Siverek

Siverek grew around a fortress on a raised mound in the country between Urfa and Diyarbakır. Its position brought it under successive rulers of upper Mesopotamia, including the Zengids after the period of the County of Edessa. The town and its surrounding plain lay amid routes leading between the Euphrates and the upper Tigris, in a region contested by neighbouring powers.

Timur's campaigns reached Siverek around the beginning of the fifteenth century. The town subsequently passed through the hands of the Mamluks, Aq Qoyunlu and Safavids before coming under Ottoman rule in the early sixteenth century. Ottoman records of 1518 list Siverek among the districts attached to Diyarbakır. The old castle remained a landmark above the settlement through these changes of rule, while villages and pastoral tribes occupied the lands around it.