Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. It is considered one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, having been continually inhabited since c. 8,000 BCE.
Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey. It is the second-largest city in the Southeastern Anatolia Region. As of December 2024, the Metropolitan Province population was 1,833,684, of whom 1,164,940 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of the four urban districts (Bağlar, Kayapınar, Sur and Yenişehir).
Diyarbakır has been a main focal point of the conflict between the Turkish state and various Kurdish separatist groups, and is seen by many Kurds as the informal capital of Kurdistan. The city was intended to become the capital of an independent Kurdistan following the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, but this was disregarded following subsequent political developments.
On 6 February 2023 Diyarbakır was affected by the twin Turkey–Syria earthquakes, which inflicted some damage on its city walls.
Names and etymology In ancient times the city was known as Amida, a name which could derive from an older Assyrian toponym Amedi. The name Āmid was also used in Arabic. The name Amit is found in official documents of the Empire of Trebizond from 1358.Zehiroglu, Ahmet M. ; "Trabzon Imparatorlugu" 2016 () ; p. 223
After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the city became known as Diyar Bakr (), in reference to the territory of the Banu Bakr tribe, the Diyar Bakr. That tribe had already settled in northern Mesopotomia during the pre-Islamic period. In the 7th century, during the caliphate of Uthman and under the regional governorship of Mu'awiya, a portion of the tribe was ordered to settle further north in the lands near the city. The city was later also known in Turkish as ("Black Amid"), on account of its black basalt walls.
In November 1937, Turkish President Atatürk visited the city and after expressing uncertainty on the exact etymology of the city's name, "Diyarbekir", in December of the same year ordered that it be renamed "Diyarbakır", which means "land of copper" in Turkish after the abundant resources of copper around the city.See Üngör, Uğur (2011), The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 244. . This was one of the early examples of the Turkification process of non-Turkish place names, in which non-Turkish (Greek, Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic and other) geographical names were changed to Turkish alternatives.
The Armenian name of the city is Tigranakert/Dikranagerd (), in reference to the ancient capital of Tigranocerta founded by Tigranes the Great nearby.Western Armenian pronunciation: Dikranagerd; It is known as in Kurdish and in Syriac as (Āmīd).
History
Antiquity
People have inhabited the area around Diyarbakır since the Stone Age. The first major civilization to establish itself in the region of Diyarbakır was the Hurrian kingdom of the Mitanni. It was then ruled by a succession of nearly every polity that controlled Upper Mesopotamia, including the Arameans, Assyrians, Urartu, Armenians, Achaemenid Persians, Medes, Seleucids, and Parthians.Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites, 1999 p. 137 The Roman Republic gained control of the city in 66 BC, by which stage it was named "Amida".Theodor Mommsen History of Rome, The Establishment of the Military Monarchy. Italian.classic-literature.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-13. In 359, Shapur II of Persia captured Amida after a siege of 73 days.The Eye of Command, Kimberly Kagan, p. 23
According to the Synecdemus of Hierocles, as Amida, Diyarbakır was the major city of the Roman province of Mesopotamia. It was the episcopal see of the Christian diocese of Mesopotamia. Ancient texts record that ancient Amida had an amphitheatre, thermae (public baths), warehouses, a tetrapylon monument, and Roman aqueducts supplying and distributing water. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus was serving in the late Roman army during the Siege of Amida by the Sasanian Empire under Shapur II (), and described the successful siege in detail. Amida was then enlarged by refugees from ancient Nisibis (Nusaybin), which the emperor Jovian () was forced to evacuate and cede to Shapur's Persians after the defeat of his predecessor Julian's Persian War, becoming the main Roman stronghold in the region. The chronicle attributed to Joshua the Stylite describes the capture of Amida by the Persians under Kavad I () in the second Siege of Amida in 502–503, part of the Anastasian War.
Either the emperor Anastasius Dicorus () or the emperor Justinian the Great () rebuilt the walls of Amida, a feat of defensive architecture praised by the Greek historian Procopius. As recorded by the works of John of Ephesus, Zacharias Rhetor, and Procopius, the Romans and Persians continued to contest the area, and in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 Amida was captured and held by the Persians for twenty-six years, being recovered in 628 for the Romans by the emperor Heraclius (), who also founded a church in the city on his return to Constantinople (Istanbul) from Persia the following year.
Ecclesiastical history
Syriac Christianity took hold in the region between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, particularly amongst the Assyrians of the city. The Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) divided the Roman province of Mesopotamia into two, and made Amida the capital of Mesopotamia Prima, and thereby also the metropolitan see for all the province's bishoprics.
