Dahuk, Iraq
Encyclopedia
Dohuk is the capital of Dahuk Governorate in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. It has about 250.000 inhabitants, mostly consisting of Kurds
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
, with an Assyrian
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
minority. According to some sources, the name "Dohuk" comes from Kurmanji
Kurmanji
Kurmanji or Northern Kurdish is the most commonly spoken dialect of the Kurdish language.- Scripts and books :...
Kurdish
Kurdish language
Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
meaning "small village".
History
Dohuk was originally an Assyrian town named Beth Nuhadra or Naarda, where it became an eparchy within the metropolitanate of ḤadyabAdiabene (East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province)
Adiabene was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the 5th and 14th centuries, with more than fifteen known suffragan dioceses at different periods in its history. Although the name Hadyab normally connoted the region around Erbil and Mosul, the boundaries of the East Syrian...
(Arbil
Arbil
Arbil / Hewlêr is the fourth largest city in Iraq after Baghdad, Basra and Mosul...
).
The city is encircled by mountains along the Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
river. Duhok has a growing tourist industry, its population having grown rapidly since the 1990s as the rural population moved to the cities. The University of Dohuk
University of Dohuk
Founded on the 31st of October 1992 with two colleges and a total of 149 students, University of Duhok includes now 13 colleges with more than 10000 undergraduate students and 500 Postgraduate students in different specializations. University of Duhok is a member of the International Association...
, founded in 1992, is a renowned center for teaching and research in Dohuk.