The Roman Walls of Diyarbakır

The ancient city of Amida, modern Diyarbakır, Turkey, was founded at a bend in the Tigris, at the upmost limit of the river's navigation. There was a city long before the Romans came, but only became important during the reign of Constantius II, who built a mighty set of fortifications here to fend off the Persians. The walls were tested almost immediately. In AD 359, the Persian king Shapur II besieged Amida with a large force that included war elephants. Inside the walls were seven Roman legions, including the future historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who left an account of the siege. At the beginning of the siege, as Ammianus later recorded in his history, King Shapur himself, resplendent in his gilded war crown, rode up to the gates and demanded the city's surrender. The Romans refused. The Persians then tried intimidation, surrounding Amida and standing in silence for an entire day as their horsemen and war elephants paraded back and forth. When this failed, they mounted two general assaults on the walls. The Romans repulsed both with arrows and onager-flung stones. Now committed to a siege, the Persians began to build two ramps and a pair of towers with ballistas. In response, the defenders worked feverishly to raise and strengthen the walls. A Roman deserter led 70 Persian archers into the city by a secret passageway. Before they could do serious damage, however, the traitor and his raiding party were pincushioned with ballista bolts. The final assault came several weeks later. The siege towers were hauled up the ramps, and the mass Persian infantry advanced under the cover of wooden sheds. As the ballistas on the towers wreaked havoc on the ramparts, rave after wave of attackers, supported by war elephants, surged against the walls. Roman onagers smashed the towers, and Roman fire arrows stampeded the elephants. But the Persian attacks continued until a section of the city wall, destabilized by attempts to heighten it, suddenly collapsed. Persian soldiers surged through the breach. After 73 days, Amida fell. The walls were tested again in the year 503. This time, the siege lasted 97 days. But again, the walls were taken. The Persians reportedly slaughtered 80,000 men when they took the city. The city was soon recaptured by Anastasius, and the walls were rebuilt shortly thereafter by Justinian. These, substantially, are the walls that still stand today, as reconstructed by the Seljuks and later medieval rulers. Here we have a well-preserved section of the walls. They were built from large blocks of the local basalt, which give Black Diyarbakir its nickname. The circuit is about 3.5 miles in circumference, about 40 feet high and 15 feet thick. There are 82 towers. The remains of a tower from the inside. You have a sense from the patchwork masonry here of how often these walls have been restored over the centuries. And here, just beyond the citadel, we have a sweeping view over the walls and down toward the Tigris, which inspired Constantius II to build these walls in the first place, 17 centuries ago.