Bitlis (Armenian: Բաղեշ, romanized: Baghesh or Paghesh;[2] Kurdish: Bidlîs[3]) is a city in southeastern Turkey.

[1] The city is located at an elevation of 1,545 metres, 15 km from Lake Van, in the steep-sided valley of the Bitlis River, a tributary of the Tigris.

Industry is fairly limited, and deals mainly with leatherworking, manufacture of tobacco products as well as weaving and dyeing of coarse cloth.

A popular folk etymology explanation, without historical basis, is that it is derived from "Lis/Batlis", the name of a general said to have built Bitlis castle by the order of Alexander the Great.

[7] According to one popular Armenian folk story, on a cold, wintry day a donkey escaped from its stable and wandered down to the Jlifat valley below.

[6] Some medieval Armenian writers, such as Anania Shirakatsi and Vardan Areveltsi, later mention it as a part of the canton of Bznunik'.

[6] The fortress guarded the Baghesh Pass, which linked the southern reaches of the Armenian plateau to northern Mesopotamia.

[9] The Arabs conquered Baghesh at the end of the seventh century and it eventually became the capital of the Zurārid emirs of Arzan.

[6] At the end of the eleventh century, with the collapse of Byzantine power after the Battle of Manzikert, Bitlis fell under the control of Togan Arslan, a subject of the Shah Arman (Also called Ahlatshah) dynasty based in Akhlat' after brief Dilmachoglu rule.

However, in the 1470s it took the Aq Qoyunlu (White Sheep Turkomans) three successive sieges to capture Bitlis and in 1494/95 the Motikan recaptured the town.

A number of monasteries were permitted to be built by the Kurdish emirs and during the fifteenth century, Biltis flourished as a center for Armenian manuscript production.

[11] For centuries, Bitlis and nearby Kurdish principalities were deeply influenced by Persian language and culture through their ties with Persian-centered empires.

From the 14th century, Persian literary activity thrived in Bitlis, with notable works by Idris-i Bidlisi and Sharaf Khan.

Persian manuscripts filled the palace library, and its influence persisted in Bitlis’s cultural and daily life into the 19th century.

In 1898 Lynch considered the population to be close to 30,000, comprising 10,000 Armenians, 300 Assyrians, and the rest Muslim Kurds (both Alevis and Sunnis included).

[15] In February 1916, as part of the Caucasus Campaign, Imperial Russian forces launched an offensive to capture Mush and Bitlis.

On the night of March 2–3, during a blizzard, the Russian 8th Caucasian Rifles advanced silently and, after several hours of hand-to-hand fighting, took the Turkish positions with 1,000 prisoners.

Commissioned mostly by its local Kurdish rulers, the architectural style of these buildings is very conservative and similar to much earlier Seljuq-period structures.

During this time, the British stated that the people of Bitlis were unable to use all of the wheat they produced, and most was "left to rot in the underground storehouses.