Photograph: SahinBasaran, CC BY-SA 4.0
Amed (Diyarbakir), in the southeast of present-day Turkey, sits on a basalt plateau above a wide bend in the Tigris river, known in Kurdish as the Dîcle. The city’s great black walls, built from the same dark volcanic stone that gives Amed its distinctive character, have watched over this crossing point for thousands of years. For Kurds, Amed is not simply a city. It is a reference point, a symbol and, for millions of people, a home.
The walls and what they hold
The basalt walls of Amed are among the best-preserved Roman-era city walls anywhere in the world. They run for several kilometres around the old city and are wide enough in places to walk along the top. Towers punctuate the circuit at intervals, and the four main gates still define the entrances to the historic centre. The walls were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of a wider inscription covering the city’s old town, a recognition of how much has survived here across many centuries.
Inside the walls, the lanes of the old city hold mosques, Armenian and Syriac Christian churches, and traditional courtyard houses built from the same black stone. The Kurşunlu Mosque and the ancient Surp Giragos Armenian church, one of the largest in the Middle East before it was damaged in the mid-2010s, both speak to the layered communities that have lived in this city. Amed was never only Kurdish, and its architecture remembers that.
A city at the centre of Kurdish life
Amed has long been regarded as the unofficial capital of Bakur, the Kurdish name for the part of Kurdistan that falls within Turkey’s borders. Kurdish political and cultural life has repeatedly gravitated here. The city has elected Kurdish mayors, hosted Kurdish publishers and been home to Kurdish musicians, writers and activists across generations. It is also a place that has known deep conflict. The old city of Sur suffered severe damage during fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants in 2015 and 2016, and the rebuilding and displacement that followed left a mark that residents and observers across the region still talk about. That chapter is part of Amed’s story, and the city carries it alongside everything else.
Day to day, Amed is a large, busy city where people go to work, eat, argue, marry and make music. The weekly markets draw people from the surrounding countryside. The tea houses fill early. Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic are all heard on the streets, sometimes in the same conversation.
Food, music and the Tigris below
The food of Amed deserves its own mention. The city is known across the region for its lamb dishes, its particular style of stuffed vegetables and, above all, for kaburga, slow-cooked lamb ribs prepared in a way that has become closely associated with this city. Watermelon from the Dîcle plain is a seasonal staple, eaten through the long, hot summers when the river reflects a bleached sky and the black walls seem to absorb rather than radiate the heat.
Music in Amed carries the influence of the dengbêj tradition, the ancient Kurdish art of oral singing in which a single performer holds an audience with nothing but voice and memory. The city has also produced singers who work across modern styles, and its connection to Kurdish political song runs deep. On warm evenings in the old town, it is still possible to hear music drifting from an open window or a small courtyard gathering.
Coming to Amed from afar
Many people in the Kurdish diaspora carry Amed in their family histories even if they have never set foot there. Parents and grandparents who left Bakur in earlier decades often named Amed as their reference point when explaining where they came from, even if their actual village was hours away. The city held that weight because it was the place with the hospital, the court, the bus station, the connection to everywhere else.
If you have a memory of Amed, a family story connected to the city, or music that takes you back there, we would love to hear it. Send us a message or find us on social media and tell us your Amed.