Bitlis (Bidlîs): The Kurdish Emirate and the Sharafnama
- Jamal Latif
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Introduction
Bitlis, known to Kurds as Bidlîs, is a historic city set deep in a steep river valley in southeastern Turkey, guarding the only natural pass between Lake Van and the Mesopotamian plains. For more than five centuries it was the seat of one of the most durable of all the Kurdish emirates — and the home of the prince who wrote the first great history of the Kurds.
This is the latest entry in our geographic series on Greater Kurdistan. Bitlis is a place where geography made history: a fortress town on a vital mountain road, ruled for generations by Kurdish princes who turned its remoteness into a kind of independence.
Quick Facts
Common Name: Bitlis
Kurdish Name: Bidlîs
Armenian Name: Baghesh (Paġeš)
Region: Bakur (Northern Kurdistan)
Province: Bitlis Province, Turkey
Setting: A steep valley on the Bitlis River, near Lake Van, at about 1,500 m elevation
Population: Around 53,000 in the city (2021)
Famous As: Capital of the long-lived Kurdish Emirate of Bitlis and home of Sharaf Khan Bidlisi
Key Landmarks: Bitlis Castle, the Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami), and the Şerefiye Mosque complex
Contents
Origins: A Fortress in the Pass
Bitlis owes its whole existence to a gap in the mountains. The city sits in the narrow valley of the Bitlis River, a tributary of the Tigris, commanding the single practical route between the Van basin and the lowlands toward Diyarbakir. Whoever held Bitlis held the road. By tradition its castle was founded in antiquity — a popular legend credits a general of Alexander the Great named Badlis — and the town appears in early Armenian sources as Baghesh, an important centre of the historic province of Aghdznik.
Captured by Arab armies in the seventh century, Bitlis then passed in turn among Armenian, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Mongol rulers, its fortress always the prize. Out of this turbulence emerged a lasting local power: a Kurdish dynasty that would hold the town for the better part of six hundred years.
The Emirate of Bitlis
From around the thirteenth century, Bitlis was the seat of a Kurdish emirate ruled by the Rojaki (Rozaki) tribal confederation. Caught between far larger empires — first the Mongols and their successors, later the Ottomans and the Safavids — the princes of Bitlis became masters of survival, bending to whichever power was strongest while preserving a remarkable degree of self-rule. Unlike ordinary provincial governors, the rulers of Bitlis held their land as a hereditary right and styled themselves not khan but emir, or mir — prince.
That autonomy was real enough that an Ottoman traveller could still marvel at it deep into the imperial period. Visiting in 1655, Evliya Çelebi described the near-royal court of Abdal Khan of Bitlis — a palace of hundreds of rooms, vast kitchens, and gardens with fountains — the household of a Kurdish prince who answered to the sultan only when he had to.
Sharaf Khan and the Sharafnama
Bitlis’s greatest gift to history was a book. Sharaf Khan Bidlisi (1543–1603), prince of Bitlis and head of the Rojaki line, spent his later years writing the Sharafnama, the “Book of Honour,” completed in 1597. It was the first systematic history of the Kurdish dynasties and ruling houses — the Marwanids, the Hasanwayhids, the Ayyubids of Saladin, and many others — and it remains the oldest and most important single source for the medieval history of the Kurds.
Written in Persian by a ruling prince about his own people, the Sharafnama is part chronicle, part act of self-definition; modern Kurdish writers have returned to it again and again as a foundation for a Kurdish national story. That such a work was produced in Bitlis is no accident: the town was a centre of learning as well as of power.
A Town of Mosques and Madrasas
Bitlis preserves more medieval and early-modern architecture than almost any other town in eastern Anatolia, most of it built from the honey-coloured local stone. Its Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) is one of the oldest Seljuk-era mosques in the region, with a distinctive conical-domed minaret. The Şerefiye Mosque complex — mosque, madrasa, soup kitchen, and tomb — was built by the Bitlis emir Şerefhan around 1529, and the İhlasiye Madrasa and Pasha Hammam add to a remarkably dense ensemble of princely buildings, most of them commissioned by the local Kurdish rulers.
