The Old Bridge (), also known as the Old Tigris Bridge, is a ruined four-arch bridge spanning the Tigris River in the town of Hasankeyf in Batman Province in southeastern Turkey. It was built by the Artuqid Turkmens in the mid-12th century, between about 1147 and 1167, and at the time its central arch was one of the largest in the world, if not the largest. The bridge was repaired by Ayyubid Kurdish and Aq Qoyunlu Turkmen rulers during the 14th and 15th centuries and appears to have eventually collapsed in the early or mid-17th century. The bridge's ruined piers still stand (two of them in the Tigris River), as does one arch. Since 2020 the ruins of the bridge, along with most of the town of Hasankeyf, have been submerged underwater by the filling of the Ilısu Dam reservoir.
Background In Roman times, Kepha (Hasankeyf) was a base for legionnaires on the frontier with Persia, and for a time the capital of the Roman province of Arzanene. The existence of a Roman bridge across the Tigris at Hasankeyf has been viewed as "highly probable" by one scholar who speculates that (like the later bridge) it may have had "a wooden superstructure based on piers of masonry and natural stone". However, none of the remaining structure of the bridge appears to date from Roman times.
Roman builders had trouble bridging major rivers that were subject to spring flooding, such as the Tigris. Nevertheless, there was at least one bridge across the Tigris upstream from Hasankeyf as early as the fifth century AD, when Bishop John of Amida (who was appointed in 483/484) is reported to have built the bridge that forms the foundation of the present-day On Gözlü Köprü outside Diyarbakır. There may have been bridges across the Tigris even closer to Hasankeyf, as surveys in 1989–1991 showed evidence of two bridges crossing the Tigris near its confluence with the Batman River, upstream from Hasankeyf. One was a probably Roman bridge at Köprüköy, upstream from the rivers' confluence; three piers of this bridge remain, but it can only be dated approximately. The second was a possibly neo-Assyrian bridge at Şahinli, slightly downstream of the confluence; only some stones of the southern footing remain on the riverbank, near Hirbemerdon Tepe.
The earliest mention of any bridge across the Tigris at Hasankeyf is in an account of the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia in 638. Over the subsequent five centuries, Hasankeyf was ruled by the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and later by semi-autonomous Hamdanid and Marwanid rulers. There is little information on river crossings at Hasankeyf during this period. The late-10th-century Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi describes Hisn Kayfa as a "place of abundance" with a strong citadel and many churches, whose residents get their drinking water from the Tigris, but makes no mention of a bridge. In the 11th century, Seljuq Turks and their Turkmen and Oguz allies moved into eastern Anatolia, culminating in the Seljuq defeat of Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Victory at Manzikert quickly resulted in Seljuq forces controlling large parts of Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. The Seljuq sultan Rukn ad-Dīn Barkiyāruq granted Hasankeyf as a fief to the Artuqids in .
Control of trade along the Diyarbakır–Mosul route down the Tigris, and north–south between Lake Van and the Euphrates generated prosperity for the Artuqids and ensured their power in the region. Consequently, the existence of a reliable river crossing for goods and people was a priority.
Construction and Artuqid period Date Current scholarship suggests the bridge was built in the mid-12th century, no earlier than 1147 and no later than 1167.
Late 19th- and early 20th-century scholars generally dated its construction to the year AH 510 (1116/17), and described the bridge as being rebuilt on the site of some undescribed earlier bridge. Most scholars of the time traced this date to an anonymous writer who annotated what is now known as the Paris manuscript of Ibn Hawqal's Surat al-Ard some time after AH 534 (1139/40). The English geographical historian Guy Le Strange, using the Ibn Hawqal annotation as his source, specifically says the bridge was restored by Qarā Arslān in AH 510 (1116/17). The same reconstruction date was given by Henry Hoyle Howorth, citing the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla.
Support for the AH 510 dating waned after closer reading of a pair of manuscripts by the 12th-century Artuqid historian ibn al-Azraq al-Fariqi held by the British Library. Ibn al-Azraq writes that the bridge was built on the orders of Fakhr ad-Din Qara Arslan of the Artuqid dynasty. Ibn al-Azraq also states that the Hasankeyf bridge was built later than the Malabadi Bridge, the earliest in the Diyar Bakr. Construction of the Malabadi Bridge started in AH 541 (1146/47) under the Artuqid ruler of Mardin, Husam al-Din Timurtash, and finished in AH 548 (1153/54) under his son . A date later than AH 541 (1146/47) for the Hasankeyf bridge is consistent with Qara Arslan's sponsoring its construction, as his accession is variously dated to AH 539 or 543 (1144/45 or 1148/49) and he ruled Hasankeyf until AH 562 (1166/67).
In a 1994 overview of Seljuk and Ottoman bridges, Fügen İlter dated the bridge to between 1155 and 1175.
There is also conflicting information from the same primary sources about whether the Hasankeyf bridge was built entirely new, or was rebuilt from an earlier structure. The German historian of Islamic art Michael Meinecke quotes Ibn al-Azraq's report that the bridge was a replacement for an earlier and less substantial one. Le Strange (citing the annotator of Ibn Hawqal) says it was "restored"; Howorth (citing Sayf al-Dawla) says it was "re-erected".
