Sanliurfa

We left our aerie in Mardin early in the morning for our two hour drive west to a place called Sanliurfa.

We made two stops today on our route. The first was Sanliurfa and the second in Gaziantep where ended our day. This post is about Sanliurfa.

Sanliurfa was first inhabited around 9000 BC. Yes, about 11,000 years ago. It is informally known as just Urfa.

In 1963 an archaelogist stumbled upon what is now know as Göbekli Tepe. The site has been under excavation since 1995 (and continues today) and has produced a wealth of antiquities that are now housed in the Urfa Archaelogical Museum. This museum was our first stop of the day.

The most famous item in display in the Urfa Museum, is a statue known as “The Urfa Man”. It is dated c. 9000 BC to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and is considered as “the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human”.

In his eyes are obsidian rocks, and he stands about 1.8m tall. I have to admit it was eerie looking at him.

They have recreated a small area of the dig at Göbekli Tepe so you can visualize what it looks like.

The museum had two floors of items found in the arcbaelogical digs around Urfa – way too many to picture here, but will share two more.

A relief of two early settlers of Urfa and then this beautiful pottery jug. Just look at how many pieces had to be found and put together in order to reassemble this piece.

There are two parts to the museum – this famous part and then while they were clearing the ground to build the museum they found a wealth of mosaics. It was a really nice display but the most beautiful mosaics we saw later in the day at another museum.

So from here we walked over to what is called “The Pools of Abraham”. There is some disagreement but a lot of Jewish and Muslim adherants believe that Urfa is the birthplace of Abraham, the father of both the Islamic and Jewish faiths. They also believe that Job spent a lot of his time in Urfa. Also the Armenian alphabet was invented in Urfa. So this a pretty holy and historic place.

In the middle of town is a beautiful park with a long pool of water that is teeming with carp.

As you walk deeper into the park you come along the long pool of water.

According to tradition, Nimrod had Abraham immolated on a funeral pyre, but God turned the fire into water and the burning coals into fish. The pool of sacred fish remains to this day.

There also was a small cemetary adjacent to the park.

The park was filled with people as we walked.

From here it was a short walk to the main market in Urfa. Gigantic and teeming with shoppers out to get whatever they needed for the day.

We spent a few minutes walking around and looking st everything that was on offer.

Here are some of those up close. On the left are dried lime rinds, on the right dried tomatoes.

Of course spices were everywhere.

When we finished at the market we walked back to our car for another two hour drive west to a town called Gaziantep. The next post is about our visit there.