Southeastern Anatolia
Situation and Importance
Diyarbakir, one of the most picturesque of all Turkish cities, with a high proportion of its inhabitants Kurds, stands on a pedestal of black basalt on the west bank of the upper Tigris (Dicle Nehri), surrounded by fertile plots of
cultivated land. Provincial capital (and unofficial "capital" of Turkish Kurdistan) the city is located in a steppe-like plain, bordered to the southwest by the flat but massive basalt ridge of the Karaca Dag (1,938m/6,360ft). Once a staging post on the ancient trade route from the Persian-Arabian Gulf to the Old Syrian Mediterranean ports and, via Byzantium, to the West, Diyarbakir, with its excellently preserved town wall and citadel, its host of lovely medreses and mosques and its winding alleyways is the epitome of an old Anatolian town. For some years now new industries have brought a huge influx of people into Diyarbakir from the surrounding countryside. The walled Old Town is about 1.5km/1mi across from west to east and a kilometer from north to south.
History
In the ninth century B.C. Diyarbakir was the chief settlement in the Bit Zamami region, intermittently dependent in subsequent centuries on the Assyrian Empire. Later the city became capital of the Roman province of Mesopotamia. It was here in 115 that Trajan defeated the Parthians. From the fourth to the seventh century the hard-pressed Byzantines struggled to defend the city against the Sassanids; the emperor Constantius built substantial ramparts to this end in 394, which Justinian strengthened 200 years later. The dark basalt walls led to the city being called "Amida the Black", the Turkish form of which, "Kara Amid", is still used today. In 636 the Arabs captured the town for the Omayyads. They in turn handed it over to the Beni Bakr tribe, from whom its present name derives (Diyar-Bakir; land of the Bakr). After a short period of independence, possession changed hands several times before the Seljuks (Ortokids) ravaged the city in 1085. In the final years of the 14th century the Akkoyunlu Turkomans made it their capital; in 1507 it became Persian and in 1515 it passed to the Ottomans. Located as it is at the very heart of Turkish Kurdistan, Diyarbakir has witnessed and continues to witness bloody confrontations between Turks and Kurds, including full-scale rebellion in 1929.
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