The Original Tigranakert

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Arpa wrote "...one would get the impression that Diayarbakir and Tigranakert are the same. There is a sizable diasporan community that idetify themselves as Dikrangerdtsi/Tigranakert-tsi and leave the impression that they are in fact from Tigranakert. Amid and Tigranakert were never the same. However there may be a valid reason why they do that. When Tigranakert (built by Tigran the Great) was finally destroyed many of its inhabitants were absorbed into the region of Diyarbakir, they not only brought the name with them they also continued to speak with the distinct dialect of Tigranakert. Many still do. The reason why I said "slight" misconception.

There is very little about Tigranakert except that it was located several tens of miles NW of Diyarbakir, best estimation is that it may have been where the Turkish town of Silvan is now. In fact it is said that several years ago the ruins could still be seen there."

 

The original Tigranakert is probably (almost certainly) a site known as Arzen, a long way east of Diyarbekir. Amazingly, the only proper description of the place was published way back in in 1865 (Taylor - Journal of the Geographical Society, vol35, 1865). Here is that description.

 

I will post more recent writings about the site later, if I am not banned again.

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In October, 1861, I made a short journey from Diarbekr to Saert, by Miafarkeyn, Arzen, and Zok; and from thence, following the course of the Bohtan Su, or Centritis, to Til, where it joins the Tigris, whose course I followed close up to Redhwan, on the Arzen Su. Crossing this latter river, I proceeded to Hesn Keyf, on the Tigris, and then, via Mediat and Mardin, back to Diarbekr.

 

(I've left out the rest of the text until he reaches Arzen.)

 

Four hours and a half from this (an old bridge over the Batman Su) I crossed the Iluzu Arzen, or Redhwan Su - it is called by all these names - into the present district of Gharzan. The province in which it is situated was called Arzanene by the Romans, and Artzn (Moses of Chorene), Aghdsnik, Aghdsen, and Khordsen by Armenian writers, and Arzen by the Arabs, since corrupted into its present name of Gharzan by the Kurds and Turks. It was one of the provinces taken by the Parthians from the Armenians, and was ceded A.D. 298 with Intilene, Zabdicene, Moxoene, and Cordouene, by Narses King of Persia to the Romans, under Galerius, in the time of Diocletian.

 

The ford was near the flourishing village of Giri Hassan, close to the ruins of Arzen, the Oppidum Arzanenorum of Procopius, situated on the left bank of the river. The ruins are very extensive; the remains of the old walls, 20 feet thick at the base, and tapering up to 8 foot, constructed of irregular pieces of rough stone, cemented with mortar, that surround the town are easily traced; and the defences towards the river, consisting of thicker walls and a number of small-domed buildings, are in still better preservation. The area contained within them is about 2700 square yards. On the north-eastern and southern sides the walls are straight and regular, but towards the west it narrows off into an irregular shape that follows the course of the stream. It has four gates, one in each of the three regular walls, and a fourth leading to the river. At the southern side is a mound of ruin connected with the wall, that seems to have been a large fortified bastion. The whole ruin is surrounded by a deep ditch, which was crossed at three of the gates by as many bridges, whose foundations still appear above ground.

 

When I visited it, the area included within the walls was bearing a fine crop of wheat, but the regular lines of the streets, and some of the sites of the larger buildings, could still be traced. So many medals in gold and silver are found here that the fellahs who till the ground are paid nothing by the owner for their labour, and they give him in addition half of everything they may find. The town was built on what appears a natural platform of some little elevation, which, at its western end, has a steep sharp fall into the plain about a mile from the walls, where it is bounded by a deep bed, through which a small marshy stream flows towards the Tigris, close under the Yezid village of Tellebeea, or Tileeba.

 

Independently of other associations, Arzen is interesting as being connected with the earliest Christian history, it having been visited, according to Abul Furraj, the Syrian historian, by Mar Addaeus, or Thaddeus, one of the Seventy, the apostle of the Syrian Chaldaeans (and the same who cured Abgarus Uchama of his leprosy), in the thirtieth year of Our Saviour's Ascension, and the fifteenth of Tiberius Caesar, who then built a church here, which was afterwards called by his name.

