over control of Erbil, or Arbira as it was known in that period. After the 1st century AD, Arbela became an important Christian center. During the Sassanid period, Erbil was the seat of a satrap (governor). In 340 AD, Christians in Erbil were persecuted and in 358, the governor became a martyr after he converted to Christianity. A Nestorian school was founded in Erbil by the School of Nisibis in c. 521. During this period, Erbil was also the site of a Zoroastrian fire temple. Muslim conquest until the Ottomans Erbil was conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century. It remained an important Christian center until the 9th century, when the bishop of Erbil moved his seat to Mosul. In the middle of the 10th century, Erbil came under the rule of Hadhabani Kurds until 1063 when it was taken over by the Seljuks. From the first half of the 12th century until 1233, Erbil was the seat of the Begteginids, a Turcoman dynasty that rose to prominence under the reign of Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul. In 1183, Zain ad-Din Yusuf, ruler of Erbil, shifted his allegiance to the Ayyubid Sultanate. In 1190 when Zain ad-Din Yusuf died, his older brother Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri, who was previously governor of Edessa, became the new governor of Erbil. He created a lower town around the city on the citadel mound and founded hospitals and madrasahs. When Gökburi died in 1233 without an heir, control of Erbil shifted to the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir after he had besieged the city. When the Mongols invaded the Near East in the 13th century, they attacked Erbil for the first time in 1237. They plundered the lower town but had to retreat before an approaching caliphal army and had to put off the capture of the citadel. After the fall of Baghdad to Hülegü and the Mongols in 1258, they returned to Erbil and were able to capture the citadel after a siege lasting six months. Hülegü then appointed a Christian governor to the town and there was an influx of Jacobite Christians, who were allowed to build a church. As time passed, persecutions of Christians, Jews and Buddhists throughout the Ilkhanate began in earnest in 1295 under Oïrat amir Nauruz. This manifested early on in the reign of the Ilkhan Ghazan. In 1297, after Ghazan had felt strong enough to overcome Nauruz' influence, he