Mardin and Sanliurfa

After leaving Midyat we traveled a bit over an hour back to Mardin. The travel literature calls it “magical Mardin.” It sounds a bit hokey but in a way it’s true. The town really does hang on a hill below ruins of a fortress of some sort. That much we could see on our way through town to Hasankeyf. It was dark when we arrived back in Mardin, and there were spotlights shining on the upper cliffs. The hotel was wonderful. It had a pillow-top bed with a real down comforter and a large bathroom with a bathtub (haven’t even seen one since arriving in Turkey) and shower with actual doors. I had planned to have a good soak after dinner, but the metal stopped operated by pulling a handle in the tub was missing. I assumed that meant they didn’t was us to take baths to conserve water. However, those staying in other rooms reported – the next morning – that their rooms had stoppers. Oh well. I had a great sleep.



The next morning we all pilled into the bus to visit an active Syrian Orthodox monastery on the backside of the mountain. Someone asked the young guide if he were Christian, and he answered yes, Orthodox. The little chapel was touching. There was one old fresco visible, apparently the only one that survived the rampaging Mongols. For some reason. I just started to tear up standing in that little chapel. I don’t know exactly why. Perhaps it was the perseverance against terrible odds that the monastery represents. I wanted to spend some time just sitting there and our guide said okay. But she came looking for me very shortly – afraid that I might somehow get left behind – so my moment of contemplation didn’t last long.

The only survivng original fresco in the chapel

From there we visited a madrasa. Like the Church after the fall of the Roman Empire, it had assumed many of the civic functions. It had been not only a school but a hospital and many other things. And Timurlane is said to have beheaded its founder – legend has it that the redddish stones in one of the interior walls were colored by his blood.

Mardin-Style Garbage Collection

Having visited two sites outside the town, we drove back into Mardin. There are actually only two real streets in the old town, streets that can be used by cars or buses. However, there is a network of winding, narrow streets – some residential and others shopping streets. In fact, the streets are so narrow that they use donkeys with wooden boxes strapped on either side. We visited a mosque with a little niche that had four hairs purported to come from Mohammed’s beard and a Syrian Orthodox church, where someone I assume to be a clergyman gave quite a long talk in Turkish. The members of our group listened intently and I recognized the words for “bread” and “wine,” so I assume he was talking about the schism between his church and the rest of orthodox Christendom. I asked on of the English-speaking Turks in our group to ask this gentleman if any baptized Christian could take communion in his church or if you had to be of their father. He answered in perfect English that anyone who believed in Jesus Christ was welcome to participate fully in their services. Too bad we didn’t know earlier that he spoke English because some of us had a lot of questions for him.

Hairs from Mohammed's Beard in a little vial on the pedestal

We were then turned loose to explore. Some of us decided to visit the local archeological museum. The building was more impressive than the collection. We had been told we would see more Syrian-style architecture. The buildings were all quite boxy with lots of pointed arches and intricate decorative stone carvings. They appeared to be limestone, clearly the color of the surrounding countryside. That’s probably why you have to be almost there before you see it.

Archeological Museum

After a very late lunch, we left of Sanliurfa, about an hour east of Gaziantep. They like to claim that they are the site of the Biblical Ur, Abraham’s ancestral home. Biblical scholars pretty well agree that they found Ur of the Chaldees in the southern end of the Tigris-Euphrates basis, in Iraq. But we didn’t argue. We had been scheduled to stop at Haran, which also figures in Abraham’s story, but it was too dark. Instead we stopped at a famous carp pool, part of a large mosque complex and pilgrimage site for Muslims. Legend has it that Nimrod tried to burn Abraham to death. However, God turned Abrahams tears into the pool and the fire into carp. For 50 cents you can buy fish food. It’s then that you see how many carp there actually are in the pool.

Drummer from the traditional "band" We were sitting on the floor around low U-shaped tables.

We finished off the evening listening to traditional Turkish music, eating (again) and dancing. I really enjoyed that evening – too bad it didn’t happen earlier because the group really jelled having fun together. A young couple joined us in Sanliurfa, friends of some of the people on the tour. They were celebrating their first anniversary. At the end of the evening, they dressed the couple in traditional costume and several of the girls danced around them holding candles. A fitting end to the tour.

