Diyarbakir (Amed): Ancient Amida, Capital of Bakur
- Rezan Babakir
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
Introduction
Diyarbakir, known to Kurds as Amed and to the ancient world as Amida, is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey and, for most Kurds, the de facto capital of Bakur — Northern Kurdistan. Ringed by some of the most complete ancient city walls on earth, built from the black basalt of the surrounding plain, it has been a fortress on the upper Tigris for more than three thousand years.
This is the third entry in our geographic series on Greater Kurdistan. If Erbil is the ancient heart of the south and Hasankeyf the lost jewel of the Tigris, Diyarbakir is the political and cultural capital of the Kurdish north — a city whose very name is contested and whose recent history runs from UNESCO recognition to the destruction of its old quarter.
Quick Facts
Common Name: Diyarbakir (Diyarbakır)
Kurdish Name: Amed
Ancient Names: Amida; Amid; Amedu / Amedi (Assyrian); Tigranakert (Armenian)
Name Origin: “Diyar Bakr” — the abode of the Arab Banu Bakr tribe
Region: Bakur (Northern Kurdistan)
Province: Diyarbakir Province, Turkey
River: The Tigris
Population: Around 1.8 million in the metropolitan province (2021–2023 estimates)
Key Landmark: The black basalt city walls and Hevsel Gardens — UNESCO World Heritage (2015)
Known For: Its ancient walls, deep multi-ethnic history, and role as the political heart of Kurdish Turkey
Contents
Origins: Amedu and the Assyrians
There has been a walled settlement on the high basalt plateau above the Tigris since at least the second millennium BC. In the early first millennium it was the capital of a small state called Bit Zamani and was known as Amedu — the root of both the modern Kurdish name Amed and the classical Amida. In 866 BC the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II captured the “royal city” of Amedu, and the town became a node on the great trade roads of the ancient Near East, including the Persian Royal Road that crossed the Tigris nearby.
Around 77 BC the Armenian king Tigranes the Great is associated with rebuilding the city as one of several places called Tigranakert, though that identification is debated by historians. What is certain is that, by the Roman period, Amida had become a strategic prize on the frontier between two empires.
Amida: Rome, Persia and the Black Walls
For the Romans, the upper Tigris was a vital frontier with Sasanian Persia, and Amida was its anchor. Around the year 349 the emperor Constantius II enlarged the city and girded it with the massive black basalt walls whose foundations still stand today. Ten years later, in 359, the Persian king Shapur II besieged Amida; after roughly two and a half months the city fell, an episode described in vivid detail by the Roman officer and historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who was present. The emperor Julian retook the region in 363, and Amida was besieged again by the Sasanian king Kavad I in 502–503.
The city changed hands repeatedly between Rome, Byzantium and Persia, a frontier fortress whose walls were rebuilt and reinforced with each new master. By the time the Arabs arrived, Amida was already ancient.
From Amid to Diyar Bakr: The Islamic Centuries
Arab armies took the city around 639. It came to lie within the territory of the Banu Bakr tribe, and the district name — Diyar Bakr, “the abode of Bakr” — eventually attached itself to the city itself. In the 10th and 11th centuries the surrounding region was ruled by the Marwanids, a Kurdish dynasty centred on nearby Mayyafariqin (modern Silvan), one of the first great Kurdish principalities. Under the Seljuks, the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir (Ulu Cami) took its present form around 1091, making it one of the oldest mosques in Anatolia.
Artuqids, Ayyubids, the Aq Qoyunlu and briefly the Safavids each held the city before the Ottomans took it in 1516, making it the capital of a large and prosperous frontier province. Throughout these centuries Amid was a deeply mixed city, home to Muslims alongside large Armenian, Assyrian and other Christian communities — a diversity reflected in monuments such as the great Armenian church of Surp Giragos.
The Walls of Diyarbakir and the Hevsel Gardens
Diyarbakir’s defining monument is its wall: a near-continuous circuit of black basalt running roughly 5.8 kilometres around the old city, studded with scores of towers, gates and inscriptions recording centuries of repairs. It is among the longest and best-preserved stretches of pre-modern city wall anywhere in the world. Below the walls, between the ramparts and the Tigris, lie the fertile Hevsel Gardens, which have supplied the city with food for millennia.
In 2015, UNESCO inscribed the Diyarbakir Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List, recognising both the walls and the living agricultural landscape below them.
The Kurdish Capital: Amed in the Modern Era
The city received its official modern Turkish name, Diyarbakır, in 1937, when the older Diyarbekir was re-spelled and popularly reinterpreted to suggest bakır, the Turkish word for copper. After the First World War the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) had envisaged the area as part of a possible Kurdish state, but that prospect was set aside after the Treaty of Lausanne.
