Qamişlo grew up in the 1920s on the railway line that marks the Syrian, Turkish border, a few hundred metres from Nusaybin on the other side. Kurds from the surrounding villages, Assyrian and Armenian families fleeing the massacres of 1915, Arab merchants and Jewish traders all made it their town. A century later it is the largest city of the Cizîrê and, since 2012, the political centre of the Kurdish-led administration in north-east Syria.
A shared table
The city’s character is in its mix. Sunday mornings belong to the church bells of the Syriac quarter; Fridays to the mosques; Newroz to everyone. In the old souk you can buy Kurdish sêv û gûz sweets, Armenian basturma and Assyrian kubba within a hundred metres. Qamişlo also gave Kurdish music some of its great voices, the singer Mihemed Şêxo, whose songs of exile are known everywhere Kurmanji is spoken, and the poet Cegerxwîn, who is buried here.
A decade of change
The 2004 Qamişlo uprising, sparked by clashes at a football match, was the first open Kurdish revolt in modern Syria and is remembered every 12 March. When the Syrian war began, the city passed largely into Kurdish hands and became the seat of the Autonomous Administration, with Kurdish-language schools, women’s councils and a co-chair system of government. Since the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, negotiations with Damascus over the region’s future have been under way; the outcome will decide much about how Qamişlo is governed in the years ahead.
Why it matters
Whatever comes next, Qamişlo shows something Kurds have argued for a long time: that a Kurdish city can be a home for everyone who lives in it. We will keep reporting from here.