Tuer Abdin and Midyat

It was getting dark as we left Hasankeyf heading for the unofficial capital of the Tuer Abdin, Midyat. For centuries this high limestone plateau has functioned as the heartland of the Syrian Orthodox Church, which split with the Greek Orthodox church due to a theological dispute over the “nature” of Christ. They still use the ancient Syriac language in their literature. It is a form of Aramaic, which was the language Jesus spoke and itself a variety of Hebrew. In fact, many of the villagers still use an Aramaic dialect, Turoyo, in their daily lives.

The plateau is scattered with small villages, six of which are wholly Christian and two partly, but the center of religious life is the monastery Mor (St.) Gabriel. It was established in 397 and is still operating as a monastery. Records show that Christianity was preached as early as 120 AD in Tuer Abdin, but it was not until the establishment of Mor Gabriel that the new religion was truly established in the plateau. Then it really took off. Every village established its own monastery, which in turn nurtured a deep religiosity among the people.

The archbishop of Tuer Abdin has his seat in Midyat. Until the early 1990s, there was a vibrant Christian community in Midyat. However, the violence directed against the Christians during the Kurdish war caused many to flee – to the US and France, mostly. Many of the émigrés became quite successful and are now investing heavily in their home communities. It would appear that the out-migration has stemmed – at least for the time being.

It was after dark when we arrived in Midyat – about 5 PM. The bus parked just off a traffic circle in the middle of town. Looking back across the traffic circle you could see windows on two sides of a one-block area glowing. It lit up the whole night. It turns out those were the silver shops. The merchants display their wares in the window and shine bright lights on them. The town is famous for its filigree jewelry. I had seen a demonstration of how this jewelry is made at a museum in Gaziantep. It is amazing what they can make out of what is essentially silver wire.

Martha and Fatma Goecek, the woman who makes everything sold in the store

Frankly, I was overwhelmed with the offerings and decided to visit a textile shop I saw at the end of a passageway from the street. They specialized in items decorated with woodblock prints. The designs were all taken from the stone carvings in the facades of the old houses in the city. If you click on this link you can see some of the designs If you scroll about halfway down, you find a photo of a colleague and I with the woman who does the printing and embroidery sold in the shop. http://www.midyatsanat.com Quite soon after we appeared in the shop, the gentleman who appeared to be the proprietor fetched a young man from a small restaurant next door. He was born and raised in Midyat but now lives in Frankfurt, Germany. His German was amazing. It turns out he had come back to help his brother open up a restaurant in Midyat. He was the one who told us about the significance of the prints. We asked him how to get to the old city to see some of these houses. He then sent us off with his brother, who took us to the most famous of these houses, Konukevi. It sits on a hill above the town, and we found out taker that some Turkish TV show that everyone knew had been shot there. We wended our way through darken streets to get there, but there was an almost full moon that night so it had a mysterious, almost romantic feeling. I’d love to go back and see this little city in the daylight.

Hasankeyf

Last weekend was the 4 ½ - day Bayram weekend. Most of my classmates took off for Istanbul or cities in the western part of the country. I felt the need for a some peace and quiet and decided to spend the weekend at home. In the end I did get tempted into taking a two-day (Sunday-Monday) trip to Mardin and environs. A colleague and I had checked into going to Mardin via public transportation but the bus schedule made a weekend trip difficult. This seemed like a good opportunity to see that area.

View dropping down from the Tuer Abdin into the Tigris basin.

Actually, Mardin is located high on the slopes of a mountain, looking across into Syrian and what was anciently known as Mesopotamia, the Tigris-Euprates basin. Today that area is found in parts of Syrian and Iraq and even Iran and southeastern Turkey. The trade routes between Mesopotamia and Anatolia (roughly modern Turkey) ran through Mardin, across the Tuer Abdin (the e stands for an umlaut over the u), over the Tigris and up to Diyarbakir.

Looking downstream at the ruins of an ancient bridge in Hasankeyf.

