Şırnak

i.The Upper Tigris and the Bohti Country

Şırnak sits on the great upper Tigris country at the southeastern corner of Türkiye — a country of folded limestone ridges, deep river canyons, and broad open plains, with the provincial seat in a bowl at 1,400 metres elevation on the southern slopes of Cudi Dağı, fifty kilometres north of the Iraqi border. The principal river is the Dicle (Tigris), which enters the country from the upstream Diyarbakır-Batman drainage, runs through the historic town of Cizre on the broad alluvial plain, and crosses the Iraqi border at Habur to flow on to Mosul. The southern half of the province is dominated by the great open plain — the modern Silopi and İdil districts — where the historic Mesopotamian-Anatolian caravan road runs through the country.

The province extends to 7,172 square kilometres and supports a population of 570,745 under the TÜİK 2023 count (the 2024 figure is estimated at approximately 580,000), organised into eight districts: the central Merkez (Şırnak) at 108,699; Silopi (the largest, at 148,126 — the principal commercial centre and the Habur frontier town); Cizre (the historic upper-Tigris town); İdil; Güçlükonak; Uludere; Beytüşşebap; and the small district seat of Şırnak Merkez town itself. The country is also the principal Türkiye-Iraq commercial gateway: the Habur Sınır Kapısı at Silopi handles over half of Türkiye's overland trade with Iraq.

ii.Cizre — Jazirat ibn 'Umar

The principal historic town of the wider province is Cizre, on a great bend of the Tigris fifty kilometres south of the modern provincial seat. The town's name preserves the medieval Arabic Jazirat ibn 'Umar ("the island of the son of 'Umar") — the late-9th-century town founded c. 865 by Hassan ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab al-Taghlibi, on a man-made island carved out of the Tigris-river bend (the river was diverted by an engineering work to encircle the town on three sides). The Turkish name Cizre is the direct linguistic descendant of the Arabic Jazira, "the island."

Through the medieval centuries Cizre was one of the principal Tigris-river commercial towns: substantial under Marwanid and Zengid rule in the 11th–12th centuries, under the Ayyubids of Hisn Kayfa and Mosul in the 13th, and under the Mongol Ilkhanate and the Aqquyunlu in the 14th–15th centuries. The principal medieval survival is the Cizre Ulu Camii (Great Mosque), built in 1155 under the Zengid atabeg Nureddin Mahmud, with the famous late-12th-century wooden minbar (now displayed in the İstanbul Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi) and the substantial main building still in active use as the principal congregational mosque of the town.

iii.The Bohti Beyliği and the Abdaliye Medresesi (1437)

Through the late-medieval and early-modern centuries Cizre was the capital of one of the most durable of all the eastern Anatolian-Kurdish principalities: the Bohti Beyliği (Bohtan Emirate), the hereditary Kurdish principality of the Bohti (Bokhti / Bohtan) lineage that held the upper Tigris country from the 13th century until the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms of the mid-19th century. The Bohti were one of the principal Kurdish noble families of the wider region, and the Cizre principality controlled, at its medieval height, a substantial territory along the Tigris from the modern Diyarbakır border south to Mosul.

The principal medieval survival of the Bohti principality is the Abdaliye Medresesi, built in 840 AH / 1437 CE by Emir Abdal (Abdullah) ibn Abdillah Seyfeddin Bohti, the Bohti emir of the time. The medrese — one of the principal surviving medieval Kurdish-Islamic educational buildings in Türkiye — is built in the local courtyard-medrese form with the characteristic Tigris-valley dark-stone construction, and has been in continuous educational use across the centuries. The Abdaliye is one of the principal pilgrimage sites of the modern town.

The Bohti country was incorporated into the Ottoman state through the same Çaldıran-and-İdris-i-Bitlisî settlement of 1514–15 (see our Bitlis essay) that brought the wider Kurdish emirates under Ottoman authority. Like Hakkâri, Bitlis, and Soran, the Cizre Bohti principality was preserved as a hereditary semi-autonomous emirate (hükümet status) under the formal authority of the Diyarbekir beylerbeyi, and continued in continuous hereditary rule under Ottoman suzerainty for three and a half centuries.

iv.Cudi Dağı and the Quranic Tradition of Noah

The principal religious-historical site of the wider province — and one of the most sacred sites of the entire Islamic geographical tradition — is Cudi Dağı, the great mountain that rises immediately north of Cizre to 2,089 metres. The Qur'an, in Sūrah Hūd (11:44), names al-Jūdī as the place where Noah's Ark came to rest after the Flood:

"Wa qīla yā arḍu ibla'ī mā'aki wa yā samā'u aqli'ī wa ghīḍa al-mā'u wa quḍiya al-amru wa istawat 'alā al-Jūdī…"
"And it was said: 'O Earth, swallow your water; and O Sky, withhold your rain.' And the water subsided, and the matter was concluded, and the Ark came to rest on al-Jūdī…" — Qur'an 11:44

The principal Islamic-tradition identification of al-Jūdī, established by the classical commentators of the 9th and 10th centuries — al-Ṭabarī, al-Mas'ūdī, and Ibn al-Athīr — places it at this mountain in the upper Tigris country, and the modern Cizre tradition follows this medieval identification. (The alternative tradition that places Noah's landing at Mount Ararat in Ağrı province is the principal Christian and Jewish tradition; see our planned Ağrı essay.) The Quranic identification has been the principal authority of the Islamic-tradition pilgrimage to Cudi Dağı for the past twelve centuries; the modern province of Şırnak is officially termed "Şehr-i Nuh" ("the City of Noah") in tourist and provincial materials.

