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120-463: Diyarbakır ( Turkish pronunciation: [diˈjaɾ.bakɯɾ] ; Armenian : Տիգրանակերտ , romanized :  Tigranakert , local pronunciation: Dikranagerd ; Kurdish : Amed ; Syriac : ܐܡܝܕ , romanized :  Āmīd ), formerly Diyarbekir , is the largest Kurdish -majority city in Turkey . It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province . Situated around a high plateau by

240-520: A consistent Proto-Indo-European pattern distinct from Iranian, and that the inflectional morphology was different from that of Iranian languages. The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement and postulated that

360-461: A continuous occupation from a hunter-gathering lifestyle (based on hunting, and gathering and grinding of wild grains) to an economy based mainly on growing (still wild varieties of) wheat, barley and legumes from around 9000 BC (see PPNA ). Domestication of goats and sheep followed within a few generations, but did not become widespread for more than a millennium (see PPNB ). Weaving and pottery followed about two thousand years later. From Al-Jazirah

480-526: A letter to a British Vice-Consul, he declared: "The Kurdish nation is a people apart... we want our affairs to be in our hands." In 1895 an estimated 25,000 Armenians and Assyrians were massacred in Diyarbekir Vilayet , including in the city. At the turn of the 19th century, the Christian population of the city was mainly made up of Armenians and Syriac Orthodox Christians . The city

600-468: A loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian եւ yev , ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi ). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities. Loan words from Iranian languages , along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led some linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that

720-665: A main focal point of the conflict between the Turkish state and various Kurdish separatist groups, and is seen by many Kurds as the de facto capital of Kurdistan . The city was intended to become the capital of an independent Kurdistan following the Treaty of Sèvres , but this was disregarded following subsequent political developments. On 6 February 2023 Diyarbakır was affected by the twin Turkey-Syria earthquakes , which inflicted some damage on its city walls. In ancient times

840-506: A member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)". The Turkish government ordered a general internet blackout after the arrest. Nevertheless, on 26 October, several thousand demonstrators at Diyarbakir city hall demanded the mayors' release. Some days later, the Turkish government appointed an unelected state trustee as the mayor. In November, public prosecutors demanded a 230-year prison sentence for Kışanak. In January 2017,

960-486: A military victory. Cities like Emar on the Upper Euphrates and Abarsal (location unknown) were vassals of Ebla. Ebla exchanged gifts with Nagar, and a royal marriage was concluded between the daughter of a king of Ebla and the son of his counterpart at Nagar. The archives also contain letters from more distant kingdoms, such as Kish and possibly Hamazi, although it is also possible that there were cities with

1080-425: A network of schools where modern Armenian was taught, dramatically increased the rate of literacy (in spite of the obstacles by the colonial administrators), even in remote rural areas. The emergence of literary works entirely written in the modern versions increasingly legitimized the language's existence. By the turn of the 20th century both varieties of the one modern Armenian language prevailed over Grabar and opened

1200-535: A population of 30,000 in the 1930s to 65,000 by 1956, to 140,000 by 1970, to 400,000 by 1990, and eventually swelled to about 1.5 million by 1997. During the 1990s, the city grew dramatically due to the immigrant population from thousands of Kurdish villages depopulated by Turkey during the Kurdish–Turkish conflict . According to a November 2006 survey by the Sûr Municipality, 72% of the inhabitants of

1320-647: A prolific manufacturing (food processing and cloth weaving) system. The region's position at the border of the Sasanian and Byzantine territories also made it an important commercial center, and advantage that the region continued to enjoy, even after the Muslim conquest of Persia and Byzantine possessions in the Levant . Al-Jazira included the Roman/Byzantine provinces of Osroene and Mesopotamia , as well as

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1440-667: A rectangular area between the Lake Urmia to Palu and from the southern shores of Lake Van to Cizre and the beginnings of the Syrian Desert , although its borders saw some changes over time. The city was an important military base for controlling the region and at the same time a thriving city noted for its craftsmen, producing glass and metalwork. For example, the doors of Rumi 's tomb in Konya were made in Diyarbakır, as were

1560-503: A reorganization of the provinces in 1952, Diyarbakır city was made the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province . In 1993, Diyarbakir was established as a Metropolitan Municipality. Its districts are Bağlar , Bismil , Ergani , Hazro , Kayapinar , Çermik , Çinar , Eğil , Dicle , Kulp , Kocaköy , Lice , Silvan , Sur , Yenişehir , Hani and Çüngüş . The American-Turkish Pirinçlik Air Force Base near Diyarbakır

1680-540: A school book named "Our City, Diyarbakir" (" Şehrimiz Diyarbakır" in Turkish ) on Diyarbakir Province in which it claims that a Turkish similar to that spoken in Baku is spoken in the city along with regional languages like Arabic , Persian , Kurdish , Turkmen and Caucasian languages . Critics link this to a general trend towards anti-Kurdish sentiment in Turkey. There is local jewelry making and other craftwork in

