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Sanliurfa
 About 110 miles (180 km) west of Kiziltepe, in South Eastern Anatolian
region, lies the venerably old towns of Urfa (Sanliurfa). According to
both the Bible and Quran it is the birthplace of Abraham before his
migration to Canaan, now Palestine. Local Muslim legend differs from that
of the other great monotheistic faiths by the intervention of one vicious
and cruel King Nimrod, who had launched from a catapult from the city's
citadel to fall into a pile of burning wood. Happily, God intervened, and
turned the fire to water and the faggots to fish, and today, the visitor
to the town can visit the mosque complex surrounding Abraham's Cave and
The Pool of Sacred Fish (Balikligöl) surrounding it. The cruel ruler's
giant slingshot is represented by two Corinthian columns still standing
atop the citadel.
This is an Anatolian city which has figured in all the religions of the
book. Old Testament prophets such as Jethro (Hz. Suayp), Job (Hz. Eyup),
Elijah (Hz. Elyasa) and Abraham (Hz. Ibrahim) lived in this city, which in
ancient times known as Edessa, and Moses (Hz. Musa) lived in the region
for seven years working as a shepherd before returning to Egypt with his
staff. It was in Sanliurfa that early Christians were first permitted to
worship freely, and where the first churches were constructed openly.
Pagan temples were converted to synagogues, synagogues to churches and
churches to mosques, resulting in a uniquely eclectic architecture.
The city's history, is far more complex than mere legendary myths. Known
to the ancient Greeks as Orrhoe or Osrhoe, the famous Seleucus Nicator of
Antioch, first established the capital of his eastern Hellenistic realm
here, populating it with Macedonian veterans who preferred to call it
Edessa, after their native province. Urfa remained an important garrison
town into Roman times, and was one of the first centers of the early
church, but one given over to the monophysite heresy.
It was at Edessa that the great scientific works of late antiquity were
translated, with commentaries, into Syriac/Aramaic, from whence they made
their way into Arabic after the Muslim conquest, only to find their way
back to the west following the re-conquest of the city by the Byzantines
and then the Crusaders. Under Baldwin I it became the first of several
Crusader states in the Middle East.
The city was finally sacked by the Kurdish Zengi dynasty, with all the men
put to the sword and all the women sold into slavery in 1146. Following
the standard Mongol conquest of the Middle East, ancient Edessa
disappeared from history in the 13th century, reemerging only in the
present century. Thanks for its survival should go to the local population
who brilliantly resisted French attempts to include it in greater Syria
during Ottoman period. Like many of the other towns which offered
resistance at the time of War of Liberation, Urfa has received the
honorific "Sanli" (Honored) to append to its name.
Today, Urfa is a surprising mix of the old and new, with Turkish, Arab and
Kurdish peasants who come from the countryside haggling in the traditional
bazaar, while young technocrats and engineers hustle between offices and
shops lining the modern downtown section. A city of some 1,300,000 (1997),
Urfa is earmarked to be one of Turkey's largest metropolitan areas after
the nearby Ataturk Dam 50 miles (75 km) north of town comes on-stream in
the 1990s. Already the city has the single highest growth rate in the
country, with many indigent farmers and absentee landlords from the nearby
Harran plain returning with the promise of making the city the center of
Turkey's new Fertile Crescent. Restaurants are packed with locals and
foreigners dining on the famed Urfa kebab of Turkish Cuisine and other
delights of the area.
HARRAN
 South of Urfa, the landscape once more flattens into the Mesopotamian
plain, broken only by the ancient mounds and obscure, mud brick villages.
All of the villages are connected to electrical grids, and, with the
prospect of greater wealth thanks to irrigation, many locals are investing
in such "luxury" objects as refrigerators and televisions. Here lies a
part of Turkey experiencing extremely rapid change, especially as it was
formerly one of the poorest and least developed of any area in the country.
Some nine miles (15 km) off the main tarmac road leading to Syria, turn
left and ask for Sultantepe, apparently a major site in ancient Carrhae,
where tablets inscribed with the legends of Gilgameth (Gilgamis) have been
unearthed. Farther down the dirt road are the ruins of Sumurtar, a large
mound with a labyrinth of passages and underground chambers used by the
Sabians, worshippers of the sun, moon and planets. The grottos were
clearly used for ceremonial purposes; some seem to have been later
converted into subterranean mosques replete with mihrab facing the
direction of Mecca.
Back toward the main road is the village of Harran itself, with its
beehive-like dwellings. Here was the site of the Temple of Sin (known also
as the first university), famous throughout the ancient world for its star
readers and savants. It was in Harran where Rebecca drew water for Jacob,
from whence Abraham decided to make his move into the land of Canaan. This
was also where the Roman Emperor Crassus was defeated by the Parthians,
with the Legion standards captured and brought back to Ctesiphon to the
undying shame of the Romans; Crassus himself reportedly died by having
liquid gold poured down his mouth. Later, the Emperor Julian the Apostate
worshipped the moon here on the way to his fateful encounter with Shapur I
farther east. Harran was also the last hold out of the Sabians, the pagans
who had managed to survive through to the 11th century. Standing atop the
ruins of the ancient citadel, one overlooks the scattered bits of rock and
material - history stretching back to the very dawn of time: the very
potsherds crunching underfoot have an immediacy here, the broken vessels
having surely been used by some long forgotten ancestor from the land of
Ur, an acquaintance of Abraham, or a Roman legionnaire from Gaul, whose
memory now swirls with the dust devils across the oblate horizon.
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