History of Diyarbakır

The area around Diyarbakır has been inhabited by humans from the Stone Age with tools from that period having been discovered in the nearby Hilar cave complex. The pre-pottery neolithic B settlement of Çayönü dates to over 10,000 years ago and its excavated remains are on display at the Diyarbakır Museum. Another important site is the Girikihaciyan Tumulus in Eğil.^[8]

The first major civilization to establish themselves in the region of what is now Diyarbakır were the Hurrian kingdom of the Mitanni. The city was first mentioned by Assyrian texts as the capital of a Semitic kingdom.

It was then ruled by a succession of nearly every polity that controlled Upper Mesopotamia, including the Arameans, Assyrians, Urartu, Armenians, Achaemenid Persians, Medes, Seleucids, and Parthians.^[6] The Roman Republic gained control of the city in 66 BC, by which stage it was named Amida, from which the modern Kurdish language name for the city, Amed, comes.^[7] In 359, Shapur II of Persia captured Amida after a siege of 73 days which is vividly described by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus.^[9]

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Syriac Christianity took hold in the region between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, particularly amongst the Assyrians of the city. The earliest documented bishop of Amida was Simeon of the Assyrian Church of the East, who took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325, on behalf of the Assyrians. In the next century, Saint Acacius of Amida (who died in 425, and is included in the Roman Martyrology^[10]) was noted for having sold the church's gold and silver vessels to ransom and assist Persian prisoners of war.

Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) divided the Roman province of Mesopotamia into two, and made Amida the capital of Mesopotamia Prima, and thereby also the metropolitan see for all the province's bishoprics.^[11] A sixth-century Notitia Episcopatuum indicates as suffragans of Amida the sees of Martyropolis, Ingila, Belabitene, Arsamosata, Sophene, Kitharis, Cefa, and Zeugma.^[12] The Annuario Pontificio adds Bethzabda and Dadima.

The names of several of the successors of Acacius are known, but their orthodoxy is unclear. The last whose orthodoxy is certain is Cyriacus, a participant in the Second Council of Constantinople (553). Many bishops of the Byzantine Empire fled in the face of the Persian invasion of the early 7th century, with a resultant spread of the Jacobite Church. Michael the Syrian gives a list of Jacobite bishops of Amida down to the 13th century.^[13][14][15]

At some stage, Amida became a see of the Armenian Church. The bishops who held the see in 1650 and 1681 were in full communion with the Holy See, and in 1727 Peter Derboghossian sent his profession of faith to Rome. He was succeeded by two more bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church, Eugenius and Ioannes of Smyrna, the latter of whom died in Constantinople in 1785. After a long vacancy, three more bishops followed. The diocese had some 5,000 Armenian Catholics in 1903,^[16] but it lost most of its population in the 1915 Armenian genocide. The last diocesan bishop of the see, Andreas Elias Celebian, was killed with some 600 of his flock in the summer of 1915.^{[17][18][19][20]}

An eparchy for the local members of the Syriac Catholic Church was established in 1862. Ignatius Philip I Arkus, who was its first bishop, was elected patriarch in 1866, and kept the governance of the see of Amida, which he exercised through a patriarchal vicar. The eparchy was united to that of Mardin in 1888. Persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War brought an end to the existence of both these Syrian residential sees.^{[17][18][21][22]}

In 1966, the Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Amida, with jurisdiction over all Chaldean Catholics in Turkey, was revived in Diyarbakır, with the city being both episcopal see and location of the diocesan cathedral of St. Mary Church, Diyarbakır.

As of 2015, there are two Chaldean churches and three Armenian churches in at least periodic operation. Three other churches are in ruins, all Armenian: one in Sur, Diyarbakır, one in the citadel that is now part of a museum complex, and one in another part of the city.

No longer a residential bishopric until 1966 (Chaldean rite), Amida is today listed by the Catholic Church as a multiple titular see,^[23] separately for the Roman Rite and two Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.