We traveled first to Hasankeyf on the Tigris so now I’ve been to both of the “cradle of civilization” rivers. In fact, I actually stepped into the Tigris. That wasn’t possible where we stopped on the Euphrates, but I’ll get it done before I get home. Hasenkeyf is known for its medieval ruins of Selcuk, Kurdish and Arabic origins. The town was originally founded by the Romans and passed through the hands of many ruling groups until the Ottomans finally took it over in the early 1400s.

Couldn't resist this shot from the trail up the gorge, looking across to the town and some now abandoned cliff dwellings. Click on the photo and you'll see an almost full moon in the center right.

Behind the village that lies on the Tigris rises some impressive cliffs, cut in at least one place by a canyon or gorge. Trails lead up the canyon walls to the top of the cliff where there are ruins of a palace built by the Artuid kings (12th century). All sorts of dwellings have been carved into the cliff all along the pathway. In fact, part of the cliff looks a bit like a honeycomb. The local guidebook says that it’s not know when people began inhabiting these particular cave but it is believed that people were living nearly 4,000 years prior to the birth of Christ. People from neighboring societies called these people “kefenen” or “people of the caves.”

Eating fish on the banks of the Tigris.

Before attempting the climb up the gorge, we at lunch at one of the little fish restaurants built on stilts along the banks of the Tigris. We didn’t actually start our walk until about 3 PM. It’s pitch dark by 4:30 PM so we didn’t make it to the top. Too bad. The place was also overrun by tourists – all Turkish as far as I could tell – and the attendant peddlers selling everything from scarves, woolen rugs, and local crafts to clothing imported from India. They had set up booths along the main street and the road into the gorge but also all along the path to the top. Many of the caves not house little shops – even places to buy tea. Sometimes it seemed like a bit much, but how else are those people supposed to make a living. When our bus pulled in we were stopped by police armed with machine guns. On the sidewalk next to them were barriers that could be used to set up a roadblock. I assume that even though the government has made peace with Kurdish insurgents, the area is still considered a bit risky. I supposed it’s just like Northern Ireland. There are still people on both sides who just won’t give up the fight.

Looking upstream in the late afternoon. The sun is shining on one side of the mausoleum.

Before leaving we crossed the river to get a good look at the Zeynel Bey tomb. It was build as a mausoleum by Zeynel for his father the Akkoyun ruler Hasan. Akkoyn or Ak-Qouyn means “White Sheep Turkmen.” They were rulers of the small Turkish principality where Hasankeyf is located. (For me it’s almost impossible to untangle the history of Turkey from the time that the Turkish tribes appeared on the scene until the Ottoman Empire finally solidified.) The monument is important as the most Timurid-influenced monument in Turkey – think Tamurlane and Samarkand, where he had his capital. Actually, Tamarlane and his hordes did actually invade Mardin and surround areas. He was an equal-opportunity killer, slaughtering Christians and Muslims alike.

Close-up of the mausolelum

When we got off the bus at the monument, children seemed to appear from nowhere. They tried out their few words of English and tried to teach us to count in Kurdish. Little did they know they were approaching English teachers! Soon after two well dressed men appeared. I thought they were other tourists, but as our bus pulled away they were standing with a group of children that had grown to about 15. At first I thought they were just other tourists visiting the monument or at the end, perhaps teachers of the children. But we were later told they were security personnel.

Kurban Bayrami (Feast of the Sacrifice)

Kurban Bayrami, the Muslim holiday celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and God’s subsequent provision of a ram for the sacrifice, is a four-day holiday in Turkey. Schools let out at noon on Thursday and banks closed at 1 PM the same day – surprise, surprise. Thank goodness for ATM machines. The tradition is for each family to slaughter a lamb or ram or even a steer and give the meat away to the poor and needy.

Starting a couple of days ago it wasn’t uncommon to hear a lamb bleating somewhere in the neighborhood. And the president of the university made a couple of jokes about slaughtering lambs during his little Bayram speech. He warned people not to cut themselves and said he didn’t want to see any of them on TV, chasing an escaped animal down the street. If you were in a rural area, you probably wouldn’t think much about a family slaughtering an animal for food. That’s just what you do. But our part of town is all apartment buildings. We just weren’t prepared for the fact that people would slaughter a lamb or even a steer in a vacant lot behind your building or even in a parking area next to an apartment building. But that’s what’s been going on all day.