The town of Cizre also holds, by the same tradition, the Tomb of the Prophet Noah: by local tradition, after the Flood the Prophet Noah descended from al-Jūdī to settle at the foot of the mountain at Jazira (modern Cizre), and was buried there after his death. The traditional Hz. Nuh Türbesi at Cizre is one of the principal pilgrimage sites of the wider region, set in the small park at the centre of the historic town.

v.Ehmedê Xanî and the Mem û Zîn (1692)

The single most important literary product of the wider province is the great Kurdish-language epic Mem û Zîn, written in 1692 by the Bohti scholar and Sufi Ehmedê Xanî (Ahmed-î Hânî; 1651–1707). The work — a long verse mathnawi of 2,656 distichs in classical Kurmanji Kurdish, modelled in its formal structure on the Persian mathnawis of Nizami and Jami — is universally regarded as the principal classical work of the Kurdish literary tradition, and one of the principal early-modern Anatolian-language literary works.

The plot is a tragic Romeo-and-Juliet love story set at the court of the Bohti emir Mîr Zeynuddin of Cizre in the year 854 AH (1450–51): the prince's sister Zîn (or Sitî) and the young court official Mem fall in love across the political-factional divides of the Cizre court; the malevolent intriguer Bekir of the rival faction prevents their union; both die of grief, and are buried in adjoining tombs which become a place of pilgrimage. The poem is at once a courtly romance, a Sufi allegory of the soul's longing for union with God, and (by some modern readings) a political-historical allegory of the wider Bohti and Kurdish predicament of the late Ottoman period.

The principal pilgrimage site connected to the epic is the Mem û Zîn Türbesi at Cizre — the joint tomb-shrine of the historical figures behind the poem, set in the Botan quarter of the historic town. The shrine, much restored over the centuries, is one of the principal civic pilgrimage sites of the wider Kurdish-speaking country. Ehmedê Xanî himself is buried in his hometown of Doğubayazıt in modern Ağrı province (the famous Ehmedê Xanî Türbesi within the great İshak Paşa Sarayı complex — see our planned Ağrı essay).

vi.Bedirhan Bey and the End of the Bohti Beyliği (1840s)

The last great ruler of the Bohti principality was Bedirhan Bey (c. 1803–1868), the Bohti emir of Cizre from 1821, one of the principal Kurdish political figures of the 19th-century eastern country. Bedirhan ruled the wider Bohti country in continuing semi-autonomy through the 1820s and 1830s, in the closing decades before the Tanzimat-era abolition of the eastern hereditary emirates. In the early 1840s, in the context of the wider Ottoman Tanzimat administrative-reform programme, Bedirhan's continuing autonomy came into conflict with the central Ottoman state. The Ottoman army under Osman Paşa took Cizre in July 1847; Bedirhan surrendered, was exiled first to Edirne and then to Crete (where he lived until his death in 1868), and the Bohti hereditary principality was formally abolished.

The Bohti country was placed under standard Ottoman provincial administration as part of the Diyarbekir Vilayeti (and from 1879, partly under the Bitlis Vilayeti for the upper country, partly under the Mardin sancak of the Diyarbekir Vilayeti for the lower country). The long Ottoman centuries closed at Cizre, as elsewhere in the wider region, in the difficult conditions of the First World War and the National Struggle. The wartime relocation (tehcir) of 1915, ordered for the eastern provinces in conditions of active warfare on three fronts and ongoing wartime emergency, was applied to the Armenian and Syriac communities of the country; the demographic structure of the country after 1923 was substantially different from the late Ottoman pattern.

vii.The Republic and the 1990 Founding

Under the early Republic of Türkiye the wider Şırnak country was administered as a collection of districts under the parent Mardin, Siirt, and Hakkâri provinces — with no unified provincial centre. The historic town of Şırnak itself was an obscure district seat of Siirt. The administrative reorganisation of the early-Özal Republican period created the modern province by law in 1990: Şırnak was established as Türkiye's 73rd province, carved from the territory of three parent provinces — the districts of İdil, Cizre, and Silopi from Mardin; the central Şırnak district and Güçlükonak from Siirt; and Beytüşşebap and Uludere from Hakkâri.

The new provincial population at founding (1990) was a modest 25,059; by 2007 the figure had risen to 54,302; by 2023 to 570,745. The very rapid 21st-century growth — over twenty-fold in a generation — reflects the substantial Republican investment in the new province, the rapid urbanisation around the Habur frontier commercial economy, and the substantial demographic dynamism of the wider southeastern region.

