Akre

Overview

Akre, also recorded as Akra or Aqra, is a town in Duhok Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Its former Jewish quarter remains identifiable to residents. That quarter connects the town to the wider history of Jews in Kurdistan, while events in the twenty-first century have brought attention to the treatment of journalists in Akre and to Christian property in its district.

Geography

Akre lies within the Iraqi part of Kurdistan. The town and its surrounding district are distinct places: Hazar Jot, named in a 2022 warning about confiscated Christian property, is a village in Akre district. Akre is among the towns whose former Jewish quarters remain recognizable, alongside Halabja, Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Zakho. Identifying those neighborhoods has proved easier than locating old synagogues and graveyards. The difference matters in Akre, where the remembered location of a community remains part of the town’s geography even as physical traces of its communal life are harder to find.

Ancient and biblical history

Akre had an ancient Jewish community, historically known to Jews as Ekron. The broader Jewish history of Kurdistan includes a tradition linking its Jews to the Israelites exiled by Assyria. That tradition describes a regional ancestry; it does not date the founding of Akre’s community. In the first century, the kingdom of Adiabene, also in the wider region, became associated with Judaism after members of its royal family converted. These histories place Akre within a long regional Jewish presence while remaining distinct from events documented specifically in the town.

Jewish history

Between 300 and 500 Jews appear to have lived in Akre during the nineteenth century. An official census in 1930 recorded about 1,000 Jews among a total population of approximately 19,000. Members of the community spoke Aramaic-Jebelic and worked in agriculture, whitewashing, goldsmithing, the perfume trade and other commerce. Jews owned many orchards in the district. The community was centered on its synagogue, and Akre’s former Jewish quarter can still be identified by residents.

The town formed part of a network of Jewish communities across Iraqi Kurdistan. Jews lived in towns and villages throughout the region, with communal life extending beyond any single urban center. Akre’s synagogue, quarter, occupations and orchards show how that presence was woven into both town and district. Its history belongs alongside those of other communities, including Amadiya and Kirkuk, whose Jewish residents also left in the twentieth century.

The departure of Akre’s Jews took place amid the wider exodus of Iraqi Jews in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1950, Kurdish neighbors attacked Jews in Akre and injured many of them; afterward, members of the community immigrated to Israel. Across Iraq, pressure on Jews increased after the establishment of the State of Israel. Iraqi legislation in 1950 permitted Jews to leave if they renounced their citizenship, and a measure enacted in March 1951 froze the assets of departing Jews. Many Iraqi Jews reached Israel through Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Those national events provide context for Akre’s departure, while the attack in Akre was a specific local event.

Older residents of Iraqi Kurdish towns have retained memories of Jewish neighbors and friends, but those personal recollections have faded across generations. Akre’s identifiable quarter preserves a visible connection to that past. Finding old synagogues and graveyards has been more difficult, even in towns where residents can point to former Jewish neighborhoods. Near Akre, an effort announced in 2022 to restore the small Ezekiel synagogue illustrates continuing attention to Jewish heritage in the area.

Modern history

The Jewish departure changed Akre’s communal landscape in the mid-twentieth century. The town’s later history also reflects the development of regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish self-government emerged after 1991, and Iraq’s 2005 constitution recognized the Kurdistan Region as an official region. Akre’s location within that region places its local affairs in the context of both regional institutions and the Iraqi state.

Security

On March 27, 2018, security forces attacked and beat a Kurdsat television crew in Akre. Reporter Dilbrin Ghazi was injured and detained for two hours. The incident formed part of a wider pattern of reported beatings, detentions and threats against media workers in the Kurdistan Region that year. It is a documented instance of violence against journalists in Akre, with a named injured reporter and a recorded period of detention.

Present day

In August 2022, Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako warned that political parties were confiscating Christian property in several areas, including Hazar Jot in Akre district. He said procedures to return the properties he identified had not taken place despite follow-up. His warning placed the village within a broader concern about Christian property rights in the Kurdistan Region. Alongside the town’s Jewish heritage and the 2018 attack on a television crew, the warning records another issue affecting minority rights and civic life in Akre’s district.