The photo was taken out of the window of my apartment. You can see the one white sheep and one black sheep huddled against the wall.

Shortly before noon we took the bus downtown to try to locate the departure point for the bus to the airport. Walking to the busstop we saw a guy on a motorcycle with a kind of sidecar. It was more of a wagon for hauling things than a car for someone to sit in. In this little wagon was a black ram, all tied down. Then you saw people driving small station wagons with a white sheep in back.

The other sight we saw from the bus was 10 or 12 lambs outside a butcher shop. The guys had set up shop inside the shop to slaughter a family's lamb for them. I guess the real clincher for me was walking back to the apartment. In a carpark area behind an apartment building that's less than a block from where we live, there were three live sheep, one carcass suspended from a frame and another on the ground being gutted. I felt so badly for the sheep waiting their turn. Perhaps it was the incongruity of this rural activity happening in a very urban setting or just how much slaughtering was going on. If every family is supposed to slaughter an animal, then a lot of sheep or cattle died in Gaziantep today.

"And then there were no sheep left." (from Amahl and the Night Visitors) The carcass of the last sheep is hanging in the yard. In the interim a woman has been hauling off meat in a wheelbarrow.

We talked about how we don't mourn for all the dead Thanksgiving turkeys. Yet somehow all this slaughtering was disturbing. But if we thought about the big feed yards and slaughter houses, we'd probably never eat meat again.

Thanksgiving in Gaziantep

This year Thanksgiving falls on the day before a very important Muslim holiday, Bayram. It commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. We know that son as Isaac but in Islam it is Ishmael who almost gets sacrificed. Those that can afford it – or who raise their own animals – slaughter a lamb and give almost all of it away to the poor. It’s also a time for visiting family members. The holiday officially begins at 5 AM on Friday; however, the official government holiday begins at noon on Thursday -- presumably giving people time to get back to their homes -- and runs through Monday. So it’s a nice long weekend.

This was the room in the hotel where we celebrated Thanksgiving -- with food being rolled in from the kitchen

We Americans wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving somehow and also to invite our Turkish colleagues. We knew no one would come if we did it the day before Bayram, so we decided to have a Thanksgiving potluck the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It started small. We thought we’d just have rotisseried chickens, which you can buy everywhere. There weren’t any turkeys to be had in Gaziantep.


Well, things changed. The American director of our program used some high-level contacts she had to get a couple of turkeys flown in from somewhere. Also there were two new staff people coming from Texas. One brought several bags of fresh cranberries and another a couple of cans of pumpkin. Then the Zirve people arranged for us to use the kitchen in the hotel where everyone stayed before the apartments were ready. With the kitchen came two chefs and a darling apprentice chef. And one of them even cut the turkey quite expertly.

We had just planned to mix up the fruit in a bowl. But the Turkish chefs would have nothing to do with that. It had to be arranged and adorned with fruit "flowers."

We are blessed to have in our group a teacher who started out to be a chef. While in culinary school he decided he didn’t want that life and retooled himself as a teacher. He took over cooking the turkeys -- they were perfect. He also made wonderful gravy and fabulous stuffing -- with persimmons and cranberries. Needless to say it was quite a feast. And we were glad to be able to introduce this holiday to our Turkish friends.

Joe and Laressa, teachers in our program and our group chefs.

On the Trail of the Hittites

Last Sunday was a classically beautiful fall day. There was no way to stay inside, despite the pile of work on my desk. A number of us had been wanting to see the Hittite Open Air Museum just outside the small village of Yesemek, about an hour from Gaziantep. There is no way to get there by public transportation so six us us got together and hired a cab to drive us. We left Gaziantep on the same route we took to Antakya, dropping down into that fabulous agricultural valley. At Nurdagi we turned south toward Antakya, hugging the western side of the valley.


