The British occupation declared Sheikh Mahmud as king in order to silence the residents of Sulaymaniyah and stop their rebellion, but Sheikh Mahmud acted and ruled independently from the British, and wanted them out of the kingdom. As a result, in the same year, he was exiled for several years to the Andaman islands in India by the British occupation, only to return and raise another unsuccessful rebellion centered in Sulaymaniyah in 1923.
In January 1926 the League of Nations gave the mandate over the territory to Iraq, with the provision for special rights for Kurds. In 1930-1931,Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji made his last unsuccessful attempt to free Kurdistan, he retreated into the mountains, and later signed a peace accord with the Iraqi government and settled in the new Iraq in 1932. The first and oldest neighborhood in the city is called "Goija", which was named after the mountain overlooking the city. "Sabunkaran" was of the cities first neighborhoods, its name means "those who make soap" in Kurdish, its residents were mainly involved in the soap industry. "Julakan" or the Jews neighborhood where it was mainly inhabited by Kurdish Jews. In the fifties and after the establishment of the state Israel, most of its inhabitants migrated to the newly created state. In 23 April 1982 a demonstration broke out in the city against the arrests and torture of the city's youths who were accused of palnning revolt against the ruling Arab Ba'ath regime.
Since liberation in 1991, it has been administered by Kurdish Government and serves as one of the metropolises of Iraqi Kurdistan
