Guide
The Malabadi Bridge, whose original name is the Akarman Bridge, stands within the Silvan district of Diyarbakır, 23.2 kilometres from Silvan. It was built in 1147 by Timurtaş bin İlgazi of the Artuqid principality, founded by Artuk Bey, one of the Oghuz Turkmen lords who came with the Turkish advance into Anatolia after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and took the region. It is recorded in the inventory of historical monuments of Diyarbakır and was restored by the municipality of Silvan in 1989; the bridge is the main element of that municipality's emblem.
Though the historical sources and the bridge's own inscription give its name as the Akarman Bridge — medieval Turkish sources sometimes call it the Karaman Bridge — the name Malabadi later became common among the people of the region. It takes that name from Bad, founder of the Marwanids; Malabadi means the house or property of Bad in Kurdish, and the Badıkan tribe living at Silvan traces its roots to him as well.
The bridge is 150 metres long, seven metres wide and nineteen metres high from the water to the keystone. It is built of coloured stone and has come down to the present through repairs. Its arch is the widest of any stone bridge in Türkiye and the Near East.
Within the arch on either side are two rooms used as shelter by caravans and travellers, especially on hard winter days, and by the bridge guards. It is said that these rooms were once connected by passages to the far ends of the road, so that the footfalls of approaching caravans could be heard through them while they were still some way off.
The bridge is made of three sections, each of a different length and set on broken lines, joined to the roads at east and west by gentle slopes. The middle section rests as a mass on rock and holds a very large pointed arch of 38.60 metres span together with a small basket-handled arch of three metres. The third section runs noticeably parallel to the first and has two pointed openings, with a further opening near where it meets the road. The bridge therefore has five openings in all, one of them very large.