Construction
The bridge had four main arches. Two huge piers were built in the river to support the -wide main arch. Again, there is some confusion as to how this main arch was built. Some scholars describe it as a wooden construction anchored into the stone piers and describe the purpose as being to allow the crossing to be easily dismantled in time of war. Other sources, including several from the period before the bridge was destroyed, do not mention a wooden element, despite providing a detailed description of the bridge. And one 17th-century source that does mention a wooden central span describes it as a repair due to an earlier collapse.
However it was built, this central arch had a span of about . That was about larger than the nearby Malabadi Bridge, which means it probably had the largest span of any single arch from the time of its construction until completion of the Pont du Diable in the Principality of Catalonia (now France) in 1341.
The roadway of the bridge rose from the north bank (where it is just above the flood plain) to the south bank (where it meets the top of the cliff on which the lower city sits). Flanking the main arch were slightly smaller arches to the north and south, with the roadway climbing towards the center of the bridge. A fourth arch, smaller than the others and the only one still remaining somewhat intact, carried the roadway to the northern abutment. At the south, where the roadway meets the steep slope up to the citadel, there was no need for a corresponding fifth arch, and the flanking arch led directly to the massive masonry construction of the abutment. The southern abutment is pierced by an arched gateway, and it appears that some writers have counted this as a fifth structural arch.
Meinecke describes the bridge as a whole as being "a unique masterpiece of architectural engineering". The total length from one abutment to the other is about . Meinecke notes that the sides of the bridge contained passages that could accommodate townspeople on both sides of the river in case of emergency. The presence of arrow slits indicates that these passages had a defensive purpose.
Decoration On the western (upstream) faces of the triangular buttresses is a series of reliefs that have been interpreted by Estelle Whelan as Qarā Arslān's khāṣṣakiyya (his page corps or bodyguard). Five reliefs remain out of a total that Whelan estimates was originally eight, two on each of the four upstream walls of the two main piers. Each shows a single human figure carved on a vertical block and set into the middle course of masonry. The western pier shows a standing human figure wearing a kaftan, boots and hat known as a sharbush. His bent arms rest on a straight object that may be an arrow or a mace. A figure on the inner wall of the same pier rests on a bow and the other figure on this wall holds a bird.
In early 2018, as the Turkish government prepared to fill the lake behind the Ilısu Dam, four of the reliefs were moved to the garden of the Batman provincial museum.
Comparison with contemporary bridges Meinecke compares the style of the bridge in Hasankeyf to that of two other bridges: Malabadi Bridge (built AH 541–548 (1146/47–1153/54)) over the Batman River about north of Hasankeyf on the orders of the Artuqid ruler Husam al-Din Timurtash, and a bridge in Cizre (built before AH 558 (1162/63) on the orders of the vizier of Mosul, Jamal ad-Din Muhammad al-Isfahani. Meinecke records Ibn al-Azraq's statement that the Hasankeyf bridge was modeled on Malabadi Bridge, but does not explain how the Hasankeyf Bridge apparently predates the Malabadi one. All three bridges contain similar panels of figural designs, and follow a similar pattern of construction. Meinecke also notes that the Hasankeyf and Cizre bridges display similar Artuqid mason's marks, as does the Great Palace in the Hasankeyf citadel.
Describing the bridge at Hasankeyf in the Mu'jam Al-Buldan ("Dictionary of Countries", 1224–1228), the Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote: "I have not seen a bigger [bridge] in any of the lands I have traveled." Yaqut describes the bridge as having a single great arch over two smaller ones, a description that may have been intended to indicate the flanking arches.
Rebuilding during Ayyubid and Aq Qoyunlu periods Ḥasan Ibn al-Munshiʾ records in the Taʾrīkh bait Aiyūb () that by the early 14th century the bridge was unusable. It was restored during the reign of the Ayyubid sultan al-ʿĀdil Ghāzī, AH 742–768 (1341–1367).
There is evidence that additional repairs were made around when Hasankeyf was under the rule of the powerful Aq Qoyunlu bey Uzun Hassan who had conquered Hasankeyf from the Ayyubids in 1462. Historian Thomas Alexander Sinclair dates the brick repairs on the surviving northern arch to the Aq Qoyunlu period. Meinecke sees the presence of brick masonry, and turquoise glazed bricks in particular, as evidence that the repairs were performed by a group of Iranian craftsmen who also worked on the nearby Tomb of Zeynel Bey along with local stonemasons. Meinecke speculates that the leaders of the Iranian workshop included Pīr Ḥasan b. ustādh ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, whose name is inscribed on the tiles of the Zeynel Bey Tomb's entrance niche. He believes they operated as craftsmen-for-hire and traces their route from work on the Blue Mosque in Tabrīz before , to Istanbul's Çinili Köşk in , and then to the tomb and bridge in Hasankeyf around , before moving on to the south iwan of Isfahan's Masjid-i Jumʿa in .
A Venetian merchant who traveled to Hasankeyf around 1507 provides a detailed description of the bridge:
Ottoman period After Sultan Selim I's victory at the Battle of Chaldiran, the Ottoman Empire gained control of Hasankeyf in 1515. There are few direct accounts of Hasankeyf or the bridge for the next century, but official records do indicate that the town remained a key crossing point on the Tigris. A 1997 study of Ottoman tax records showed that about 858,500 sheep crossed over the bridge during one tax cycle. These were likely herded by nomads moving between pastures in the mountains and pastures in the steppe.