Bitlis sits west of Lake Van, built along a valley thick with historic buildings — which is why it is called the beautiful city in the valley. Its name is said to come from Bedlis, one of Alexander's commanders, who built the castle here on his orders.
The province was Urartian territory before it was anything else. Assyrian rule followed, then the Medes, and with the founding of the Persian kingdom Darius II took it. Alexander held it in the 4th century BC; the emperor Trajan took it in the 2nd century AD, and it stayed under Byzantium until the 7th.
The Turkish period gave Bitlis a role beyond its size. When the Turkish advance into Anatolia began in the 10th century the town became an important stop, and it was here, at Ahlat on the lake shore, that Alp Arslan and his armies were hosted — a part in the opening of Anatolia to the Turks. The Ayyubids attacked in the 13th century, then the Khwarazmians and the Mongols. The battle of Çaldıran in 1514 brought the province under Ottoman rule, and under the Ottomans Bitlis became a centre of learning, art and culture. It was occupied for a time by Tsarist Russia during the First World War and made a province after the Republic was declared.