1800-458: A similar fate after its Christian population left when it was annexed to Turkey. The Christian population of the city crossed the border into Syria and settled in Qamishli , which was separated by the railway (new border) from Nusaybin. Nusaybin became Kurdish and Qamishli became an Assyrian city. Things soon changed, however, with the immigration of Kurds beginning in 1926 following the failure of

1920-416: A supplement to ongoing hunting and gathering practices. This raises questions about whether (semi)sedentary hunter-gatherer communities were sufficiently affluent and numerous to coordinate and carry out large-scale communal construction projects. Alternatively, it suggests the possibility that well-established agricultural societies may have existed much earlier than previously recognized. Notably, Göbekli Tepe

2040-583: Is Beth Nahrain (ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ) . Historically, the name could be restricted to the Sinjar plain coming down from the Sinjar Mountains , or expanded to embrace the entire plateau east of the coastal ranges. In pre- Abbasid times the western and eastern boundaries seem to have fluctuated, sometimes including what is now northern Syria to the west and Adiabene in the east. Al-Jazira is characterised as an outwash or alluvial plain , quite distinct from

2160-456: Is an annual Watermelon Festival. The core of Diyarbakır is surrounded by an almost intact set of high walls of black basalt forming a 5.5 km (3.4 mi) circle around the old city. There are four gates into the old city and 82 watch-towers on the walls, which were built in antiquity and restored and extended by the Roman emperor Constantius II in 349. The area inside the walls is known as

2280-552: Is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages . It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological changes within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization , although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian ), Albanian and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian

2400-561: Is clearly the dialect to be most closely related to Armenian. Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the augment and a negator derived from the set phrase in the Proto-Indo-European language * ne h₂oyu kʷid ("never anything" or "always nothing"),

2520-583: Is considered one of the most important cultural and historical traditions of these regions. Lighting a fire, wearing new clothes, holding a dance ceremony, and giving gifts to each other are some of the activities that are done in this celebration. Diyarbakır's cuisine includes lamb dishes which use spices such as black pepper , sumac and coriander ; rice, bulgur and butter. Local dishes include Meftune, lamb meat and vegetables with garlic and sumac, and Kaburga Dolması, baked lamb's ribs stuffed with rice, almonds and spices. Watermelons are grown locally and there

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2640-474: Is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós , with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá ), Avestan ( ərəzifiia ), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios ). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian eue ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely

2760-473: Is extremely important archeologically. This is the area where the earliest signs of agriculture and domestication of animals have been found, and thus the starting point leading to civilization and the modern world. Al-Jazirah includes the mountain Karaca Dağ in southern Turkey, where the closest relative to modern wheat still grows wild. At several sites (e.g. Hallan Çemi, Abu Hureyra , Mureybet ) we can see

2880-526: Is located just 32 km from Karaca Dağ. The questions raised by Göbekli Tepe have led to intense and creative discussions among archeologists of the Middle East. Excavations at Göbekli Tepe continues, only about 5 percent has been revealed so far. Sumerians are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia. The Uruk period ( c.  4000 to 3100 BC) existed from

3000-471: Is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian , although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well. One notable loanword from Anatolian is Armenian xalam , "skull", cognate to Hittite ḫalanta , "head". In 1985,

3120-582: Is separated into three eras: Old Assyrian Empire (circa 2050–1750 BC), Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), Median Empire (678-549 BC) and Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC). The region fell to the Assyrians' southern brethren, the Babylonians in 605 BC, and from 539 BC it became part of the Achaemenid Empire ; Achaemenid Assyria was known as Athura . From 323 BC, it was ruled by

3240-443: Is subject to hot air masses from the deserts of Syria and Iraq to the south. The highest recorded temperature was 46.2 °C (112.64 °F) on 21 July 1937. Winters are chilly with moderate precipitation and frosty nights. Snowfall is quite common between the months of December and March, snowing for a week or two. The lowest recorded temperature was −24.2 °C (−10.12 °F) on 11 January 1933. Highest recorded snow depth

3360-535: Is the working language. Armenian (without reference to a specific variety) is officially recognized as a minority language in Cyprus , Hungary , Iraq , Poland , Romania , and Ukraine . It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia constitutes the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq , northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey , in

3480-587: The 2019 municipal elections , Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı of the HDP party was elected mayor of Diyarbakir. In August 2019 he was dismissed and subsequently sentenced to 9 years and 4 months imprisonment accused of supporting terrorism as part of a government crackdown against politicians of the Kurdish HDP party; the Turkish state appointed Münir Karaloğlu in his place. Other Kurdish mayors in Kurdish cities across

