Jalawla

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Jalawla (Arabic: جلولاء‎, Turkish: Celavla, also known as Gûlala, or mistranslated as Jalula, Kuridish: Celewla, Turkoman Qarah Ghān) is a town in Diyala Governorate, Iraq. It is located on the Diyala River 8km north of Al-Sadiyah, 45km west of the town of Khanaqin.

Background:
In 637, the Battle of Jalula took place here, between the Sasanian Empire and the Arab Muslims, shortly after the conquest of Ctesiphon. Historian Ibn Atheer mentions a folk etymology for the name, by stating that the Sasanian Persian losses at Jalawla reached 100,000 and the dead bodies filled the battlefield ( "Jellat" in Arabic) so the area became known as Jalula/Jalawla.

Before Saddam's Al Anfal Arabisation campaign, the vast majority of the city was Kurdish. In 2003 it had an estimated population of some 30,000 people. Sunni Arabs comprise about 60%, Shia and Sunni Turkmens make up about 10%, and the rest were primarily Shia Fayli Kurds. The original Fayli inhabitants had been largely deported into Iran by various Iraqi Sunni Arab governments starting in 1964. After being liberated by Peshmerga forces of South Kurdistan, Kurdish Government started resettling its originial, kurdish inhabitants to the town. The Arab tribes wich supported Saddam were denied any chance of returning to the city.

From August to November 2014 the city was mostly under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and local Arab tribes which seized the town from the Kurdistan Regional Government in August 2014.
On the 23 November 2014, the Federal army, Shi'ite militia and Kurdish Peshmerga troops recaptured the whole city.

* Quoted from wikipedia.