Amed

Every power of upper Mesopotamia has held Amida: Assyrians, Romans and Sasanians, the Arab dynasties who renamed it Diyar Bakr, Marwanid Kurdish emirs, Seljuks, Aqqoyunlu and Ottomans. Its 5.8 km ring of black basalt walls, raised on Roman foundations and rebuilt by each ruler in turn, is among the longest defensive circuits surviving anywhere. In the late Ottoman city Armenians, Syriacs, Arabs, Jews and Kurds shared its gated quarters; the twentieth century remade it as the political and cultural capital of the Kurds in Turkey.

Amed is the emotional capital of Bakur — the city of the dengbêj, the singers of unaccompanied epic, whose house in the old town keeps the tradition alive daily. Its walls and the Hevsel Gardens below joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2015, and its old churches and mosques still stand wall-to-wall in the Sur quarter, scarred but standing after the destruction of 2015–16.

Very hot, dry summers on the basalt plateau — highs run near 38 °C in July — with cold winters, occasional snow and spring rains.

Places in Amed

• Sûrên Amedê — Five and a half kilometres of black basalt with 82 towers and four great gates, ringing the old city since late antiquity. UNESCO World Heritage together with the Hevsel Gardens.
• Mizgefta Mezin — Converted from the church of St Thomas after 639 and rebuilt in 1091, it is counted among the oldest great mosques of the region — its courtyard reuses Roman columns and theatre stones.
• Baxçeyên Hewselê — Seven hundred hectares of orchards and market gardens between the walls and the Tigris, cultivated for thousands of years and still feeding the city.