Adıyaman

關於Adıyaman

Adıyaman (Kurdish: Semsûr) is a city in southeastern Turkey. It is the administrative centre of Adıyaman Province and Adıyaman District. Its population is 290,883 (2024). The inhabitants of the city are mostly Kurdish.

An unverified theory is that the former name of the city, Hisn-Mansur derives from the name of the Umayyad Emir Mansur ibn Jawana who was killed by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur in this region in 758. Because of the difficulty among the locals in pronouncing Hisn-Mansur, the corruption Semsur emerged.

Various unverifiable theories exist for the name.

The first settlement on the site of the city was the ancient town of Perrhe, part of the kingdom of Commagene before it became part of the Roman and later Byzantine Empire.

It was then captured by the Arabs and became known as Hisn Mansur. It became a contested border town between the Abbasid caliphate and the Byzantines and was therefore well protected; a wall with three gates and a ditch guarded the town while in its middle stood a fortress with double walls.

In the early eleventh century, the town formed part of the Byzantine defences in the Euphrates region together with Edessa, Gargar, Samosata...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.