The Fall of the Emirate
The long autonomy of Bitlis ended in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Ottoman state, centralising its power, moved to abolish the semi-independent Kurdish emirates one by one. In 1847 Bitlis was brought under direct Ottoman administration, and by 1849 the last emir had been removed — part of the same wave that ended Kurdish princely rule from Cizre to Hakkari.
Bitlis then became a provincial capital of the Ottoman Empire. By the late nineteenth century it was a substantial town with a large Armenian population alongside its Kurdish majority — a coexistence shattered by the catastrophe of the First World War.
Modern Bitlis
The early twentieth century was devastating for Bitlis. Its large Armenian community was destroyed in the genocide of 1915, and the town was fought over and briefly occupied by Russian forces during the First World War, sharply reducing its population and ruining its old weaving and dyeing trades.
Today Bitlis is a Kurdish-majority provincial town of around 53,000 people, scholars consistently identifying it among the most heavily Kurdish cities of the region. Its harsh winters, steep streets, and dense stock of historic stone buildings give it a character unlike anywhere else in eastern Turkey — a living reminder of the centuries when this was a Kurdish princely capital.
Timeline of Key Events
Antiquity — A fortress guards the Bitlis pass; known to Armenians as Baghesh.
7th century — Arab conquest; the town changes hands repeatedly.
13th century — The Kurdish Rojaki emirate of Bitlis takes shape.
1543–1603 — Life of Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, prince and historian.
1597 — Sharaf Khan completes the Sharafnama.
1655 — Evliya Çelebi describes the lavish court of Abdal Khan.
1847–1849 — The Ottomans abolish the emirate and impose direct rule.
1915 — The Armenian community of Bitlis is destroyed in the genocide.
1916 — Bitlis is fought over and briefly occupied during the First World War.
Debates and Controversies
Bitlis carries the weight of a genuinely shared and then sundered past. For centuries it was a town of Kurds and Armenians together; the Armenian name Baghesh, the ruined monasteries, and the churches recall a community that made up roughly a third of the population before 1915 and was annihilated in the genocide. Honest history neither erases that Armenian Bitlis nor denies the city’s long and continuous Kurdish identity — both are true. The Kurdish character of the emirate and its rulers is well attested, not least by Sharaf Khan’s own writing; the loss of the Armenians is a wound in the same history. A profile of Bitlis that mentions only one of these is incomplete.
Legacy and Significance
Bitlis matters to Kurdish history out of all proportion to its size. It was one of the most enduring of the Kurdish emirates, a self-governing princely state that outlasted most of its rivals, and it produced in the Sharafnama the founding text of Kurdish historiography. To walk its stone streets beneath the castle is to stand in a place where, for six centuries, Kurdish princes ruled in their own right — and where a prince once sat down to write his people’s history so it would not be forgotten.
Related Places and Topics
The Kurdish emirates and their long struggle with the Ottoman state. The Emirate of Bohtan at Cizre and the Emirate of Çemişgezek, fellow principalities recorded in the Sharafnama. Diyarbakir (Amed) and Silvan, the great cities to the west. Idris Bitlisi, the earlier Ottoman-Kurdish scholar from the same town.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Bitlis important in Kurdish history?
It was the seat of one of the longest-lasting Kurdish emirates, ruled by the Rojaki dynasty from roughly the 13th to the 19th century, and the home of Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, author of the Sharafnama, the first great history of the Kurds.
What is the Sharafnama?
The Sharafnama (“Book of Honour”), completed in 1597 by Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, prince of Bitlis, is the oldest systematic history of the Kurdish dynasties and a foundational source for Kurdish history.
Is Bitlis a Kurdish city?
Yes. Bitlis is a historically and presently Kurdish-majority city. Before 1915 it also had a large Armenian community, which was destroyed in the genocide.
What is there to see in Bitlis?
Bitlis Castle dominates the town, alongside an unusually rich collection of medieval and early-modern stone buildings — the Seljuk-era Grand Mosque, the 16th-century Şerefiye Mosque complex, the İhlasiye Madrasa, and the Pasha Hammam.
References and Further Reading
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