Culture
The majority of Deiries (from Deir ez-Zor) are Arabs, most of them are farmers from Jazira and urbanised bedouins of the Syrian Desert, with few Kurdish, Armenian and Assyrian/Syriac families.
Deir ez-Zor was the final concentration place for Deir ez-Zor Camps for annihilating the Armenian deportation caravans. Tens of thousands of surviving men, women and children were systematically killed on the banks of the Euphrates River. Today the Armenian Genocide Memorial church commemorates the memory of Genocide victims who lost their lives.
Successive waves of new settlers from surrounding countrysides and provinces were heavily related to severe drought in late 1950s and 1990s most of them looking for standard jobs and giving away farming and herding life-style. Mesopotamian dialect of Arabic is used in the city, with slight influence of the North Syrian one can be noticed as well. Dominated by Sunni Muslims, Christianity in Deir ez-Zor can be traced back to the Apostolic Age, with few active churches and chapels belong to different congregations.
The city is also famous for the Deir ez-Zor suspension bridge (Arabic: الجسر المعلق) which spans the Euphrates and was completed in 1927. The Deir ez-Zor Museum keeps thousands of antiquities collected from nearby archeological sites in Northern Mesopotamia. Main campuses of Al-Furat University and Al-Jazeera University are also located there. Many other polytechnic schools and professional institutes provides tertiary education are based in the city as well. The local daily newspaper Al Furat and few other publications are published there and circulated in neighboruing Al-Hasakah and Raqqa governorates.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)