3600-528: The Arameans , Assyrians , Urartu , Armenians , Achaemenid Persians , Medes , Seleucids , and Parthians . The Roman Republic gained control of the city in 66 BC, by which stage it was named "Amida". In 359, Shapur II of Persia captured Amida after a siege of 73 days. According to the Synecdemus of Hierocles , as Amida, Diyarbakır was the major city of the Roman province of Mesopotamia . It

3720-466: The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet (" օ " and " ֆ "), bringing the total number to 38. The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek (951–1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style of Old Armenian by the 10th century. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of

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3840-563: The Armenian genocide , mostly in the diaspora ). The differences between them are considerable but they are mutually intelligible after significant exposure. Some subdialects such as Homshetsi are not mutually intelligible with other varieties. Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th-century BC Behistun Inscription and in Xenophon 's 4th century BC history, The Anabasis ),

3960-615: The Ayyubids in 1183. Ayyubid control lasted until the Mongol invasions of Anatolia , with its last Ayyubid ruler Al-Kamil Muhammad . The Mongols of Hulagu captured of the city in 1260 ( Siege of Mayyāfāriqīn ), following a long siege with a small Mongol force and a much larger Georgian and Armenian force under the Georgian leader Hasan Brosh . Between the Mongol occupation and conquest by

4080-700: The Church of the Virgin Mary , remains the city's cathedral and the see of the bishop of Diyarbakır in the Syriac Orthodox Church . Another ancient church, the Church of Mar Cosmas, was seen by the British explorer Gertrude Bell in 1911 but was destroyed in 1930, while the former Church of Saint George , in the walled citadel, may originally have been built for Muslim use or for the Church of

4200-822: The First Crusade , the western part came into Crusader hands as the County of Edessa , while the rest was ruled by a succession of semi-independent Turkish rulers until taken over by the Zengids , and eventually the Kurdish Ayyubids . Thereafter the northern and eastern portions were ruled initially by the Artuqids , laterly by the Kara Koyunlu and Akkoyunlu Turcomans and finally by the Safavids ; while

4320-782: The Greek Seleucid Empire , the Greeks corrupting the name to Syria , which they also applied to Aram . It then fell to the Parthians and Romans and was renamed Assyria by both. The area was still known as Asōristān under the Sasanian Empire until the Muslim conquest of Persia , when it was renamed al-Jazira. Since pre-Arab and pre-Islamic times, al-Jazira has been an economically prosperous region with various agricultural (fruit and cereal) products, as well as

4440-641: The Greek language , the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages . Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-3rd millennium BC. Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek ( s > h ). Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who believe

4560-643: The Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands , the " Armenian hypothesis ". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection. Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic , splitting into Proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian ). Classical Armenian (Arm: grabar ), attested from

4680-542: The Mekhitarists . The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar , was published in grabar in 1794. The classical form borrowed numerous words from Middle Iranian languages , primarily Parthian , and contains smaller inventories of loanwords from Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Mongol, Persian, and indigenous languages such as Urartian . An effort to modernize the language in Bagratid Armenia and

4800-779: The Muslim conquest of the Levant during the early Arab–Byzantine wars , Amida fell to the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate led by Iyad ibn Ghanm , and the Great Mosque of Amida was constructed afterwards in the city's centre, possibly on the site of the Heraclian Church of Saint Thomas. There were as many as five Christian monasteries in the city, including the Zuqnin Monastery and several ancient churches mentioned by John of Ephesus. One of these,

4920-588: The Natufian culture ). Further surprises followed in the 1990s with the spectacular finds of the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey. The earliest of these apparently ritual buildings are from before 9000 BC—over five thousand years older than Stonehenge —and thus the absolute oldest known megalithic structures anywhere. As far as current knowledge goes, there were no firmly established farming societies during that time period. Farming appeared to be in an experimental stage, serving primarily as

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5040-633: The Safavid dynasty of Iran, the Kara Koyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu – two Turkoman confederations – were in control of the city in succession. Diyarbakır was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1514 by Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha , in the reign of the sultan Selim I ( r.  1512–1520 ). Mohammad Khan Ustajlu , the Safavid governor of Diyarbakir, was evicted from the city and killed in the following Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. The Classical Age of

5160-863: The Shatt al-Arab in the Basra Governorate of Iraq, and their sources in eastern Turkey are in close proximity. The region extends south from the mountains of Anatolia , east from the hills on the left bank of the Euphrates river, west from the mountains on the right bank of the Tigris river and includes the Sinjar plain. It extends down the Tigris to Samarra and down the Euphrates to Hit, Iraq . The Khabur runs for over 400 km (250 mi) across

5280-504: The Syrian Desert and lower-lying central Mesopotamia ; however, the area includes eroded hills and incised streams. The region has several parts to it. In the northwest is one of the largest salt flats in the world, Sabkhat al-Jabbul . Further south, extending from Mosul to near Basra is a sandy desert not unlike the Empty Quarter . In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the region has been plagued by drought. Al-Jazirah

