urbanization in the country’s post-Saddam period, providing a bastion of stability among the more volatile areas of Iraq. Erbil’s modern urban development of concentric ring roads ripple out from the central citadel, the core of the historic city, far enough to leave long-standing denizens dizzy.