The province is the seat of Şırnak Üniversitesi (founded 2008), one of the new-generation eastern Anatolian universities with a strong programme in Kurdish-language and regional studies. The principal civic developments of the 21st century include the new airport at Şırnak (Şerafettin Elçi Havalimanı, opened 2013), the substantial new road network connecting the principal districts, and the new educational and medical facilities at Cizre, Silopi, and the central Merkez.

viii.The Habur Border and the Frontier Economy

The principal commercial feature of the modern province is the Habur Sınır Kapısı — the Türkiye-Iraq frontier crossing at Silopi, the principal land border between Türkiye and Iraq. The Habur crossing handles, in a typical year, over 1.5 million heavy-goods vehicles in each direction; it is the principal export and import route for Iraqi commerce with the wider Mediterranean world, and the principal transit route for the oil-export pipeline from the Iraqi Kurdistan oilfields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The frontier town of Silopi has grown — from a 1990 village of 22,000 to the modern town of 148,126 — as the principal Türkiye-side commercial hub of the Iraqi trade.

The economic geography of the province reflects this frontier role: substantial commercial trucking, a working customs and brokerage industry, and the principal Turkish-side Iraqi-trade banking centre at Silopi.

ix.The Tigris Valley and the Beytüşşebap Mountains

The wider provincial geography offers two distinct landscape types: the broad open Tigris alluvial plain to the south (Cizre, Silopi, İdil, the historic Mesopotamian-Anatolian caravan road country), and the high mountain country to the north (Beytüşşebap and Uludere, the southern slopes of the great Cilo-Sat range). Beytüşşebap in particular, at 1,650 metres elevation in the upper Habur (Çağlayan) valley, is one of the principal high-mountain towns of the wider country, with the substantial summer pasturage country of the upper Habur watershed.

The principal river canyon of the province — the Habur Çayı canyon — runs from Beytüşşebap south through Uludere and Güçlükonak to the Tigris, providing one of the principal scenic drives of the wider region. The canyon country is also one of the principal habitats of the Türkiye-side Persian leopard population (shared with the wider Hakkâri Cilo-Sat country).

x.Modern Tourism and the Cudi-Cizre Pilgrimage Circuit

The province has developed, in the past two decades, a substantial faith-tourism economy centred on the Cudi-Cizre Quranic-tradition pilgrimage circuit. The principal stops are the Hz. Nuh Camii ve Türbesi at Cizre (the traditional tomb of the Prophet Noah); the Cudi Dağı pilgrimage trail from the village of Heştan up the mountain to the traditional landing site (a substantial walk of 8 kilometres); the Cizre Ulu Camii of 1155; the Abdaliye Medresesi of 1437; and the Mem û Zîn Türbesi. The annual pilgrimage circuit, organised by the provincial Tourism Office in association with the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, has become one of the principal Islamic-pilgrimage events of Türkiye outside the principal Mecca-Medina haj cycle.

xi.What to See, in Order

The principal first visit in the province is Cizre — the great historic Tigris-river town fifty kilometres south of the provincial seat. The compact walking circuit in the historic centre covers the Hz. Nuh Türbesi (the traditional tomb of the Prophet Noah); the Cizre Ulu Camii of 1155 with its famous 12th-century Zengid building (and the displayed-elsewhere wooden minbar); the Abdaliye Medresesi of 1437; the Mem û Zîn Türbesi; the historic stone bridge across the old Tigris bend; and the small Cizre Müzesi with the principal regional ethnographic collection.

The principal natural-and-religious visit is to Cudi Dağı — reached from the village of Heştan north of Cizre by the marked pilgrimage trail to the traditional landing site (a moderate-difficulty walk of 8 kilometres, best in late spring and autumn).

At Şırnak Merkez, the modest town in the mountain bowl on the southern Cudi slopes, the principal visits are to the small provincial museum, the modern shopping streets of the Republican-era new town, and the principal viewpoint over the upper Tigris country.

The wider province offers the spectacular Habur Çayı canyon (one of the principal scenic drives of the country, running from Beytüşşebap south through Uludere); the modest historic small town of İdil (with the historic Syriac Mor Yakup Church and the surviving small Ottoman-era bazaar); and the Habur Sınır Kapısı at Silopi (for the curious traveller, the Türkiye-Iraq frontier post is one of the principal land border crossings of the eastern Mediterranean).

Cudi Dağı of the Qur'an's Sūrah Hūd — the city of Noah on the upper Tigris, the Bohti emirate of Cizre, and the great Kurdish epic of 1692.

For the parent territories from which the 1990 province was carved, see Mardin (Cizre, İdil, Silopi), Hakkâri (Beytüşşebap, Uludere), and the planned Siirt essay (Şırnak Merkez, Güçlükonak); for the parallel İdris-i Bitlisî 1515 settlement, see Bitlis (the principal account); for the Diyarbekir beylerbeyi framework, see Diyarbakır; for Ehmedê Xanî's grave at Doğubayazıt, see the planned Ağrı essay. For more on the upper Tigris country and the great rivers of Türkiye, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.