5400-617: The 1915 Armenian genocide . The last diocesan bishop of the see, Andreas Elias Celebian, was killed with some 600 of his flock in the summer of 1915. An eparchy for the local members of the Syriac Catholic Church was established in 1862. Persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War brought an end to the existence of both these Syrian residential sees. In 639, as part of

5520-408: The 5th century to the 19th century as the literary standard (up to the 11th century also as a spoken language with different varieties), was partially superseded by Middle Armenian , attested from the 12th century to the 18th century. Specialized literature prefers "Old Armenian" for grabar as a whole, and designates as "Classical" the language used in the 5th century literature, "Post-Classical" from

5640-681: The Amuda massacre of August 9, 1937. This massacre, carried out by the Kurd Saeed Agha, emptied the city of its Assyrian population. In 1941, the Assyrian community of al-Malikiyah were subjected to a vicious assault. Even though the assault failed, the Assyrians were terrorized and left in large numbers, and the immigration of Kurds from Turkey to the area have converted al-Malikiya, al-Darbasiyah and Amuda to completely Kurdish cities. The historically-important Christian city of Nusaybin had

5760-481: The Armenian language by adding well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language in their writings. The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary. "A Word of Wisdom", a poem by Hovhannes Sargavak devoted to a starling, legitimizes poetry devoted to nature, love, or female beauty. Gradually,

5880-817: The East . The city was part of the Umayyad Caliphate and then the Abbasid Caliphate , but then came under more local rule until its recovery in 899 by forces loyal to the caliph al-Mu'tadid ( r.  892–902 ) before falling under the sway of first the Hamdanid dynasty and then the Buyid dynasty , followed by a period of control by the Marwanids . The city was taken by the Seljuks in 1085 and by

6000-411: The Hamdanid power put the region back under the nominal rule of the Caliphs of Baghdad, while actual control was in the hands of the Buyid brothers who had conquered Baghdad itself. At the turn of the 11th century, the area came under the rule of a number of local dynasties, the Numayrids , the Mirdasids , and the Uqaylids , who persisted until the conquest by the Seljuq Empire . With the arrival of

6120-403: The Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa. A notable example is arciv , meaning "eagle", believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu . This word

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6240-400: The Ottoman Empire saw it expand into Western Armenia and all but the eastern regions of Kurdistan at the expense of the Safavids. From the early 16th century, the city and the wider region was the source of intrigue between the Safavids and the Ottoman Empire , both of whom sought the support of the Kurdish chieftains around Idris Bitlisi . It was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1514 in

6360-400: The Parthian/Persian provinces of Asōristān, Arbayestan , Nisibis , and Mosul . The conquest of the region took place under the early Caliphate that left the general administration of the region intact, with the exception of levying the jizya tax on the population. At the time of Mu‘awiyah , governor of Syria and the later of the Umayyad Caliphate ), the administration of al-Jazira

6480-440: The Persians under Kavad I ( r.  488–531 ) in the second Siege of Amida in 502–503, part of the Anastasian War . Either the emperor Anastasius Dicorus ( r.  491–518 ) or the emperor Justinian the Great ( r.  527–565 ) rebuilt the walls of Amida, a feat of defensive architecture praised by the Greek historian Procopius . As recorded by the works of John of Ephesus , Zacharias Rhetor , and Procopius,

6600-411: The Romans and Persians continued to contest the area, and in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 Amida was captured and held by the Persians for twenty-six years, being recovered in 628 for the Romans by the emperor Heraclius ( r.  610–641 ), who also founded a church in the city on his return to Constantinople ( Istanbul ) from Persia the following year. Syriac Christianity took hold in

6720-546: The Russian Empire), removed almost all of their Turkish lexical influences in the 20th century, primarily following the Armenian genocide . In addition to Armenia and Turkey, where it is indigenous , Armenian is spoken among the diaspora . According to Ethnologue , globally there are 1.6 million Western Armenian speakers and 3.7 million Eastern Armenian speakers, totalling 5.3 million Armenian speakers. In Georgia, Armenian speakers are concentrated in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki districts where they represent over 90% of

6840-404: The Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were further consolidated. Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to Istanbul , whereas Tbilisi became

6960-654: The Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages . Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms such as ałaxin "slave girl" ( ← Hurr. al(l)a(e)ḫḫenne ), cov "sea" ( ← Urart. ṣûǝ "(inland) sea"), ułt "camel" ( ← Hurr. uḷtu ), and xnjor "apple (tree)" ( ← Hurr. ḫinzuri ). Some of

7080-406: The Sur district; before its recent demolition and redevelopment this district had 599 registered historical buildings. Nearby is Karaca Dağ . Diyarbakır has a Mediterranean ( Köppen climate classification : Csa ) or an anomalously warm, hot-summer oceanic climate ( Trewartha climate classification : Doa ). Summers are very hot and very dry, due to its location on the Mesopotamian plain which

