Bitlis is a historic valley city in eastern Turkey, known in Kurdish as Bidlîs and Armenian as Paghesh. Its history joins Kurdish princely rule, Persian historiography, religious foundations, trade and Armenian community life.
A city shaped by the mountain corridor
Bitlis stands in a deep valley of the southeastern Taurus, on the route between the Lake Van basin and the lower country toward Mesopotamia. The Bitlis stream belongs to the Tigris drainage. This corridor served caravans and seasonal movements of people and livestock. The castle controlled a narrow ridge above the watercourses, while the town spread along their banks and up the slopes. The physical relationship remains visible in the accompanying photograph. Geography helps explain the city’s importance without reducing its inhabitants to a succession of military occupations. [1] [7]
A prince between Ottoman and Safavid courts
The Kurdish ruling house’s history involved changing imperial allegiances. Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, born near Qom in 1543, received part of his education at the Safavid court. In 1578 he crossed to Ottoman service and obtained the governorship of his ancestral Bitlis. In 1597 he handed his official functions to his son Shams al-Din. His career connects the city with a wider network of courts and Kurdish principalities; it was not an uninterrupted period of complete independence. Erika Glassen’s biography also marks his death date, around 1603–04, as uncertain. [2]
What the Sharafnama contains
Sharaf Khan’s Persian-language Sharafnama, completed in 1597, is a central work of Kurdish historiography. Its account of Kurdish territories and dynasties draws on written sources and testimony and includes the author’s own life. A connected section treats Ottoman rulers and contemporary Iranian and Turanian rulers. The book therefore places Kurdish houses within a wider political chronology. It is invaluable evidence, while also reflecting the interests and perspective of a ruling prince. Reading its dynastic categories as a modern population census would misunderstand its purpose. [2] [3]
Religious buildings and the people who used them
The city’s monuments include mosques, madrasas, tombs, inns and baths. Tuncel dates the Şerefiye complex to 1529 and lists İhlasiye among the later sixteenth-century foundations. The 1529 date predates the historian Sharaf Khan’s birth, so the mosque’s similarly named patron should not simply be identified with the author. Armenian Paghesh also had a substantial religious geography. Robert Tatoyan’s archival reconstruction identifies churches, monasteries and institutions from Armenian records. It restores names and functions to buildings that disappear when the city is described only through its rulers. [1] [2] [4]
Education beyond the princely court
Rosemary Russell’s study of the Mount Holyoke Girls Seminary uses college archives, mission reports and photographs. Charlotte and Mary Ely arrived in Bitlis in 1868 to develop education for Armenian girls. Graduates became teachers in the town and nearby settlements. Tuition could be paid in goods, while pupils contributed sewing and other work. The school’s history connects education with households, labour and the practical difficulties of attendance. Its archival photographs preserve people and classrooms rather than only monumental architecture. This was one institution within the city’s broader Armenian educational and religious life. [5]
The destruction of 1915 and the later city
The Armenian Genocide shattered that community life. Grace H. Knapp’s The Tragedy of Bitlis, published in 1919, is chiefly a compilation of the accounts of Grisell M. McLaren and Myrtle O. Shane. It describes arrests and the killing of Armenian men, deportations of women and children, and attempts to shelter people in mission premises. Knapp’s preface explains the compilation and her own connection with the city, allowing readers to distinguish the editor from the witnesses. Russell’s archival study records the seminary’s end in summer 1915. These events belong within the city’s history alongside its Kurdish political and literary heritage. [5] [6]
Administration, commerce and urban change
Bitlis became the centre of an Ottoman province in 1879. Tuncel’s history describes tanning, textile production and dyeing beside the streams. The town’s administrative status changed again in the Republic: it was attached to Muş in 1929 and became a provincial centre again in 1936. These shifts help explain its role beyond the emirate. The dated 2005 photograph shows a later inhabited townscape, rather than an unchanged surviving version of princely Bitlis. [1] [7]
Sources and further reading
- Metin Tuncel, “Bitlis,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), pp. 225–228: geography, religious buildings, trades and administrative history.
- Erika Glassen, “Bedlisi, Sharaf-al-Din Khan,” Encyclopaedia Iranica IV/1 (1989; updated 2013), pp. 76–77: biography, uncertain death date and the contents of the Sharafnama.
- Martin van Bruinessen, “Kurdistan in the 16th and 17th Centuries, as Reflected in Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname,” Journal of Kurdish Studies 3 (2000), pp. 1–11: Sharafnama (1597) and the emirate’s place in regional history.
- Robert Tatoyan, “Bitlis (Paghesh) – Religious Life: Churches and Monasteries, Part I,” Houshamadyan (18 July 2023): original archival reconstruction.
- Rosemary Russell, “Bitlis – Missionaries,” Houshamadyan (14 October 2016): research using Mount Holyoke archives, mission reports and photographs.
- Grace H. Knapp, The Tragedy of Bitlis (Fleming H. Revell, 1919), preface and chapters VII–VIII: primary accounts chiefly by Grisell M. McLaren and Myrtle O. Shane. Library of Congress copy, digitized by Internet Archive.
- Dosseman, Bitlis View of city 1387, 18 September 2005, CC BY-SA 4.0: original city photograph.