Ain Diwar Bridge

One arch stands in the middle of the plain. Near the point where Syria meets Turkey and Iraq, north-east of the village of Ain Diwar, it is all that is left of a stone bridge. The bridge once crossed the Tigris; the river has shifted its bed since then and now runs five hundred metres to the east. So the structure stands out on the plain as a bridge over no water at all.

Getting there

112 kilometres east of Qamishli by road, through Malikiyah. Two hours by car. Going out and back from Qamishli is a day on its own and cannot be joined to the day of the tells. The road runs parallel to the border.

How long it takes

An hour. The arch, the wrecked piers and the fields around them; the real work is walking up close and looking at the stone.

What to see

The one surviving pointed arch, the piers on either side reduced to rubble, and a line of ruin running a few hundred metres to the west. The carvings on the structure can still be read: signs of the zodiac, figures standing for heavenly bodies, and mounted horsemen. That carved programme is the main evidence for dating the bridge and a typical piece of Zangid work. Gertrude Bell photographed it shortly before the First World War, and in those plates the ground around the arch looks far less worn than it does now.

What not to miss

The name of the thing. The bridge was long known as a Roman bridge and is still called one in many sources: built, the story went, in the second century AD so that Rome could cross into Upper Mesopotamia, then repaired by Seljuks and Arabs. A reappraisal published in 2014 turned that around. Arabic sources show that the bridge was built between 1146 and 1163. The order came from Jamal al-Din Muhammad al-Isfahani, vizier to Qutb al-Din Mawdud, the Zangid ruler of Mosul. There is no real evidence that any bridge stood on this spot before. Neither of the two comprehensive surveys of Roman bridges lists it. So what you stand under is not Roman but twelfth-century — and it may never have been finished.

The site today

The arch is standing, but it sits in farmland with no maintenance regime. This is the corner where three borders meet, so both the road and permission to approach can change from day to day. Keep off the border strip and take no photographs of military positions. Ask in Qamishli about the road before you set out.