The second was a possibly neo-Assyrian bridge at Şahinli, slightly downstream of the confluence; only some stones of the southern footing remain on the riverbank, near Hirbemerdon Tepe.

The late-10th-century Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi describes Hisn Kayfa as a "place of abundance" with a strong citadel and many churches, whose residents get their drinking water from the Tigris, but makes no mention of a bridge.

[18][19][20][21] The English geographical historian Guy Le Strange, using the Ibn Hawqal annotation as his source, specifically says the bridge was restored by Qarā Arslān in AH 510 (1116/17).

[22] Support for the AH 510 dating waned after closer reading of a pair of manuscripts by the 12th-century Artuqid historian ibn al-Azraq al-Fariqi held by the British Library.

The German historian of Islamic art Michael Meinecke quotes Ibn al-Azraq's report that the bridge was a replacement for an earlier and less substantial one.

[14] That was about 1.4 m (4.6 ft) larger than the nearby Malabadi Bridge, which means it probably had the largest span of any single arch from the time of its construction until completion of the Pont du Diable in the Principality of Catalonia (now France) in 1341.

[31] On the western (upstream) faces of the triangular buttresses is a series of reliefs that have been interpreted by Estelle Whelan as Qarā Arslān's khāṣṣakiyya (his page corps or bodyguard).

[32] In early 2018, as the Turkish government prepared to fill the lake behind the Ilısu Dam, four of the reliefs were moved to the garden of the Batman provincial museum.

Historian Thomas Alexander Sinclair dates the brick repairs on the surviving northern arch to the Aq Qoyunlu period.

[38] Meinecke speculates that the leaders of the Iranian workshop included Pīr Ḥasan b. ustādh ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, whose name is inscribed on the tiles of the Zeynel Bey Tomb's entrance niche.

This foundation is so large that it is about twenty paces[e] in circumference, made in the form of a column, and sustains the central arch, being fixed in the middle of the river.

The arch is so wide and lofty that a vessel of three hundred tons,[f] with all its sails set, can pass under it; and in truth, many a time when I have been standing on it and looking down into the river, the great height has made me shudder.

There are few direct accounts of Hasankeyf or the bridge for the next century, but official records do indicate that the town remained a key crossing point on the Tigris.

In the Cihānnümā, begun in 1648, Ottoman geographer Kâtip Çelebi briefly describes Ḥıṣn Kayfā and notes the existence of "a bridge between the city and the mountain with the fortress on it.

Çelebi's trip north from Baghdad, which took him through Cizre, Hasankeyf and Nusaybin, is recorded in fragmentary notes in Volume 4 of his Seyâhatnâme (written in 1673) that have not yet been published in full.

While many of them traveled by road between Diyarbakır and Mosul through the Tur Abdin, a few ventured along the Tigris, often on rafts called kalaks, and passed by Hasankeyf.

Among the earliest of these travelers were three Prussian military officers based in Anatolia who were working on modernizing the Ottoman army in response to the campaigns of Muhammad Ali of Egypt: Captain Karl von Vincke, Major-General Friedrich Leopold Fischer [de] and Captain Helmuth Graf von Moltke, later to serve as chief of general staff for the Prussian and German armies.

[52] Moltke's description of Hasankeyf includes this assessment: "But the most remarkable object is the remnants of a bridge which, in a vast arch spanning 80 to 100 feet, has crossed the Tigris.

The artist Tristram James Ellis traveled down the Tigris on a raft from Diyarbakır in March 1880 and at "Hassan-Keyf" noted "some high towers standing in the river, with a minaret on one side, and huge precipices rising from the water just in front."

He correctly identified these towers as "piers of a Saracenic pointed arch bridge, now ruined, which at one time carried the great Persian caravan road over the river".

[58] During a raft voyage down the Tigris in April 1909, Ely Bannister Soane encountered "the great piers of a once colossal bridge ... that tower above and shadow the passer-by in his humble kalak".

[61] The first detailed survey was performed by the French architectural historian Albert Gabriel, who visited Hasankeyf twice in 1932 along with the epigraphist Jean Sauvaget.

[66][68] Following the announcement of the plans for the Ilısu Dam, the bridge was among various historic sites in Hasankeyf to receive closer scrutiny.

Arık helped organize the site survey in late 2002 by the Center for Research and Assessment of the Historical Environment (TAÇDAM) at Middle East Technical University that resulted in a detailed plan of both the town and the bridge.

[70] The 2006 İmam Abdullah Zawiyah excavation examined a zawiya or religious complex on a site to the northeast of the road approaching the bridge's northern footing.

An epigraph above the tomb's entrance records later repairs by one of the sons of the Aq Qoyunlu Turkmen leader Uzun Hassan in AH 878 (1473/1474).

[71] Sinclair visited the site in 1979 and, noting a tile on the south wall of the prayer hall with the blessing of the Twelve Imams, speculated that the building had at some point been used by a Shia group, such as the Qara Qoyunlu or the Qizilbash.

[27] As construction of the dam progressed, there was increased focus by the Turkish government on the idea of relocating or preserving some of the historic structures in Hasankeyf that would be flooded by the reservoir.

While relocation was ultimately chosen for some monuments, such as the Tomb of Zeynel Bey, this approach to preserving the ruined bridge appears to have been abandoned.

[72] Turkish authorities are reportedly planning to include "historical scuba diving" around the submerged piers among the activities to be offered to tourists after the reservoir is filled.