<!-- Infobox begins --> <!-- Infobox ends -->
Tal Afar (pronounced /ta.la.fer/) (also
Tal'Afar,
Tal Afar,
Tall Afar,
Tell Afar,
Tel Afar) (in
Arabic:
تلعفر or
تل عفر, , in
Turkish:
Telafer) is a city and district in northwestern
Iraq in the
Ninawa Governorate located approximately 30 miles west of
Mosul and 120 miles north west of
Kirkuk.
While no official census data exists, the city which had been assessed to have a population of approximately 200,000, had dropped to 80,000 as of 2007, nearly all of whom are
Iraqi Turkmen. In Tal’Afar itself, the population is mostly Turkomen, about 75 percent of whom are Sunni Muslims, while a quarter are Shi’ites. While most residents speak
Arabic, a dialect of
Turkish is regularly used throughout the city.
History
southwest of the town of Tal Afar are the mounds of
Yarim Tepe which yielded remains from the
Halafian culture from the
Hassuna,
Halaf and
Ubaid periods, between 7,000 and 4,500 BC.
Tel Afar has been thought to be a city mentioned in the
Bible,
Telassar or Thela'sar, mentioned in
2 Kings 19:12 and in
Isaiah 37:12 as a city inhabited by...
Read More