Few cities in Turkey are as surprising as Mardin. Perched on a rocky hill deep in the south-east, it looks down on the vast plain of Mesopotamia, which fades towards the horizon and Syria. Seen from below, it's an amphitheatre of honey-coloured limestone houses stacked one above another up the slope, with terraces, arches, courtyards and a tangle of alleys and stairways, all crowned by the ruins of an ancient citadel. At sunset, when golden light bathes the stone and the plain, it's one of the most beautiful sights in the country.
But what makes Mardin unique isn't only its beauty. It's also a mosaic city. For centuries Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians (or Syriacs) have lived here side by side, Sunni Muslims alongside Orthodox Christians. You can read that mix in its stones: madrasas and mosques built by the Artuqid dynasty, which ruled the region in the Middle Ages; the bazaar where silversmiths and coppersmiths still work; and, on the outskirts, Syriac monasteries more than a thousand years old such as Deyrulzafaran, where a Christian community still prays in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. It's a place where time seems to stand still and cultures meet.
This guide helps you explore that stone city in a practical way: what to see in the old town, how to get to the monasteries and the ruins on the plain, how much admission costs, how to get around its steep slopes, and how to use Mardin as a base for exploring Turkey's fascinating south-east, with the city of Dara, Midyat and the monasteries of the Tur Abdin. Mardin isn't a place for crowds: it's a journey into an ancient, peaceful world that is deeply different from the rest of Turkey.
Mardin is a very ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia. Its name comes from the Aramaic 'Marida', meaning 'fortress', and refers to the citadel that crowns its hill. It was an early and very important centre of Syriac Christianity: in the 4th and 5th centuries some of the world's first monasteries were founded around it, such as Deyrulzafaran, which served for centuries as the seat of the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church. It passed through Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian and Arab hands until, in the 12th century, it came under the Turkish Artuqid dynasty, which gave it its monumental character: the Great Mosque, the madrasas and much of its stone architecture. After the Mongols and other powers, it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. In the 20th century the region's Christian communities suffered greatly, especially during the First World War, and their numbers fell drastically. Today Mardin, now part of the Republic of Turkey, keeps its unique mix of peoples and religions. We tell the whole story in detail on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Deep Anatolia, between mountains and Mesopotamia: the colossal sanctuary of Mount Nemrut, the golden-stone Christian city of Mardin, the cradle of civilisation and the heart of the Kurdish question.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Mardin was born from its geography. The city clings to the slope of a steep, rocky hill that rises like a balcony over Upper Mesopotamia, the fertile plain watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates that many regard as one of the cradles of civilisation. From the top of its crag, whoever held Mardin controlled the routes between Anatolia, Syria and the Iranian plateau, and could see any enemy coming from miles away. It's no coincidence that its name comes from the Aramaic 'Marida', which means, precisely, 'fortress'.
The hill has been inhabited since very ancient times, in a region where urban life goes back thousands of years. In Antiquity, the area was fought over by the great empires of the East: the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, the empire of Alexander and his successors, and then the long tug-of-war between Rome (later Byzantium) and the Parthian and Sasanian Persians, which turned this frontier into a stage for constant warfare. Very close to Mardin, the Byzantine emperor Anastasius built the fortress city of Dara at the start of the 6th century to hold back the Persians: its colossal ruins, with cisterns and necropolises carved into the rock, are still astonishing.
On this frontier hill, between empires and religions, Mardin gradually took shape as a citadel and, at its feet, as a city of stone. But before it was a city of mosques and madrasas, Mardin was, above all, a great centre of Eastern Christianity.
Long before the arrival of Islam, the Mardin region became one of the great centres of Syriac (or Assyrian) Christianity, one of the oldest branches of the Christian faith, whose followers spoke and prayed in Aramaic, the same language Jesus spoke. As early as the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was spreading through the Eastern Roman Empire, some of the world's first and most important monasteries were founded in the hills and on the plateau around Mardin, the region known as Tur Abdin, 'the mountain of the servants of God'.
The most famous is Deyrulzafaran, the 'saffron monastery' (Mor Hananyo in Syriac), founded around the year 493 on top of an even older sanctuary. For centuries it was a leading spiritual and intellectual centre, and between 1160 and 1932 it was home to no less than the seat of the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, in other words, the head of the entire Church. A few kilometres away, the monastery of Mor Gabriel, founded in 397, is one of the oldest monasteries in the world still in operation. Within their walls, generation after generation, monks copied manuscripts, trained bishops and kept alive a liturgy in Aramaic that is still sung today.
