Nusaybin

Nisibis

FortMesopotamia · Nusaybin, Mardin Province, TurkeyBuilt 115 CE

About

Trajan's armies took Nisibis without a fight in 115 CE as they swept down from Armenia into northern Mesopotamia. The city became capital of the new province of Mesopotamia, organized the following year and celebrated on freshly minted coins. Roman garrison troops occupied Nisibis, holding one of the most strategically placed road junctions between the Tigris and the old Persian roads west. The province it anchored lasted barely eighteen months. Hadrian ordered Trajan's entire Mesopotamian conquest abandoned within days of taking power in August 117 CE, and Roman troops had withdrawn west to the Euphrates by the following year.

What happened here

A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.