We drove a good 20 minutes to the small town of Islahiye, where we turned east again. The village of Yesemek at the base of the mountains on the eastern side of this big valley, about 27 km from Islahiye. The goal of the journey was an ancient Hittite quarry and sculpture workshop dating back to the second millennium BC -- it's been there for over 3,000 years, in fact, probably closer to 4,000 years! Archeologists estimate that the quarry and workshop were abandoned sometime in the 8th century BC . The Hittites were a late Bronze Age-early Iron Age people who established a kingdom sometime in the 18th century B.C. Their capital was in Hattusa, near present-day Ankara, but eventually expanded as far as the Aegean in the west, east of Gaziantep and south into Syria and what is today Lebanon. They also kept records in a cuneiform script. With the Hittites came the beginning of the written history of Turkey. At the workshop, basalt was quarried and shaped into rough cuts of sculptures that were then finished at the final destination.





Remains of these sculpture sare scattered over the whole hillside, but there is a formal terraced area with a stream running through it. It's nicely treed, with benches and even a picnic table or two. It is such a peaceful place to sit and contemplate the history or the beauty around you. There were basically three type of sculptures manufactured in the Yesemek workshop: sphinxes, lions and mountain gods.


Above is a rough cut of a sphinx. There is a finished example of such a statue in the Gaziantep archeological museum.


Here are a couple of lions. They were usually put on either side of gates to palaces or other monuments. We saw a wonderful lions gate in the museum at Antakya.


The third kind of sculpture made in the workshop were the mountain gods. There are always two figures of the gods, but the number of orbs or solar discs around their heads differs. Frankly, I don't see any discs in this one but -- aside from the intruding foot -- this is the best shot I got of the mountain gods.



The Hittites were known for their chariots. This is the only sculpture of its kind found in the workshop. You can see the wheel of the chariot on the left block. It is presumed that there was one on top of it, but it has never been found. On the right you see a horse running over a man. You can also see a stag on the right and an eagle in the upper right. I really like this one.


This is the view down into the valley. I was shooting almost into the sun so the picture is a bit washed out. But click on the image and get it to full screen size. I could have sat there all day. There is actually a big lake between the village and the mountains in the back.


On the hill across from the Hittite sculpture park is a small area devoted to exhibiting modern stone scuptures. I thought they were fun so have included a couple of photos. You can see the hillside with the Hittite sculptures in the background

Another modern sculpture.

As we were leaving the museum, the caretaker invited us back to his home/farmstead for tea. It was wonderful. They had chickens and chicks running around, fig trees, and a grape arbor. If you enlarge the picture you will see that the traditional Turkish teapot has to parts. You make a strong tea in the upper part. You fill each glass about 1/3 full of the tea and then add water. Tea is always drunk from glasses.


As we were leaving the village we met the village herd being driven back into town. Some were all black like the picture above. Others were black and white.




When they came to an intersection, some cows automatically turned right and others left. They ambled up the road and turned, in groups of twos and threes, into open gates. They knew exactly where they were going.

The sun was setting as we left for home. What a great day!

Views from Zirve University

It was a beautiful day here in Gaziantep so I decided to hike up to the top of the hill behind my office and take a few photos. Here they are.

The is the first of what will be seven classroom and office buildings. If you click on this photo you will see a second building behind it. It is nearing completion and should be open after the first of the year. The "content" faculty will move there, and our building will be for English language instruction and probably some administrative offices. My office is on the third floor, out of four. The window is the one on the far left. You can also see an indoor practice facility under construction. The outdoor soccer field and basketball court are already finished. In fact, there have already been games between the English teachers, the IT guys and the "content" faculty.

This picture was taken looking a bit southeast of the campus -- if you kept going you'd end up in Syria. If you click on the photo you'll notice a road winding its way to a little village. Also you can see plowed fields and a bit of green. Since we've had some rain, the green is really noticeable.

This picture is a bit probably more south than east. Notice the pistachio grove in the back.


This a a photo looking north, back into Gaziantep. The 16 (or so) story apartment buildings appear to be marching south. They were actually built by the government to address the "ghetto" problem. In fact, such high rise apartment buildings are not the norm in Gaziantep. Most are five or six stories, like the one I live in. Sadly, I'm sure Zirve will someday be within the city limits.



Another photo looking back into town. The large structure in the middle is a specialty hospital. There's a very fancy townhouse development right next to it.