Qamişlo

The largest Kurdish city in northeastern Syria, today capital of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

The city's history

Qamişlo

Qamişlo was founded in the 1920s as a refuge for Kurdish and Christian survivors of the Armenian and Syriac genocides who had fled from Turkey. It grew rapidly as a trade hub on the Jazira-Euphrates frontier and became a cultural refuge for Kurds after Kurdish education was banned in Turkey. Today it has about 200,000 inhabitants — Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians and Syriacs. Since 2012 it has been the capital of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. It hosts the first Kurdish university in Syria (Rojava University) and a cultural centre publishing books and research in classical Kurmanji Kurdish.

Figures from this city

C

Poet

Cegerxwîn

1903 – 1984

Cegerxwîn — 'the broken-hearted' — was the pen name of the poet Şêxmûs Hesen (1903–1984), the greatest Kurdish nationalist poet of the twent...

Other cities in Syria

Syria

Afrîn

The Kurdish olive region of northwestern Syria. Afrîn winds between green hills covered by a million olive trees, each one descended from the planting of a Kurdish grandfather centuries ago. It was the safe Kurdish haven of Syria until March 2018, when Turkish forces and allied militias entered and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Population · 200,000

Syria

Kobanê

The city that stopped the advance of ISIS and rewrote the modern Kurdish dictionary of heroism. Kobanê — also called Ayn al-Arab — stood firm for five unbroken months in 2014–2015 against the most violent ISIS assault, when its forces were nothing but Kurdish volunteers and women fighters. They saved it from annihilation and gave hope back to all the peoples of the region.

Population · 100,000