Diwan

A traditional Diwan, or guest house, of an established Erbil family. While they now live in a modern quarter of the city, each evening the older men return to this old house below the citadel to talk, eat and conduct business.

Lining the walls are the remains of one of the finest private libraries in the region, which included books in English, Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish. Saddam Hussein issued a decree to take the most important books to Baghdad. It is not known whether they were destroyed in the fires and lootings which followed the U.S. led invasion of 2003.