Amid

Amid, later called Diyarbekir, stands on a high basalt plateau above the Tigris, behind the long black walls that Roman emperors rebuilt and Procopius praised. The Great Mosque, raised under the Seljuk sultan Malik Shah and built in alternating bands of black basalt and white limestone, stands beside two madrasas of the same age. The Ayyubids took the city in 1183, and the Mongols seized the region in 1260.

Timur took and plundered the city in 1394 and in 1404 left it to the Aq Qoyunlu, for whom it served for a time as capital. The Safavids captured it in 1508, and in 1515 the Ottomans took it for Selim I after a siege. They made it the centre of the Diyarbekir province, which covered most of Turkish Kurdistan and from which armies marched and wintered on their way east. The city was a base for controlling the Kurdish principalities and a town of craftsmen in glass and metalwork.