Kobanî
کۆبانی
Kobani · City of the resistance. The border city whose stand against ISIS was watched by the world.
- Region
- Rojava
- English name
- Kobani
- Kurdish name
- Kobanî
- Sorani name
- کۆبانی
- Population
- 45,000 (2004, city)
- Elevation
- 520 m
- Founded/origin
- Grew from a station settlement on the Baghdad railway in the early 20th century; Kurdish tradition links its name to the railway 'company'.
Like Qamişlo, Kobanî was born of the railway and settled by Kurds of the surrounding villages and Armenian survivors of 1915. It leapt into world history in late 2014, when ISIS — then at the height of its power — surrounded the town and was fought to a standstill, street by street, by its YPG and YPJ defenders, with the battle visible from the Turkish border hills. The city's liberation in January 2015, at the cost of its near-total destruction, was the first major defeat of ISIS and became a founding story for the autonomous administration.
Kobanî's name now stands, across Kurdistan and far beyond it, for resistance — the image of its women fighters travelled the world, and its Martyrs' Cemetery is a place of pilgrimage. The rebuilt town keeps a working-day character: a market street, schools teaching in Kurdish, and the wheat and pistachio plain at its door.
Dry steppe on the Euphrates plateau — hot cloudless summers, cool winters, and around 300 mm of rain in a good year.
Places in Kobanî
- Goristana Şehîdan — The terraced cemetery where the defenders of 2014–15 are buried — rows of engraved stones and flags on the edge of the town they held.