Qamishli
— the city the survivors built.
Not only on a wall.
“A city in north-eastern Syria, on the Jaghjagh River where it meets the Turkish border opposite Nusaybin. Founded in 1926 by Assyrian and Armenian survivors of the 1915 genocides, and grown into a Kurdish-majority centre of the Jazira region. Churches, mosques, and a long market street share the older quarters; the railway that runs west to Aleppo crosses the border twice along the way.
Qamishli, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Qamishli sits on the Jaghjagh River in Al-Hasakah Governorate, on Syria's border with Turkey directly across from the Turkish town of Nusaybin. The city was founded in 1926 by Assyrian Christian survivors of the Sayfo and Armenian refugees of 1915, drawn to the new French Mandate town along the Berlin-Baghdad railway. Population estimates before 2011 put the city around 200,000, with substantial Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, and Chaldean communities. Since 2012 most of the city has been administered by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, alongside a remaining Syrian government quarter.
Qamishli's older quarters hold a dense mix of religious architecture for a city less than a century old. Saint Jacob of Nisibis Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, the Armenian Church of the Holy Martyrs, the Chaldean Catholic Church of Our Lady, and the Great Mosque of Qamishli all stand within a short walk of the central market. The late Ottoman Berlin-Baghdad railway station anchors the western edge of the historic core, with a low brick facade and a single platform that runs along the border fence opposite Nusaybin.
Qamishli's year carries the calendars of several communities at once. The Assyrian new year, Kha b-Nisan, is observed in early April with parades that have run since the 1950s. Christmas and Easter follow the Julian and Gregorian calendars in different churches; Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha mark the Muslim year. The wheat and cotton harvests of the surrounding Jazira plain set the agricultural cycle, peaking in May and October. Summer temperatures regularly cross 40 degrees Celsius; winters are cool with occasional snow off the Anatolian plateau to the north.