Sanliurfa
Sanliurfa is rich with sacred legends as it one of the oldest cities in the world. Sitting at an ancient crossroad between Anatolia and Syria, it has survived many of the world’s greatest empires and conflicts, from the Hittites, the Hurrians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenids, Alexander’s Greeks, Imperial Rome, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Mongols, the Seljuk Turks, and the Ottomans. All of these forces have left their mark on the landscape of the city, but it is perhaps best known in the Muslim world as the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham and the site of Job’s cave.
Abraham’s stories form the core of the city. There is a cave with a plaque identifying it as the first Prophet’s place of birth. It is next to a mosque that was earlier a church and before that a temple to an unknown deity. Up hill from the mosque is the city fortress. According to legend, King Nimrod was an ardent worshipper of pagan deities representing the sun, the moon and the stars. When he was about sixteen, Abraham recognized that the celestial bodies are not constant, so therefore they couldn’t be ‘ultimate truth.’ One day when everyone was at a festival he took an ax and smashed all the idols except one, upon which he hung the ax. As everyone knew he was the culprit he was brought in front of the king, who sentenced him to be flung from a catapult formed by the two pillars into a raging fire below. Abraham prayed and God changed the fire into water and the logs into fish saving him. Today the Fish Pond is in the main park in the center of the city. The fish (carp) are considered sacred and no one is allowed to eat them. As with all good temples, the main bazaar, which consists of multitudinous shops in labyrinthian narrow winding alleyways, is next to the Mosque by the cave.
While Abraham is perhaps the most visible Biblical figure in Urfa, Job and Jesus have their stories as well. The cave where Job is said to have lived for seven years, and the well that finally cured him from his skin disease are in the courtyard of a mosque about five miles from the Fish Pond up one of the surrounding hills. People of all ages flock to Job’s cave to pray as they do to Abraham’s birthplace. At the well, I witnessed something that no one could explain to me; a well-dressed man in his 30s was very carefully putting individual granules of sugar through the grate that covered the well. When he was done, he flicked the rest of the sugar on the top and spread it around so that all of it would fall into the water below. Why he did this, I do not know, but it was conducted with mathematical precision.
Signage at Job’s mosque stated that Job lived in the 8th C BCE, and that he was a direct descendant of Abraham’s something I believe not a few Biblical scholars would take issue with.
The Prophet Elisha is supposed to have come looking for Job, but died before he found him. He is said to have died in the village of Eyyub Nebi outside of town.
Stories of Moses do not appear within the city walls either, but they do within the region. About 60 miles southeast of Sanliurfa is Sogmatar, where Moses supposedly met Shuayb’s daughters at the town well. Shuayb later gave him one of his daughters as his wife and he returned to Egypt with her. His famous staff, which is now in the Topkapi Relic Museum in Istanbul, is also from here.
Not to be outdone with all the Old Testament prophets, the New has its own legend. According to the City Guide Book: “During the reign of the Edessa (Roman name for Urfa), King Abgar V (13-50 CE), the people of Urfa converted to Christianity (from worship of Sin, the god of the Moon) and great changes took place in the spiritual life of the region. The Edessa Kingdom in Urfa was the first state in history to accept Christianity.
According to legend, King Abgar V suffered from leprosy. Although the King had heard that Jesus cured lepers, he was so badly afflicted by the disease that he could not go to Jerusalem to be cured. He sent an envoy called Hannan to Jesus with a letter declaring that he had accepted Christianity, asking about Jesus’ teachings and inviting him to Urfa.
The envoy Hannan was also a very good artist. After presenting the letter to Jesus he climbed on a high platform and tried to paint Jesus’ portrait, but could not manage to do so. Understanding that the artist had been unable to depict him, Jesus washed his face and then dried it on a handkerchief, giving it to Hannan. Those around him could see that Jesus’ portrait had been imprinted on this piece of cloth. Hannan took a letter and this cloth back to Edessa. Jesus sent the apostle Thomas in his place and he prayed for the King. King Abgar put this cloth on his wounds and was miraculously cured of his leprosy.
This cloth was kept for many centuries; however, is location is no longer known. According to certain oral traditions, it fell into the well in the Great Mosque in Urfa and thus the well is considered to be sacred.” Sanliurfa City Guide P.24-25 While I could easily find the Old Testament figures’ caves and waters, I searched throughout the Ulu Cami (Great Mosque), but only saw the ablution pond/well, so I can’t say for certain where this one is.
What is certain, however, is that the city did convert to Christianity early in the Common Era, and was a bastion of the Byzantine Empire. 6th C villas and churches have been uncovered, some with amazing mosaics, like the Amazon villa which has a marvelous mosaic floor with four Amazonian women in the process of killing various wild animals. This villa forms the basis of the new Mosaic Museum directly south of the brand new Archeological Museum.
My disappointment in the changes to the archeological site of Göbekli Tepe over the past three years completely disappeared upon seeing the new museum. It is excellent. The building itself is reminiscent of an ancient stone block fortress temple, but with buttresses that create a very modern airy feel. The museum and offices surround an open courtyard with a small pond and fountain. The museum café is adjacent to the water and serves a very good cappuccino, which I needed after four fascinating hours touring 12 millennia of human history in the museum.
The exhibits are laid out in separate sections, each with a number of rooms, according to era starting with the Neolithic with stone and bone artifacts from Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Cori, to the Chalcolithic with ceramics from many of the mounds in the region, to materials from the Bronze, Iron, Hellenistic, Imperial Roman, Byzantine, through to the Islamic Era. There are dioramas for the pre-Hellenistic times, including one that showed how they think the large T-stones from Göbelki Tepe and Nevali Cori were chiseled out of the ground and transported uphill. There is a replica of one of the circles with the T-stones from Göbekli Tepe as well as one from the residential area with similar shaped Ts from Nevali Cori, which is now under the waters of the Ataturk Dam. The exhibits themselves are beautifully laid out. Some of the sculptures that were squashed together in the old museum and hidden behind dirty glass casings, are now fully visible with enough space around them that it is possible to get a sense of the feeling the artists were trying to inspire. The oldest freestanding sculpture of a humanoid figure, found when they were digging a road to build a bank, has his own room. His black obsidian eyes bore into the visitor, questioning what we have learned over the past 12,000 years. The head with the Vedic snake from Nevali Cori is now on display as are many of the bird faces from the Neolithic period. There are some superb examples of early goddess figures, as well as intricately painted ceramic ware, and a small finely etched Madonna and child in a shell. I put a selection of the photos from the museum into a separate file on the website so that you would have a visual imprint of the richness of this museum. I was also thrilled to see that the signage is in English as well as Turkish.
Sanliurfa is not a city that caters to individual tourists. There are no city tours, no maps of the city available at the hotels, hardly anyone speaks English or German, but it is a city that provides a glimpse into our ancient legends and shows how the past continues in the present. If you are interested in Biblical stories or in understanding the origins of human civilization, this city with its new museums should be on your travel agenda.
