page_title: Old Bridge, Hasankeyf
section_title: Ottoman period
hierarchical_section_title: Old Bridge, Hasankeyf / Ottoman period
caption_attribution_description: English: The cities of Hasankeyf (left) and Diyarbekir (right) on the Tigris river. South is at the top. Detail from a 17th-century map of the Tigris and Euphrates now owned by Shaikh Hassan bin Muhammed al-Thani of Qatar. The map may have been drawn by the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi.
context_page_description: The Old Bridge, also known as the Old Tigris Bridge, is a ruined four-arch bridge spanning the Tigris River in the town of Hasankeyf in Batman Province in southeastern Turkey. It was built by the Artuqid Turkmens in the mid-12th century, between about 1147 and 1167, and at the time its central arch was one of the largest in the world, if not the largest. The bridge was repaired by Ayyubid Kurdish and Aq Qoyunlu Turkmen rulers during the 14th and 15th centuries and appears to have eventually collapsed in the early or mid-17th century. The bridge's ruined piers still stand, as does one arch. The ruins of the bridge are expected to be submerged, along with most of the town of Hasankeyf, by the filling of the Ilısu Dam starting in 2018.
context_section_description: After Sultan Selim I's victory at the Battle of Chaldiran, the Ottoman empire gained control of Hasankeyf in 1515. There are few direct accounts of Hasankeyf or the bridge for the next century, but official records do indicate that the town remained a key crossing point on the Tigris. A 1997 study of Ottoman tax records showed that about 858,500 sheep crossed over the bridge during one tax cycle. These were likely herded by nomads moving between pastures in the mountains and pastures in the steppe.
  By the second half of the 17th century, travel to the region had evidently increased, and two accounts suggest that the bridge remained functional, although perhaps with some damage.
  The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi visited Hasankeyf in 1656 during his third major travel through Kurdistan. Çelebi's trip north from Baghdad, which took him through Cizre, Hasankeyf and Nusaybin, is recorded in fragmentary notes in Volume 4 of his Seyâhatnâme (written in 1673) that have not yet been published in full. Excerpts from the manuscript indicate that Çelebi was clearly impressed by the "great bridge" at Hasankeyf, which he laments his inability to adequately capture. He does note that the Hasankeyf and Batman bridges contained chambers to accommodate travellers on both sides. Çelebi also mentions the bridge at Hasankeyf later in Volume 5 as one of several notable bridges that was less impressive than the 15th-century Uzunköprü Bridge near Edirne. Neither reference describes the bridge as ruined and the implication is therefore that the Hasankeyf bridge was functional in 1656.
  The young Venetian nobleman Ambrosio Bembo traveled down the Tigris and reached Hasankeyf on 6 February 1673. He provides a clear description of the state of the bridge. "Over the river there is a broken stone bridge of four arches, one of which has fallen and has been remade in wood. In the middle of the bridge there is a covered place that serves as a guardhouse. The entire bridge used to be covered in ancient times. All around, it has several figures in relief, but I was not able to get any information from these ignorant people." Given that the central arch was likely always wooden, resting on stone piers, Bembo may have mistaken this for repairs to a fallen arch or the bridge may have been genuinely damaged by this point.
  The importance of Hasankeyf shrank beginning in the 17th century and subsequent historical records of southeast Anatolia do not mention the bridge. Therefore, it has been assumed that the bridge became unusable due to damage during the late 17th century.
caption: This detail from a 17th-century map (south at top) shows Hasankeyf in miniature at the left and Diyarbakır at the right. The bridge over the Tigris is clearly depicted just outside Hasankeyf as the road from Diyarbakır enters the city. From a 17th-century Ottoman map of the Tigris and Euphrates that may have been created by Evliya Çelebi.[44]
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