Diyarbakır City Walls and History of the City

Abstract

Until the years of domination by the Ottomans, Diyarbakır frequently fell under the possession of various rulers either as a result of wars or, at least, through various treaties. The inscriptions on the walls and towers of the city indicate that the new rulers of the city, tried to fortify the walls immediately after their conquest. In the light of the present information derived from the historic city walls and its inscriptions, history of the city and the role of its various rulers who reshaped it may be revealed. This article aims to show that interpretation of inscriptions helps one see how the walls and the inner city structure was transformed from earlier times until the mid-sixteenth century. The continuous change of possession of the city throughout history, offers us 63 inscriptions. Six of them belong to the Byzantium era; four of them are in Greek and one is in Latin language. All others are adhered to the Islamic period. As some of these inscriptions are illegible due to erasure, 43 of them were taken up and reassessed in this article.