page_title: Qamishli
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Qamishli / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Qamishli, Syria, in 1964
context_page_description: Qamishli is a city in northeastern Syria on the Syria–Turkey border, adjoining the city of Nusaybin in Turkey. According to the 2004 census, Qamishli had a population of 184,231. Qamishli is 680 kilometres northeast of Damascus.
  The city is the administrative capital of the Qamishli District of Al-Hasakah Governorate, and the administrative center of Qamishli Subdistrict, consisting of 92 localities with a combined population of 232,095 in 2004. Qamishli was the capital of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, until it was moved to Ayn Issa.
context_section_description: The city dates back to the 1920s, when a sizable amount of Assyrians, escaping the Assyrian genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire, fled from northwestern Iran and southern Turkey and built a small town which they initially called Bet-Zalin. One of the most important funders of the early development projects in the city was Masoud Asfar, an Assyrian who survived the Massacres of Diyarbakır (1895) as a young child. Masoud, along with stepbrother, whose last name was Najjar, established the Asfar & Najjar Corporation, a company that produced wheat in Qamishli. Throughout the 1920s–1940s, the Asfar & Najjar Corporation funded hospitals, Assyrian schools, and churches throughout the city. However, in the 1960s and until the late 1970s, when Assyrians constituted two-thirds of the city's population, the government of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region actively confiscated Assyrian farms, lands, and areas, causing an Assyrian exodus. At this same time, many Kurds, fleeing persecution from Iraq and Turkey, moved into the region. 
  The city itself was officially founded as Qamishli in 1926 as a railway station on the Taurus railway.
  Qamishli, the second largest city in al-Hasakah Governorate, is considered a center for both the Kurdish and the Assyrian ethnic groups in Syria. It was heavily settled by refugees from the Assyrian genocide. Assyrians were the majority in the city until the 1970s, when Kurds from the surrounding countryside moved into the city in numbers. Qamishli is renowned for its large Christmas parade, and Newroz and Kha b-Nisan festivals.
caption: Qamishli in 1964
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