7200-404: The Turkish government. Tenorite was the primary type of copper mined. It was mined by hand by Kurds. A large portion of the ore was exported to England. The region also produced iron , gypsum , coal , chalk , lime , jet , and quartz , but primarily for local use. The city is served by Diyarbakır Airport and Diyarbakır railway station . In 1935 the railway between Elazığ and Diyarbakır

7320-502: The Turkish state. Inmates have been subject to torture, rape, humiliation, beating, murder and other abuses. Historically, Diyarbakır produced wheat and sesame . They would preserve the wheat in warehouses , with coverings of straw and twigs from licorice trees. This system would allow the wheat to be preserved for up to ten years. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Diyarbakır exported raisins , almonds , and apricots to Europe. Angora goats were raised, and wool and mohair

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7440-421: The ancient Mesopotamians . Demographics saw huge shifts during the first half of the 20th century. Thousands of Assyrian refugees entered into Syrian Jazira province from Turkey following the Assyrian genocide of World War I. Additionally, in 1933 a further 24,000 Assyrian Christians fled into the area, following the Simele massacre in the Mosul region of northern Iraq. Violence against Christians changed

7560-412: The area. Folk dancing to the drum and zurna (pipe) are a part of weddings and celebrations in the area. The Diyarbakir Municipality Theatre was founded in 1990, and had to close its doors in 1995. It was re-opened in 1999, under Mayor Osman Baydemir . It was closed down in 2016 after the dismissal of the mayor in 2016. The Municipality City Theatre also performed plays in the Kurdish language . One of

7680-468: The banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress , it is the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey . It is the second-largest city in the Southeastern Anatolia Region . As of December 2021, the Metropolitan Province population was 1,791,373 of whom 1,129,218 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of the 4 urban districts ( Bağlar , Kayapınar , Sur and Yenişehir ). Diyarbakır has been

7800-414: The campaigns of Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha , under the rule of Sultan Selim I . Mohammad Khan Ustajlu , the Safavid Governor of Diyarbakir, was evicted from the city and killed in the following Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. Following their victory, the Ottomans established the Diyarbekir Eyalet with its administrative centre in Diyarbakır. The Eyalet of Diyarbakır corresponded to today's Turkish Kurdistan ,

7920-434: The center of Armenians living under Russian rule. These two cosmopolitan cities very soon became the primary poles of Armenian intellectual and cultural life. The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as many new ideas sweeping Europe, reached Armenians living in both regions. This created an ever-growing need to elevate the vernacular, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to

8040-508: The city and after expressing uncertainty on the exact etymology of the city's name, "Diyarbekir", in December of the same year ordered that it be renamed "Diyarbakır", which means "land of copper" in Turkish after the abundant resources of copper around the city. This was one of the early examples of the Turkification process of non-Turkish place names, in which non-Turkish (Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic and other) geographical names were changed to Turkish alternatives. The modern Armenian name of

8160-482: The city and district were restored and government officials were looking towards tourism again. Many residences and buildings collapsed or suffered substantial damage in the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes around 200 miles (300 km) from the epicentre. A Turkish professor and former journalist from the country commented, "It is like having an epicenter of an earthquake in Harrisburg and buildings in New York City are collapsing." The most notable football clubs of

8280-573: The city are Diyarbakırspor (established 1968) and Amed S.F.K. (established 1990), with Deniz Naki being one of the most notable footballers from the city. The women's football team Amed S.K. were promoted at the end of the 2016–17 Turkish Women's Second Football League season to the Women's First League . In the 2014 local elections , Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) were elected co-mayors of Diyarbakır. However, on 25 October 2016, both were detained by Turkish authorities "on thinly supported charges of being

8400-413: The city is Tigranakert ( Տիգրանակերտ ). It is known as Amed in Kurdish and in Syriac as ܐܡܝܕ (Āmīd). People have inhabited the area around Diyarbakır since the Stone Age. The first major civilization to establish itself in the region of Diyarbakır was the Hurrian kingdom of the Mitanni . It was then ruled by a succession of nearly every polity that controlled Upper Mesopotamia , including

8520-457: The city was known as Amida , a name which could derive from an older Assyrian toponym Amedi . The name Āmid was also used in Arabic . The name Amit is found in official documents of the Empire of Trebizond from 1358. After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the city became known as Diyar Bakr (Arabic: ديار بكر , romanized:  Diyār Bakr , lit.   'the abode of [the tribe of] Bakr'), in reference to

8640-464: The city's "urban regeneration" policy was one of demolition and redevelopment rather than one of repairing cultural assets damaged during the recent civil conflict, and because of that many registered historic buildings had been completely destroyed. The extent of the loss of non-registered historic structures is unknown because any historic building fragments revealed during the demolition of modern structures were also demolished. As of 2021, large parts of