Amida of the Romans was suppressed in 1970, having had many archiepiscopal incumbents with a singular episcopal exception :

• Domingo Valentín Guerra Arteaga y Leiva (19 December 1725 – 8 March 1728)
• Francisco Casto Royo (15 December 1783 – September 1803)
• Gaétan Giunta (6 October 1829 – unknown date)
• Titular Bishop Augustus van Heule, Jesuits (S.J.) (9 September 1864 – 9 June 1865)
• Colin Francis McKinnon (30 August 1877 – 26 September 1879)
• Francis Xavier Norbert Blanchet (26 January 1881 – 18 June 1883)
• Beniamino Cavicchioni (21 March 1884 – 11 January 1894) (later Cardinal)
• Francesco Sogaro, Comboni Missionaies (F.S.C.I.) (18 August 1894 – 6 February 1912)
• James Duhig (27 February 1912 – 13 January 1917)
• John Baptist Pitaval (29 July 1918 – 23 May 1928)
• Carlo Chiarlo (12 October 1928 – 15 December 1958) (later Cardinal)
• Gastone Mojaisky-Perrelli (8 August 1959 – 10 May 1963)
• Robert Picard de la Vacquerie (23 May 1963 – 17 March 1969)
• Joseph Cheikho (7 March 1970 – 22 August 1970)

The diocese of Amida, in 1650, was suppressed in 1972 and immediately nominally restored as Armenian Catholic (Armenian Rite and language) titular bishopric of the lowest (episcopal) rank, Amida of the Armenians.

So far, it has had the following incumbents, of the fitting episcopal rank with an archiepiscopal exception:

• Grégoire Ghabroyan, Patriarchal Clergy Institute of Bzommar (I.C.P.B.) (3 January 1977 – 30 June 1986) as Vicar Apostolic of France of the Armenians (3 January 1977 – 30 June 1986); later Eparch (Bishop) of Sainte-Croix-de-Paris of the Armenians (France) (30 June 1986 – 2 February 2013) and Apostolic Visitor in Western Europe of the Armenians (30 June 1986 – 8 June 2013), then Patriarchal Administrator of Cilicia of the Armenians (in Beirut, Lebanon) (25 June 2015 – 25 July 2015), finally Patriarch of Cilicia as Grégoire Pierre XX Ghabroyan (24 July 2015 – present) and President of Synod of the Armenian Catholic Church (25 July 2015 – present)
• Titular Archbishop Lévon Boghos Zékiyan (21 May 2014 – 21 March 2015), as Apostolic Administrator sede plena of Istanbul of the Armenians (Turkey) (21 May 2014 – 21 March 2015), later succeeded as Archeparch (Archbishop) of Istanbul of the Armenians (21 March 2015.03.21 – present) and President of Episcopal Conference of Turkey (April 2015 – present)
• Kévork Assadourian (5 September 2015 – present), Auxiliary Bishop of Beirut of the Armenians; no previous prelature

Established in 1963 as Titular archbishopric of the highest (Metropolitan) rank, Amida of the Syriacs.

It has been vacant for decades, having had the following incumbent of Metropolitan rank;

• Titular Archbishop Flavien Zacharie Melki (6 July 1963 – 30 November 1989), as Patriarchal Vicar of Lebanon of the Syriacs (6 July 1963 – death 1983)

In 639, the city was subjected to the Muslim conquests, and the religion of Islam was introduced. The city passed under Umayyad and then Abbasid control, but with the progressive fragmentation of the Abbasid Caliphate from the late 9th century, it periodically came under the rule of autonomous dynasties. Isa ibn al-Shaykh al-Shaybani and his descendants ruled the city and the wider Diyar Bakr province from 871 until 899, when Caliph al-Mu'tadid restored Abbasid control, but the area soon passed to another local dynasty, the Hamdanids. The latter were displaced by the Buyids in 978, who were in turn followed by the Marwanids in 983. The Marwanids ruled until 1085, when the Seljuks took the city from them. It came under the rule of the Mardin branch of the Oghuz Turks, and then the Anatolian beylik of the Artuqids. The city came under the Ayyubid Sultanate in 1183, which ruled the city until it was overrun by the Mongols in 1260. For a time the city was ruled by the competing Turkic federations of the Kara Koyunlu (the Black Sheep) and then the Aq Qoyunlu until the rise of the Persian Safavids, who took over the city and the wider region in the 16th century.