Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır is one of the largest cities in Turkey. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province of south-eastern Turkey. It is the third-largest city in Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region, after Şanlıurfa and Gaziantep. The site was formerly the ancient city of Amida, and was of great importance in the Roman–Persian Wars, and during Late Antiquity was re-fortified with city walls by the Roman emperor; these walls remain standing.

According to the Synecdemus of Hierocles, as Amida, Diyarbakır was the major city of the Roman province of Mesopotamia. It was the episcopal see of the Christian diocese of Mesopotamia. Ancient texts record that ancient Amida had an amphitheatre, thermae , warehouses, a tetrapylon monument, and Roman aqueducts supplying and distributing water. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus was serving in the late Roman army during the Siege of Amida by the Sasanian Empire under Shapur II , and described the successful siege in detail. Amida was then enlarged by refugees from ancient Nisibis , which the emperor Jovian was forced to evacuate and cede to Shapur's Persians after the defeat of his predecessor Julian's Persian War, becoming the main Roman stronghold in the region. The chronicle attributed to Joshua the Stylite describes the capture of Amida by the Persians under Kavad I in the second Siege of Amida in 502–503, part of the Anastasian War.

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