This heritage turned Mardin and Tur Abdin into a sacred landscape dotted with dozens of monasteries and churches, and home to an Assyrian community that, for fifteen hundred years, was an essential part of life in the region. That Christian presence, together with the Muslim one that came later, is the key to Mardin's plural and unique identity.
In 640, shortly after the birth of Islam, the region fell to the Muslim Arab armies, and over the following centuries it passed from one power to another. But Mardin's great moment, the one that gave it its monumental character, came at the start of the 12th century with the Turkish Artuqid dynasty (Artuklu). These Turkmen rulers, who emerged as Seljuk power broke apart, made Mardin the capital of one of their principalities and turned it into a brilliant city that dominated much of southeastern Anatolia, northern Iraq and Syria between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Under the Artuqids, Mardin enjoyed a true golden age. The Great Mosque (Ulu Cami) was built or completed, with its distinctive carved-stone minaret that still crowns the old town; madrasas went up (schools where religion was taught, but also astronomy, philosophy and mathematics), along with markets, baths and palaces, all in the same golden limestone that gives the city its unmistakable colour. The 'Artuklu' style dates from this period and that of its successors, with its monumental portals, stepped domes and exquisitely fine stone carving.
The two most beautiful madrasas that visitors admire today bring this period to a close: Zinciriye (or Sultan Isa) Madrasa, founded in 1385 by the last Artuqid sultan, and Kasımiye Madrasa, begun in Artuqid times and finished in the 15th century under the Aq Qoyunlu, the Turkmen confederation of the 'White Sheep'. Before that, the Artuqids had been forced to submit to the overwhelming Mongol Empire, which ravaged the region in the 13th century, but the city survived and kept on flourishing.
After the Artuqids, the Aq Qoyunlu and a brief period of rule by Safavid Persia, Mardin was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1516-1517, in the time of Sultan Selim I, and remained under its rule for four centuries, until the end of the First World War. It was the capital of a district (sanjak) and a quiet, prosperous outpost on the southeastern frontier, part of the trade routes linking Anatolia with Syria and Mesopotamia.
The most striking feature of Ottoman Mardin was its extraordinary diversity. Its stone alleys were shared by Arabic-, Turkish- and Kurdish-speaking Muslims; Syriac Orthodox, Catholic and other Christians; Armenians; and Jewish and other communities too. This mix showed in the neighbourhoods, in churches and mosques standing side by side, in the crafts (coppersmiths, silversmiths, saddlers) and even in the many languages heard in the bazaar. Mardin was a microcosm of the diversity of the Middle East, one of those cities where, for centuries, religions learned to share the same space.
The stone city that charms visitors today, with its terraced houses, vaulted passageways (abbara), courtyards and mansions with carved façades, is largely the legacy of this long Ottoman era, layered on top of the Artuqid foundations. Mardin kept its mosaic-city character almost intact until the early 20th century, when history took a tragic turn.
The 20th century hit plural Mardin hard. During the First World War, in 1915, the Christian communities of the eastern Ottoman Empire (Armenians, but also Assyrians/Syriacs) suffered mass deportations and massacres. The violence against the Syriac population of the Mardin and Tur Abdin region, known in Aramaic as the Sayfo ('the sword'), left tens of thousands dead and marked the beginning of the end of a Christian presence that went back millennia. It is a painful and sensitive episode, still the subject of historical and political debate, and one best remembered with restraint and respect for the victims.
After the fall of the empire and the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mardin ended up within the new state, very close to the border separating it from French-mandate Syria. Over the course of the century, emigration (for economic reasons and because of the insecurity linked to the conflict in the southeast in the 1980s and 1990s) further shrank the Assyrian community: many Syriac families left for Istanbul, Europe or the Americas, leaving villages and monasteries half empty, although some have been returning in recent years to reclaim their heritage.
In recent decades, Mardin has enjoyed a revival thanks to tourism and a new appreciation of its heritage. The restoration of its stone houses, the opening of boutique hotels and museums in old mansions, and its reputation as one of the most beautiful cities in Turkey have put it on travellers' maps. The authorities and international bodies have worked to protect its historic centre, a candidate for World Heritage status.
Today, Mardin is still a mosaic city: mostly Muslim, speaking Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic, but with a Syriac Christian community that keeps its churches, monasteries and Aramaic liturgy alive. Wandering its alleys at sunset, with the Mesopotamian plain at your feet and church bells and the call to prayer ringing out almost at the same time, is a glimpse into an ancient world where, despite all the wounds of history, cultures still live side by side on the same golden stone.