8760-771: The demographics of Upper Mesopotamia. Some Kurdish and Persian tribes cooperated with Ottoman authorities in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides . In the middle of the 19th century, and due to the wars between the Kurdish Buhti amirs and the Turks, many Christians in the Siirt area were killed by the Kurds. In Syria's Jazira province, the French official reports show the existence of 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. After

8880-646: The direct rule of the government in Baghdad. At this time, al-Jazira was one of the highest tax-yielding provinces of the Abbasid Empire. During the early history of Islam, al-Jazira became a center for the Kharijite movement and had to be constantly subdued by various caliphs. In the 920s, the local Hamdanid dynasty established an autonomous state with two branches in al-Jazira (under Nasir al-Dawla ) and Northern Syria (under Sayf al-Dawla ). The demise of

9000-461: The early conquering Arab armies. Various conquerors tried, in vain, to bind various cities of the former Sassanian provinces, as well as the newly conquered Byzantine provinces of Mesopotamia, into a coherent unit under their own rule. The control of the region, however, was essential to any power centered in Baghdad . Consequently, the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate brought al-Jazira under

9120-511: The end of 1930. Under the French Mandate of Syria, newly-arriving Kurds were granted citizenship by French Mandate authorities and enjoyed considerable rights as the French Mandate authority encouraged minority autonomy as part of a divide and rule strategy and recruited heavily from the Kurds and other minority groups, such as Alawite and Druze , for its local armed forces. Assyrian Christians began to emigrate from Syria after

9240-580: The existence of the two modern versions of the same language was sanctioned even more clearly. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1990) used Eastern Armenian as its official language, whereas the diaspora created after the Armenian genocide preserved the Western Armenian dialect. The two modern literary dialects, Western (originally associated with writers in the Ottoman Empire) and Eastern (originally associated with writers in

9360-619: The failed Kurdish rebellions in Kemalist Turkey in the mid 1920s, there was a large influx of Kurds to Syrian Jazira province , that fell under the occupation of French Mandate authorities to escape the subsequent Turkish onslaught. It is estimated that 25,000 Kurds fled at this time to northern Syria, under French Mandate authorities , who encouraged their immigration, and granted them Syrian citizenship. A new wave of refugees arrived in 1929. The mandatory authorities continued to encourage Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939,

9480-710: The gold and silver decorated doors of the tomb of Ebu Hanife in Baghdad . Ottoman rule was confirmed by the 1555 Peace of Amasya which followed the Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555) . Concerned with independent-mindedness of the Kurdish principalities, the Ottomans sought to curb their influence and bring them under the control of the central government in Constantinople . However, removal from power of these hereditary principalities led to more instability in

9600-425: The hypothetical Mushki language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language. W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages , based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels. Unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies ), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy )

9720-509: The idea of farming along with the domesticated seeds spread first to the rest of the Levant and then to North-Africa, Europe and eastwards through Mesopotamia all the way to present-day Pakistan (see Mehrgarh ). Earlier archeologists worked on the assumption that agriculture was a prerequisite to a sedentary lifestyle, but excavations in Israel and Lebanon surprised science by showing that a sedentary lifestyle actually came before agriculture (see

9840-470: The interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others took the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. These changes represented the nature of the literary style and syntax, but they did not constitute immense changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or

9960-434: The late 5th to 8th centuries, and "Late Grabar" that of the period covering the 8th to 11th centuries. Later, it was used mainly in religious and specialized literature, with the exception of a revival during the early modern period, when attempts were made to establish it as the language of a literary renaissance, with neoclassical inclinations, through the creation and dissemination of literature in varied genres, especially by

10080-567: The morphology of the language. Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as parallelism . In the 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland was once again divided. This time Eastern Armenia was conquered from Qajar Iran by the Russian Empire , while Western Armenia , containing two thirds of historical Armenia, remained under Ottoman control. The antagonistic relationship between

10200-464: The municipality use Kurdish most often in their daily speech due to the overwhelming Kurdish majority in the city, followed by minorities of Assyrian , Armenian and Turkish . There are some Alevi Turkmen villages around Diyarbakır's old city , but there are no official reports about their population numbers. There have been attempts by Turkish lawmakers to deny Diyarbakır's Kurdish majority identity, with Turkey's Education Ministry releasing

10320-604: The north it includes the Turkish provinces of Şanlıurfa , Mardin , and parts of Diyarbakır Province . The name al-Jazira has been used since the 7th century AD by Islamic sources to refer to the northern section of Mesopotamia, while the Lower Mesopotamia, also known as Sawād , is the southern part of Mesopotamia. The name means "island", and at one time referred to the land between the two rivers, which in Syriac

10440-479: The northern Middle East . Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been known by the traditional Arabic name of al-Jazira ( Arabic : الجزيرة "the island", also transliterated Djazirah , Djezirah , Jazirah ) and the Syriac variant Gāzartā or Gozarto ( ܓܙܪܬܐ ). The Euphrates and Tigris rivers transform Mesopotamia into almost an island, as they are joined together at

