The Abraham Piligramage Destination of (Sanli)Urfa in Southern Turkey and the World's Oldest Temple

Jews and Christians believe that the patriarch Abraham was born in the Sumerian city-state of Ur Kashdim (the site of the city of Tell el-Muqayyar in present-day Iraq). Muslims, Shi'ite ones in particular believe that the man whom they consider not only one of the foremost of forty major prophets but their progenitor (through his son by Hagar, Ishmael) was born in Urfa in present-day eastern Turkey. (Jews' descent from Abraham is through Isaac, son by Sarah; Muslims tend to believe that the son Abraham's faith was tested by being willing to sacrifice was Ishmael, not Isaac.)

IMHO gilding the lily, they also believe that on the cliff citadel directly above the birthcave of the paragon of faith Abraham was catapulted in flames that miraculously turned into a pond (Ainzelha). This quite artificial pond is part of the grounds of the Ayyubid(-dynasty) mosque of Halil-ur-Rahman, gardens designed by Merih Karaaslan.

Alongside the pool are vendors of pellets to feed the sacred fish. Though fed all day long, the carp of the pond are very eager to eat and in feeding frenzies most of the time.

The grounds and inner courtyard of the mosque are more impressive than the mosque itself. The mosque is bifurcated with separate prayer rooms for males and for females. Surprisingly, the legendary cave is more visible on the women's side (judging by photos women took).

Urfa - since 1984 officially "Sanliurfa," "Glorious Urfa" and know by Crusaders as "Edessa" - is a very conservative city of nearly half a million, widely regarded as second only to Konya in the piety of its inhabitants. In an otherwise wintry spring in eastern Turkey, the afternoon we were in Urfa was the warmest (18C) but no one other than German tourists was wearing short sleeves. There were a lot of Iranian (Shi'ite) women making an Abrahamic pilgrimage (though another possible site of Abraham's birth is in Iran). And our very grand hotel (El-Ruha), located just across the street from the Abrahamic veneration complex, which has multiple restaurants (some with cushions, the big one with chairs), does not serve alcoholic beverages, even to infidels.

The unremarkable covered market sells gaudy, sequined clothes, not chadors, toys manufactured in China, cheeses, and bulk spices.

Pork is an unthinkable abomination, but Urfa is something of the homeland of kebab (especially kebab of lamb internal organs). I think the whole of the Mediterranean is preoccupied with eggplant (and that anyone who goes to Turkey had better like either lamb or eggplant, or both). I don't recall which of the "famous" local sweet pastries we had.

(The history of the city is enormously complicated. Islam arrived in 638 CE. Captured in the First Crusade, subsequently lost, the recapture of "Edessa" was the raison d'étre for the Second Crusade. The Armenian population of 8000 was slaughtered in 1895,* and the Syraic Christians were pushed to emigrating to Aleppo over the course of the next three decades.)

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Beyond the very oasis like grounds of the Halil-ur-Rahman mosque, there does not seem to be anything vital to visit within the city, but 15 kilometers northeast are the ruins of a megalithic hilltop temple Göbekli Tepe (Potbelly hill), erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10^th century BC (before agriculture). The great antiquity of the temple was only recognized in 1994 and the site is blocked off (though clearly visible) for a German-Turkish excavation beneath the Byzantine and Roman layers.

At the base of the hill are many (photogenic) mudbrick "beehive" houses. Some of the complexes of these are now shops (serving tea) for tourists, though people lived in them as recently as the 1980s.

*The Armenian death count derives from Lord Kinross's (1977) standard and reliable The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, p. 560. The Republic of Turkey, which succeeded the Ottomans in 1924, not only denies the Armenian genocide and the Syrian Christian ethnic cleansing, but commemorates the later and lesser Armenian ethnic cleansing of Turks.