The story of Hasankeyf

Since May 2020, the old town of Hasankeyf has lain under water, flooded as the Ilısu Dam filled. Its name recalls what made it special: because of the homes carved into the rocks, it was known by names drawn from the Syriac word Kifo, "rock"; the Arabic Hısnı Keyfa meant "City of Caves" or "City of Rocks", which became Hısnıkeyf under the Ottomans and Hasankeyf in everyday speech.

Work on its mound turned up finds from 3,500 to 12,000 years ago. Sitting on the route from Upper Mesopotamia into Anatolia, it was fortified by the Roman emperor Constantius II, and a castle built in 363 stayed long under Roman and Byzantine rule.

It later became a Syriac bishopric, fell to Islamic armies in 640 and lived its brightest days as the Artuqid capital from 1102 to 1232, before the Mongols wrecked it in 1260. The town, split in two by the Tigris, had been declared a natural protected area in 1981.