Hasankeyf castle stands on the bank of the Tigris, two hundred metres above the river, cut from a single mass of rock. The Byzantines built it in 363. Its name, Hısnıkeyfa, means "rock castle", and the site is as defensible as that suggests — hard to reach and harder to take.
For about three centuries under Byzantine rule it served a religious function as the seat of a Syriac bishopric. It passed in turn to the Abbasids, the Marwanids and the Hamdanids, and was taken in 638 by the commander Iyad ibn Ghanm. After Manzikert it fell within the Artuqid principality, which rebuilt and settled it and made it their capital between 1101 and 1231. Ayyubid and Aq Qoyunlu rule followed, and in 1515 it passed to the Ottomans.
You climb to it by stepped paths, and inscriptions are set into the walls along the way. Two supply routes run down to the Tigris — one open, one concealed — each with two hundred steps, and both are still sound.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Batman as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.6 °C in January to 30.3 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in March (76 mm) and lightest in July (2 mm). Long-term means for 1952-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:30 - 17:00, closed Monday
