I’ve just been travelling close by the Roman-Sasanian border: around Diyarbakir, or Amida, as the Assyrians and Romans called it. It was a lesson in the long history of multicultural-ness of that area – now on the edges of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Diyarbakir / Amida is an important node in the ancient international trade networks: it’s where the Royal Road connecting the capitals of Persia, Elam, and Assyria, to Gordium and Sardes in the west, crossed the Tigris.
And the Tigris formed an important part of the Roman / Armenian – Sasanian frontier. So Diyarbakir was strategically extremely significant. In the early 330s, the Roman prince Constantius (emperor: 337 to 361), “surrounded Amida with strong walls and towers, and by establishing there an armory of mural artillery, he made it a terror to the enemy”.
Not enough of a terror to fend off the Persians, though. Despite it being defended by its normal Roman garrison, the Fifth legion Parthica, plus five other legions, Shapur II (r.309-379) took the city in 359, after a seventy-three day siege.
In 363 the Roman emperor Jovian was forced to cede Nisibis (near the modern Syrian border) and five neighbouring districts to Persia to “extricate the defeated army of his predecessor Julian from Persian territory”. As part of the treaty, Amida was returned to the Romans. They reconstructed the damaged walls (367- 375); and “took in” the many Christians who had been living in Nisibis. By the fifth century, many kinds of Christians were living in Amida: adherents of the Nicene Creed, Nestorians, and Monophysites.
In October 502, the Sasanians besieged Amida / Diyarbakir again. In Janary 503, after a 97 day siege, Kavad I (r.488-530), captured the town and massacred the population. The Roman commanders Patricius and Hypatius arrived in the spring, but could not recapture the city. In the winter of 505/506 the Romans paid the Persian garrison to leave.
The emperor Justinian (r.527-565) reinforced the damaged walls but by then, the nearby fortress of Dara (now the Turkish village of Oguz) had become the focus of fighting between the Byzantine and the Sasanian Empires. Amida was briefly Persian again during the campaigns of Khusrau II (r.591-628); but the emperor Heraclius recaptured it and “as is well-known, his military successes against the Sasanians were disastrous for the region, which was an easy conquest for the Arabs”. So, four years after the battle of the Yarmuk (636), Amida received new masters: the Beni Bakr, after which the city is now named, Diyarbakır”.
You can still see Diyarbakir’s ancient walls, as rebuilt by Justinian. They’re amazing! It was Justinian who rebuilt Haghia Sofia in Contantinople (before Sinan reinforced it) – and both the original Haghia Sofia and the first walls of Diyarbakir were also built by the same man, Constantius. It’s a concrete – or, more accurately, basalt – example of the spread of Roman interest. And also fascinating to see how Roman-Sasanian treaties affected current Christian minorities: there are lots of Armenian Catholic, Syrian Catholic, Syriac and Orthodox churches, alongside the post-1915 genocide population remnants.