10560-403: The now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects existed in the traditional Armenian regions, which, different as they were, had certain morphological and phonetic features in common. On the basis of these features two major standards emerged: Both centers vigorously pursued the promotion of Ashkharhabar. The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of

10680-541: The official status of the Armenian language. Eastern Armenian is the official variant used, making it the prestige variety while other variants have been excluded from national institutions. Indeed, Western Armenian is perceived by some as a mere dialect. Armenian was also official in the Republic of Artsakh . It is recognized as an official language of the Eurasian Economic Union although Russian

10800-639: The oldest surviving Armenian-language writing is etched in stone on Armenian temples and is called Mehenagir . The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Georgian alphabet and the Caucasian Albanian alphabet . While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that

10920-486: The other common celebrations in Turkey is Nowruz . This celebration is done on the pretext of the beginning of spring and the beginning of the new year . The establishment of Nowruz has a long history, so much so that it has been celebrated in different parts of Asia for the past three thousand years, especially in the Middle East . In different parts of Turkey, especially the Kurdish regions of this country, Nowruz

11040-483: The parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity during the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine (1936). Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek

11160-407: The path to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language in the two different cultural spheres. Apart from several morphological, phonetic, and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and generally analogous rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other as long as they are fluent in one of the literary standards. After World War I ,

11280-537: The plain, from Turkey in the north, feeding into the Euphrates. The major settlements are Mosul , Deir ez-Zor , Raqqa , al-Hasakah , Diyarbakır and Qamishli . The western, Syrian part, is essentially contiguous with the Syrian al-Hasakah Governorate and is described as "Syria's breadbasket ". The eastern, Iraqi part, includes and extends slightly beyond the Iraqi Nineveh Governorate . In

11400-601: The population numbered 38 thousand, almost half being Christian and consisting of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans, Armenians, Chaldeans, Jacobites, and a few Greeks. During the Governorship of Mehmed Reshid in the Vilayet of Diyarbakır , the Armenian population of Diyarbakir was resettled and exterminated. After World War II, as the Kurdish population moved from the villages and mountains to urban centres, Diyarbakir's Kurdish population continued to grow. Diyarbakır grew from

11520-570: The population. The short-lived First Republic of Armenia declared Armenian its official language. Eastern Armenian was then dominating in institutions and among the population. When Armenia was incorporated into the USSR, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic made Eastern Armenian the language of the courts, government institutions and schools. Armenia was also russified . The current Republic of Armenia upholds

11640-563: The protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in Mesopotamia, including a section of the upper region. The political history of Upper Mesopotamia and Syria during the Early Dynastic Period is well known from the royal archives recovered at Ebla . Ebla, Mari , and Nagar were the dominant states for this period. The earliest texts indicate that Ebla paid tribute to Mari but was able to reduce it after it won

11760-405: The region also suffered a similar fate, with Turkish President Erdoğan vowing to remove any future Kurdish mayors too. Protests against the decision arose which were suppressed by the Turkish police with the use of water cannons; some protestors were killed. Diyarbakır's prison has become home to many political prisoners , mainly Kurdish activists and politicians accused of terrorism charges by

11880-533: The region between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, particularly amongst the Assyrians of the city. The Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) divided the Roman province of Mesopotamia into two, and made Amida the capital of Mesopotamia Prima, and thereby also the metropolitan see for all the province's bishoprics . At some stage, Amida became a see of the Armenian Church . The bishops who held

12000-451: The region from the 1840s onwards. In their place, sufi sheiks and religious orders rose to prominence and spread their influence throughout the region. One of the prominent Sufi leaders was Shaikh Ubaidalla Nahri , who began a revolt in the region between Lakes Van and Urmia . The area under his control covered both Ottoman and Qajar territories. Shaikh Ubaidalla is regarded as one of the earliest proponents of Kurdish nationalism . In

12120-436: The representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces". Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family , ancestral to

12240-519: The same names closer to Ebla. In many ways, the diplomatic interactions in the wider Ancient Near East during this period resemble those from the second millennium BC, which are particularly well known from the Amarna letters . Upper Mesopotamia is also the heartland of ancient Assyria , founded circa the 25th century BC. From the late 24th Century BC it was part of the Akkadian Empire , then

12360-574: The see in 1650 and 1681 were in full communion with the Holy See , and in 1727 Peter Derboghossian sent his profession of faith to Rome. He was succeeded by two more bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church , Eugenius and Ioannes of Smyrna , the latter of whom died in Constantinople in 1785. After a long vacancy, three more bishops followed. The diocese had some 5,000 Armenian Catholics in 1903, but it lost most of its population in

12480-468: The similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the Iranian language family . The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary . He showed that Armenian often had two morphemes for one concept, that the non-Iranian components yielded

