Qamishli

The city was initially a small village inhabited by Assyrians called Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܙܠܝ̈ܢ‎, romanized: Bēṯ Zālīn meaning House of Reeds[7]. The current name is a Turkified form of this, as "Kamış" means "reed" in Turkish (the Turkish name for the city is Kamışlı).

The President's street

With a population of 184,231 (2004 Census), Qamishli is among the 10 largest cities in Syria by population.

Qamishli is an ethnically mixed city, inhabited predominantly by Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians,[lower-alpha 1] and Armenians, with Assyrians and Armenians making up a significant minority. The city is considered to be a Christian center in Syria. It was founded by Assyrian refugees fleeing the Assyrian genocide in Anatolia.[8][9]

Before the Syrian Civil War, the Christian population of Qamishli was about 40,000, of whom 25,000 belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church, the biggest church in the city. As of 2014 it was believed that half of all Christians had left the city.[10]

Historically, Qamishli was also home to a significant Jewish community. The origin of the Jews of Qamishli (unlike the Jews of Damascus and Aleppo who are a mixture of Sephardi Jews and Musta'arabi Jews) is the adjoining city of Nusaybin, on the other side of the Turkish-Syrian border. In the 1930s the Jewish population of Qamishli numbered 3,000. After the escalation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 1947, the situation of the Jews of Qamishli deteriorated. The exodus of Jews from Syria peaked due to violence, such as the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo. By 1963, the community had dwindled to 800, and after the Six-Day War it went down further to 150, of whom only few remain today.

Qamishli in 1964

The city was officially founded as Qamishli in 1926 as a railway station on the Taurus railway.[11]

Statue of President Hafez al-Assad

Qamishli, the second largest city in al-Hasakah Governorate, is considered a center for both the Kurdish and the Assyrian ethnic groups in Syria. It was heavily settled by refugees from the Assyrian genocide. Assyrians were the majority in the city until the 1970s, when Kurds from the surrounding countryside moved into the city in numbers. Qamishli is renowned for its large Christmas parade and Newroz and Kha b-Nisan festivals.

21st century

In March 2004, during a chaotic soccer match, the Qamishli riots began when visiting Arab fans from Deir ez-Zor started praising Saddam Hussein to taunt the Kurdish home fans. The riot expanded out of the stadium and weapons were used against people of Kurdish background. In the aftermath, at least 30 Kurds were killed as the Syrian security services took over the city.[12] The event became known the "Qamishli massacre".

Qamishli streets during Christmas

In June 2005, thousands of Kurds demonstrated in Qamishli to protest the assassination of Sheikh Khaznawi, a Kurdish cleric in Syria, resulting in the death of one policeman and injury to four Kurdish civilians.[13][14] In March 2008, according to Human Rights Watch,[15] three more Kurds were killed when Syrian security forces opened fire on people celebrating the spring festival of Newroz.

2015 division of the city

The Syrian government remains in control of the airport, the border crossing, and various government buildings such as hospitals, many residential neighborhoods, and various mosques and churches. The government also manages the salaries of its employees, the production and the distribution of the harvest in the countryside, and organizes flights into and from the city to other various Syrian cities and Beirut. Most of the city is under the administration of the de facto Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria,[19] whereby the city serves as the capital of Jazira Canton as well as the capital of the federation as a whole.

While the situation has proved stable over the years, there have been occasional instances of armed conflict between pro-government forces and Sootoro against the Asayish, the most notable being the April 2016 Qamishli clashes, which lasted for two days before ending in a ceasefire and the recapture of the city's central prison by the Kurdish forces.

Also, many bombings have occurred in the city throughout the war, with ISIL claiming responsibility for many of the attacks, most notably on July 2016 where a double blast killed over 40 people and injured more. Qamishli is home to Chirkin prison, which houses detained Islamic State militants.[20]

The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is "Csa" (Mediterranean climate; dry-summer subtropical climate). The summers tend to be dry and warm, with July being the hottest month of the year, while the winters are usually cold and wet, with January being the coldest month with also an average of 11 days of rain. In total, around 53 days of rain occur every year.[21]

Qamishli Airport was closed to civilians in October 2015, but later reopened. Syrian flight companies including Cham Wings Airlines, FlyDamas and Syrian Air provide flights into Qamishli from Damascus, Latakia and Beirut.

Qamishli Granaries

The Al-Hasakah Governorate is not only Syria's most famed grain-producing governorate, but also the source of nearly half of Syria's extracted oil.[25] In December 2017, in preparation for the winter grain season, the government signed deals with the farming corporation in al-Hasakah and many local farmers to receive the wheat and barley planted across 58,000 acres in al-Hasakah, and to plant more in preparation for next year.[26]

The Kurdish-language newspaper Nu Dem has its headquarters in Qamishli.[5]

While prior to the Rojava conflict, there had been no institution of higher education in northeastern Syria, in September 2014 the Mesopotamian Social Sciences Academy started teaching.[6][27] Following the University of Afrin,[28] in July 2016 the Jazira Canton's Board of Education officially established the second Syrian Kurdish university in Qamishli. The University of Rojava initially comprised four faculties: Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Arts and Humanities. Programs taught include health, oil, computer and agricultural engineering, physics, chemistry, history, psychology, geography, mathematics, primary school teaching, and Kurdish literature.[29][30]

• Aram Tigran, singer
• Ciwan Haco, singer
• Gregorius Yohanna Ibrahim, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo

• Assyrians in Syria
• Kurds in Syria
• 2004 Qamishli riots
• 2015 Qamishli bombings
• Qamishli clashes (April 2016)
• Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Qamishli
• Mor Bosous Monastery in Hedil

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Qamishli.

• "From Qamishli to Qamishlo: A Trip to Rojava’s New Capital ", Fabrice Balanche, The Washington Institute, 13 April 2017
• "Amnesty Raises Kurd Issue", on Kurds in Qamishli, 2005