In the decades since, Diyarbakir has become the unmistakable political and cultural centre of Kurdish Turkey. It hosts the headquarters of Kurdish political parties and civil-society organisations and a large displaced population, and it has reclaimed its Kurdish name: Kurds widely call the city Amed, and in 2014 the local football club was renamed Amedspor. Most of its residents speak Kurdish in daily life, and many regard it as the de facto capital of Kurdistan.
Sur: Conflict and Destruction
That symbolic weight made the city a focal point of the renewed Kurdish–Turkish conflict after 2015. The fighting concentrated on Sur, the historic walled old town. After Kurdish militants erected barricades and dug in, the authorities declared a round-the-clock curfew beginning on 11 December 2015, and Turkish security forces fought a months-long operation to retake the district, which ended in March 2016. Much of Sur was destroyed; by some accounts around 50,000 of its 70,000 residents were displaced, and the state then launched a sweeping expropriation and reconstruction programme.
The political crackdown followed. Diyarbakir’s elected co-mayors, Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, were detained in 2016; Kışanak was later sentenced to more than fourteen years in prison. Government-appointed trustees replaced elected mayors here and across the southeast in 2016 and again after 2019, before pro-Kurdish candidates won the city back in 2024. In February 2023 the twin earthquakes that devastated the region also damaged sections of the historic walls.
Timeline of Key Events
2nd millennium BC — A walled settlement exists on the site.
866 BC — Ashurnasirpal II captures Amedu, capital of Bit Zamani.
c. 77 BC — Associated with Tigranes the Great as Tigranakert (disputed).
c. 349 AD — Constantius II builds the great black basalt walls.
359 — Shapur II of Persia besieges and takes Amida.
c. 639 — Arab conquest; the region becomes Diyar Bakr.
10th–11th c. — The Kurdish Marwanid dynasty rules the region.
c. 1091 — The Great Mosque takes its Seljuk form.
1516 — Ottoman conquest; capital of a major province.
1937 — Officially renamed Diyarbakır.
2015 — Walls and Hevsel Gardens inscribed by UNESCO.
2015–2016 — The Sur curfew and operation; much of the old town destroyed.
2023 — Earthquakes damage parts of the city walls.
Debates and Controversies
Diyarbakir’s history is genuinely multi-ethnic, and honest accounts resist flattening it. The city was for centuries home to large Armenian and Assyrian Christian populations, most of whom were killed or driven out during the genocides of 1915; their churches, like the restored Surp Giragos, survive as reminders. Its ancient identity is also contested — the link to Armenian Tigranakert, for instance, is debated. Today Diyarbakir is overwhelmingly Kurdish and stands as the political heart of Kurdish Turkey, but it became so through painful demographic upheavals, not timeless homogeneity. The recent reconstruction of Sur is itself disputed: the state frames it as restoration, while many former residents and heritage advocates describe it as the erasure of a living Kurdish quarter and the displacement of its people.
Legacy and Significance
No city is more bound up with modern Kurdish identity in Turkey than Diyarbakir. Its black walls make it one of the great fortified cities of the ancient world; its bazaars, mosques and churches record a layered past shared by many peoples; and its politics have made it the symbolic capital of the Kurdish movement. To call the city Amed is, for many Kurds, itself a statement — an insistence that the place has a Kurdish name, a Kurdish present, and a future still being fought over.
Related Places and Topics
Silvan (Mayyafariqin) — capital of the Kurdish Marwanid dynasty. Hasankeyf, downstream on the Tigris. Mardin and Cizre, the other great cities of the southeast. Erbil, the ancient capital of the south. The Marwanids and the early Kurdish emirates. The Treaty of Sèvres and Kurdish statehood. The Kurdish–Turkish conflict.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do Kurds call Diyarbakir “Amed”?
Amed derives from the city’s most ancient name, Amedu/Amida, used long before the Arabic-derived “Diyarbakir.” Kurds have revived Amed as the city’s Kurdish name, and it carries strong symbolic and political weight as the de facto capital of Bakur.
What is Diyarbakir famous for?
Its enormous black basalt city walls — among the longest and best-preserved ancient walls in the world — together with the Hevsel Gardens, recognised by UNESCO in 2015, and its role as the political and cultural centre of Kurds in Turkey.
Is Diyarbakir a Kurdish city?
Today it is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey and is widely seen as the de facto Kurdish capital. Historically, however, it was a deeply mixed city with major Armenian and Assyrian Christian communities, most of whom were lost in the 1915 genocides.
What happened in Sur in 2015–2016?
Sur, the historic walled old town, became a battleground in the renewed Kurdish–Turkish conflict. A months-long curfew and military operation from December 2015 destroyed much of the district and displaced tens of thousands of residents.
References and Further Reading
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