Alexander the Great and Darius III. It is also thought that region was known during the Parthian and Sassanid periods as Garmakan, which means the 'Land of Warmth' or the 'Hot Land'. In the modern Persian and Kurdish languages too "Garm" means warm; the name is still used by the Kurds in the form Garmian with the same meaning.
And from the 7th century, when Muslim Arabs conquered the area, up to the medieval era, Arab writers simply used the name Kirkheni (Syriac for "citadel") to refer to the city. Some Arabs used the names Bajermi or Jermakan. A cuneiform script found in 1927 at the foot of Kirkuk Citadel stated that the city of Erekha of Babylonia was on the site of Kirkuk. Other sources consider Erekha to have been simply one part of the larger Arrapha metropolis