At some stage, Amida became a see of the Armenian Church. The bishops who held the see in 1650 and 1681 were in full communion with the Holy See, and in 1727 Peter Derboghossian sent his profession of faith to Rome. He was succeeded by two more bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church, Eugenius and Ioannes of Smyrna, the latter of whom died in Constantinople in 1785. After a long vacancy, three more bishops followed. The diocese had some 5,000 Armenian Catholics in 1903,Annuaire Pontifical Catholique, 1903, p. 173. but it lost most of its population in the 1915 Armenian genocide. The last diocesan bishop of the see, Andreas Elias Celebian, was killed with some 600 of his flock in the summer of 1915.Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 456Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Complementi, Leipzig 1931, p. 93F. Tournebize, v. Amid ou Amida, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. XII, Paris 1953, coll. 1246–1247Hovhannes J. Tcholakian, L'église arménienne catholique en Turquie, 1998
An eparchy for the local members of the Syriac Catholic Church was established in 1862. Persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War brought an end to the existence of both these Syrian residential sees.S. Vailhé, Antioche. Patriarcat syrien-catholique, in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, Vol. I, Paris 1903, coll. 1433O. Werner, Orbis terrarum catholicus, Freiburg 1890, p. 164
Middle Ages
In 639, as part of the Muslim conquest of the Levant during the early Arab–Byzantine wars, Amida fell to the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate led by Iyad ibn Ghanm, and the Great Mosque of Amida was constructed afterwards in the city's centre, possibly on the site of the Heraclian Church of Saint Thomas. There were as many as five Christian monasteries in the city, including the Zuqnin Monastery and several ancient churches mentioned by John of Ephesus. One of these, the Church of the Virgin Mary, remains the city's cathedral and the see of the bishop of Diyarbakır in the Syriac Orthodox Church. Another ancient church, the Church of Mar Cosmas, was seen by the British explorer Gertrude Bell in 1911 but was destroyed in 1930, while the former Church of Saint George, in the walled citadel, may originally have been built for Muslim use or for the Church of the East.
The city was part of the Umayyad Caliphate and then the Abbasid Caliphate, but then came under more local rule until its recovery in 899 by forces loyal to the caliph al-Mu'tadid () before falling under the sway of first the Hamdanid dynasty and then the Buyid dynasty, followed by a period of control by the Marwanids.
From 983 to 1085, the Diyar Bakr region, including the city of Amida, was ruled by the Marwanid dynasty, a Kurdish dynasty, between 990 and 1085. The dynasty's foundation was laid by a chief from the Bohtan (Botkhti) tribe named Badh ibn Dustak, who captured Mayyafariqin (modern Silvan) and later Amida. After Badh was killed in 990, he was succeeded by his nephew, al-Hasan ibn Marwan, the son of his sister and a man named Marwan. Al-Hasan is considered the true founder of the dynasty that bears his father's name. The Marwanid emirate reached its apogee under the 50-year reign of Nasr al-Dawla Ahmad (1011–1061). This period is remembered as one of peace, prosperity, and cultural flourishing. Nasr al-Dawla was a skilled diplomat, balancing relations with the era's great powers; the Buyid Emirs, the Fatimid Caliphs, and the Byzantine Empire, all of whom sent envoys and recognized his rule. The Marwanid court, based primarily in Mayyafariqin and Amida, fostered a "pluralistic political rhetoric" that allowed for the coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups, attracting migration from surrounding regions. This period saw extensive public works, and Nasr al-Dawla left monumental inscriptions, still visible, on the Roman walls of Amida.
The city was taken by the Seljuks in 1085 and by the Ayyubids in 1183. Ayyubid control lasted until the Mongol invasions of Anatolia, with its last Ayyubid ruler Al-Kamil Muhammad. The Mongols of Hulagu captured of the city in 1260 (Siege of Mayyāfāriqīn), following a long siege with a small Mongol force and a much larger Georgian and Armenian force under the Georgian leader Hasan Brosh. Between the Mongol occupation and conquest by the Safavid dynasty of Iran, the Kara Koyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu – two Turkoman confederations – were in control of the city in succession. Diyarbakır was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1514 by Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha, in the reign of the sultan Selim I (). Mohammad Khan Ustajlu, the Safavid governor of Diyarbakir, was evicted from the city and killed in the following Battle of Chaldiran in 1514.
Safavids and Ottomans
The Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire saw it expand into Western Armenia and all but the eastern regions of Kurdistan at the expense of the Safavids. From the early 16th century, the city and the wider region was the source of intrigue between the Safavids and the Ottoman Empire, both of whom sought the support of the Kurdish chieftains around Idris Bitlisi. It was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1514 in the campaigns of Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha, under the rule of Sultan Selim I. Mohammad Khan Ustajlu, the Safavid Governor of Diyarbakir, was evicted from the city and killed in the following Battle of Chaldiran in 1514.