Diyarbakır's Watermelon, Stuffed Ribs, and Meftune

Watermelons Grown in Pits Along the Tigris

Diyarbakır's watermelons are known to reach 50, 60, even 75 kilograms — a figure tied to a traditional growing technique called "kuyu karpuzculuğu," in which the plant's root zone is set into a wide pit so the soil holds moisture longer. Fruit grown under standard conditions averages a still-considerable 20 to 30 kilograms.

The registered variety, Citrullus lanatus, has a round-to-oval shape with dark green stripes on a lighter green rind 2 to 3 centimeters thick. The flesh is red, fibrous, sweet and notably juicy. Of the historic local types — Sürme, Pembe, Beyaz Kış, Kara Kış and Ferik — only Sürme remains in wide cultivation today, grown on the fertile plains along the Tigris that also support the region's other vegetable and grain crops.

The plant itself is an annual, trailing vine with slightly hairy stems and both a taproot and shallow surface roots; each vine typically carries three to four fruit given how large they grow. Yellow flowers open around 85 days after sowing, male blooms first, and pollination relies on insects; the registered Sürme variety is diploid, carrying 22 chromosomes (2n=22).

Kaburga Dolması: A Rib Cage Stuffed and Sewn Shut

Turkish dolma, broadly, means meat or vegetables stuffed with a prepared filling — lamb, chicken, or produce like pepper and squash. Kaburga dolması applies that logic to the rib bone itself, and while it appears across the wider Ottoman culinary repertoire, it also turns up under other regional fillings in provinces such as Muş, Bingöl, Batman, Erzincan, Van, Antalya and Adıyaman.

Diyarbakır's version of stuffed ribs starts with a 1.5-kilogram lamb rib cage cut open from the inside to form a pocket, packed with a filling of rice, coarsely ground almonds, butter and herbs. Cooking happens in two stages: the sewn-shut cut steams for about three hours over simmering water in a covered colander, then finishes under a smear of tomato paste in a 190–200°C oven for roughly 20 minutes until browned.

The dish was registered as a Turkish geographical indication — "Diyarbakır Kaburga Dolması" — on December 20, 2021, following an application filed by the Diyarbakır Chamber of Commerce and Industry on November 11, 2020 — a 13-month process from application to registration. What sets it apart from versions found elsewhere in southeastern Turkey is both the filling — rice and almonds rather than bulgur — and this steam-then-roast method.

Meftune: A Sour Stew Built on Garlic and Sumac

The name meftune echoes meftun, an Arabic-derived Turkish word meaning "smitten" or "enamored." The dish itself pairs meat with a vegetable in a sour sauce, and Diyarbakır cooks it with both eggplant and winter squash. The squash used — Cucurbita moschata — is harvested in late summer and eaten from autumn onward, typically alongside lamb from the local Karakaş breed. Preparation starts with sumac steeped in three parts water; cubed squash cooks alongside sautéed lamb, and once the meat is tender, crushed garlic goes in and the dish rests briefly before serving.

Sumac supplies both the dish's sourness and its deep red color, while red pepper flakes add heat. The eggplant version follows the same logic; made with dried eggplant instead of fresh, it takes on a separate local name, "Hırçikli Meftune."

Sumac, the Region's Souring Agent

Sumac is the fruit of Rhus coriaria, a tree from the pistachio family that grows in warm climates; its bark has medicinal uses and its leaves are used in tanning. The lentil-sized fruit is crushed and added to dishes for acidity.

In Diyarbakır cooking, sumac is most often steeped in water before it goes into a dish — the method used in meftune, where it cuts through the richness of lamb while giving the sauce its characteristic red tone. That sourness fits a broader pattern: local cooking tends to pair meat with eggplant or tomato, and leans generously fatty, spicy and sour.

A Short Note on Kadayıf

Diyarbakır's dessert table is quieter than its savory one, but it has its own signature in Diyarbakır Burma Kadayıfı, made in the city since the 18th century. A stiff dough is rested for a few hours, then poured from a strainer-like tool called a "kıf" onto a copper sheet in a circle and gathered into strands or twists, sometimes wrapped around crushed walnuts, cooked in butter and finished with syrup. It's prepared locally in three forms — with clotted cream, without it, or with cheese — alongside revani, zingil, künefe and halbur hurma.

The Walls That Guard a Working Garden

Hevsel Gardens, roughly 700 hectares of fertile land between Diyarbakır's fortress and the Tigris valley, were tentative-listed by UNESCO in 2013 (three years after the fortress itself was tentative-listed, in 2000), then inscribed together on the World Heritage List in 2015 alongside the city's fortress walls, under the name "Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape." The listing falls under criterion (iv), a cultural-landscape designation distinct from UNESCO's intangible-heritage list; the walls themselves are cited for showing, through masonry and gates, historical layers running from the Roman period to the present.

Who first built the walls, and when, is unknown; only the inner citadel is thought to mark the city's earliest settlement, in an area inhabited by the Hurrians as far back as the second millennium BCE. The fortifications split into an inner and outer citadel, with four named gates — Dağ Kapı, Urfa Kapı, Mardin Kapı and Yeni Kapı. Built from local basalt, the walls rise 10 to 12 meters high and 3 to 5 meters thick, tracing an oval line roughly 5 kilometers long and studded with 82 bastions — rectangular where they face the Tigris valley, semicircular or polygonal elsewhere. The walled historic quarter they enclose spans roughly 1,040 meters north-south and 1,400 meters east-west.

The designation protects more than a historic view — it covers land still under cultivation. The squash used in kabak meftunesi grows inside these gardens, harvested in late summer and eaten through the following autumn, tying the fortress's UNESCO status directly to what ends up on Diyarbakır's table.