 

Higher up the river, and on the same side as Arzen, are the remains of another large city, where I found some of the earliest records of the Moslem conquest, in the shape of tombstones, bearing Cufic inscriptions in the character peculiar to the first century of their era. Many of them are now used by the Armenians of Kani Masee, a small village situated at one end of the ruins, as gravestones. As neither they nor the Moslems knew anything of the characters on them, I thought it best to leave them in their ignorance, as without doubt the latter would soon have desecrated every grave in the place did they know that on each stone the formula of their faith, together with a verse from the Koran, were engraved.

 

Opposite the ruins, on the right bank of the Arzen Su, which was formerly spanned at this part by a fine stone bridge, whose foundations peer above the stream, is the fine old ruin known now by the names of Kalla Sheikh Baj and Kalla Anushirvan. It is situated on a high hill of conglomerate, the usual rock formation here, having at its summit a circumference of l 1/2 mile. The remains are evidently Parthian, and consist of walls of common limestone, 14 feet thick, which in some places is composed of brickwork of thin broad tiles of the same solidity. A couple of families of decayed Gharzan Begs inhabited some miserable huts among the ruins, and they had cleared several of the old houses, which served them for a stable. These were all of course now under ground, the debris of centuries having accumulated over and covered them. They were built in arches in a very substantial manner, and seemed at one time to have occupied the whole surface, as, in several pits that had been dug in different places, the portions of many other similar buildings were also discernible. On all sides but one the mound in nothing but a steep high cliff, commanding a line uninterrupted view for many miles all round; but towards the west a winding and difficult path conducts the traveller to a large gateway still intact, and the only one in the ruin. A few greybeards of the place, who pretended to some traditional knowledge, informed me that the castle, during the times of ignorance - that is, before Islamism - belonged to the Beni Sassan; and stated that the Gharzan Begs, who live at Zok, 4 miles off, were the descendants of that dynasty in these parts; a fact that was corroborated to me by the Begs themselves on a subsequent visit I paid them. Near this is the mountainous district of Sassoon, inhabited by a warlike, unruly set of Kurds, called Baliki; they are neither Moslems, Christians, nor real Kizzilbash. They swear by a church, and never by a mosque, or the Deity, or any of the prophets.

 

 

In a footnote: The city of Arzen at the time of the Arab conquest was the property of the Armenian lord of Bitlis, and was ceded by him to Iyadh Ebn Ghanem, Omer's general. It subsequently fell, on the decline of the Abbasides, into the hands of the Kurd Merwanides, from whom it passed to a local family. Abul Feda says, "El Melik el Mudhuffer Ghazi, son of El Adel (brother of Saladin), took Arzen of Diarbekr from its lord, Hissam ed Deen, of the ancient family of El Ahdeb, who had possessed it from Melik Shah's time, and gave him Heyni in exchange, A. H. 627," El Mudhuffer was at that time lord of Miafarkeyn.

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His sketch plan of Arzen:

 

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Here is part of his map of the region. I've circled Arzen in red.

The town of Miafarkeyn (look on the left side end of the map) is modern Silvan.

 

Edited November 7, 2004 by abcdefghijk

[Guest abcdefghijkl]

There is a short description of Arzen in volume 3 of T. A. Sinclair's book "Eastern Turkey, an Architectural and Archeological Survey".

 

Sinclair visited the site in 1981. He writes that the walls had been mostly reduced to overgrown banks and mounds, but masonry was still well preserved in some parts. The interior has been ploughed up, destroying the lines of streets and buildings that were visible in the 1860s. The southern corner of the site is now crossed by a railway line. He says that the suburbs of the city stretched far beyond the actual walled area, upstream on the left bank of the river, as far as 12km away to surviving ruins at Golamasya.

 

In the addenda to the same volume he writes "In the late summer of 1988 fearful destruction was being visited on the remaining masonry". He says that tacit concent for the destruction must have been given by Turkish officials, and assumes that the reason for that concent was the eventual flooding of the site by the proposed Idil dam. (But in the addenda to volume 4, he writes that actually the site of Arzen is too far upstream to be flooded by the Idil dam.)

 

He adds "One can only hope that the site will be excavated, considering its claims to be Tigranocerta, and that it will not go the way of Arsamosata and Samsat, in other words that it will not be ignored by excavators simply because of its size and because of the complication of the material which is likely to be revealed". Arsamosata and Samsat were two other unexcavated Armenian city sites that were destroyed by dams. The "complication of the material" phrase is code for those-in-the-know: it means "the Armenian identity of the material".