One of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, Turkey’s ancient city of Hasankeyf is set to vanish forever under the floodwaters of a new dam project
On the banks of Tigris
Hasankeyf, on the banks of the Tigris River, has seen the Romans, Byzantines, Turkic tribes and Ottomans leave their mark in over 10,000 years of human settlement. The historic edifices will be moved in a hugely ambitious programme that has parallels with the shifting of key archaeological sites from the Pharaonic era in Upper Egypt when the Aswan dam was built in the 1960s, according to AFP
‘Rock fortress’
More than 20 cultures have left their mark at Hasankeyf, according to the Smithsonian Magazine. The first settlers most likely lived along the Tigris in caves carved into rock cliffs. The Romans built a fortress there circa AD 300 to patrol their empire’s eastern border with Persia.
Trade point along Silk Road
The city was later ruled by the Turkish Artukid dynasty, the Ayyubids (a clan of Kurdish chieftains) and the Mongols, who conquered the region in 1260. In the early Middle Ages, Hasankeyf became an important centre along the Silk Road. In 1515, it was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and has since remained a part of modern Turkey, the magazine adds
Set to vanish under a Sultan
The construction of the Ilisu dam was launched by Turkish President Erdogan while he was the PM in August 2006. The dam is part of the Southeast Anatolia Project, which aims to harness the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to revive a region whose development has been set back by the more than three-decade Kudish insurgency