12600-508: The successful siege in detail. Amida was then enlarged by refugees from ancient Nisibis ( Nusaybin ), which the emperor Jovian ( r.  363–364 ) was forced to evacuate and cede to Shapur's Persians after the defeat of his predecessor Julian's Persian War , becoming the main Roman stronghold in the region. The chronicle attributed to Joshua the Stylite describes the capture of Amida by

12720-519: The terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European , he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage. Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan , have rejected many of

12840-617: The territory of the Banu Bakr tribe, the Diyar Bakr . That tribe had already settled in northern Mesopotomia during the pre-Islamic period. In the 7th century, during the caliphate of Uthman and under the regional governorship of Mu'awiya , a portion of the tribe was ordered to settle further north in the lands near the city. The city was later also known in Turkish as Kara-Amid ("Black Amid"), on account of its black basalt walls. In November 1937, Turkish President Atatürk visited

12960-655: The un-elected state trustee appointed by the Turkish government ordered the removal of the Assyrian sculpture of a mythological winged bull from the town hall, which had been erected by the BDP mayors to commemorate the Assyrian history of the town and its still resident Assyrian minority. All Kurdish language street signs were also removed, alongside the shutting down of organisations concerned with Kurdish language and culture, removal of Kurdish names from public parks, and removal of Kurdish cultural monuments and linguistic symbols. In

13080-459: The villages numbered between 700 and 800. Sperl's estimation also contradicts the estimates of the French geographers Fevret and Gibert, who estimated that in 1953 out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians. Another account by Sir John Hope Simpson estimated the number of Kurds in Jazira province at 20,000 out of 100,000 people at

13200-604: The western parts came under the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt until the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) , when it was taken by the Ottoman Empire . Remainder of this region was in Ottoman hands after Battle of Chaldiran and Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555) . Although the region is ethnically diverse, it is considered to be the traditional Assyrian homeland in addition to Aramaic-speaking Christian descendants of

13320-592: Was 65 cm (25.6 inches) on 16 January 1971. 37°55′N 40°14′E  /  37.91°N 40.24°E  / 37.91; 40.24 Armenian language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Armenian

13440-480: Was also a site of ethnic cleansing during the 1915 Armenian and Assyrian genocide ; nearly 150,000 were expelled from the city to the death marches in the Syrian Desert . In January 1928, Diyarbakır became the center of the First Inspectorate-General , a regional subdivision for an area containing the provinces of Hakkari , Van , Şırnak , Mardin , Siirt , Bitlis and Şanlıurfa . In

13560-406: Was exported from Diyarbakır. Merchants would also come from Egypt , Istanbul , and Syria , to purchase goats and sheep . Honey was also produced, but not so much exported, but used by locals. Sericulture was observed in the area, too. Prior to World War I, Diyarbakır had an active copper industry, with six mines. Three were active, with two being owned by locals and the third being owned by

13680-482: Was inaugurated. At the turn of the 19th century, the Christian population of the city was mainly made up of Armenians and Assyrians. The Assyrian and Armenian presence dates to antiquity. There was also a small Jewish community in the city. All Christians spoke Armenian and Kurdish. Notables spoke Turkish. In the streets, the language was Kurdish. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica from 1911,

13800-399: Was included in the administration of Syria. During the early Umayyad Caliphate, the administration of al-Jazira was often shared with that of Arminiya , a vast province encompassing most of Transcaucasia , Eastern Anatolia and what is now Iranian Azerbaijan . The prosperity of the region and its high agricultural and manufacturing output made it an object of contest between the leaders of

13920-511: Was killed in the Sur district during a press statement in which he had been calling for a de-escalation in violence between the PKK and the Turkish state. A 2018 report by Arkeologlar Derneği İstanbul found that, since 2015, 72% of the city's historic Sur district had been destroyed through demolition and redevelopment, and that laws designed to protect historic monuments had been ignored. They found that

14040-485: Was operational from 1956 to 1997. Diyarbakır has seen much violence in recent years, involving Turkish security forces, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Between 8 November 2015 and 15 May 2016 large parts of Sur were destroyed in fighting between the Turkish military and the PKK. In early November 2015, Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist Tahir Elçi

14160-405: Was situated between Proto-Greek ( centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian ( satem subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic languages . The Armenian language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Another text translated into Armenian early on, and also in the 5th-century,

14280-682: Was the Armenian Alexander Romance . The vocabulary of the language has historically been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages , particularly Parthian ; its derivational morphology and syntax were also affected by language contact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek, Persian , and Syriac also resulted in a number of loanwords. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian (spoken mainly in Armenia) and Western Armenian (spoken originally mainly in modern-day Turkey and, since

14400-491: Was the episcopal see of the Christian diocese of Mesopotamia. Ancient texts record that ancient Amida had an amphitheatre , thermae (public baths), warehouses, a tetrapylon monument, and Roman aqueducts supplying and distributing water. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus was serving in the late Roman army during the Siege of Amida by the Sasanian Empire under Shapur II ( r.  309–379 ), and described

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