Mesopotamia, Sanliurfa, the land of milk and honey

So we left Khata in a hurry and made our way via Adiyaman to Sanliurfa checking in to the Cicik Palas hotel at positively the cheapest rate achieved in the whole time I was in Turkey - just 5,000TL per night! The first hotel I stayed in when I arrived in Istanbul cost 50,000TL.

Sanliurfa is described as being next to the Euphrates but it just south of the Attaturk Baraj and the 2,072km longest river in the Near East passes to the west of this city.

This is Old Testament country. Abraham is said to have been born here. Not only is it reputed to be the birthplace of Abraham but also Job, Elijah and Jethro lived there. Moses lived in the region for 7 years. I had to remind myself about Jethro. He was Moses' father-in-law. Moses married Jethro's daughter Zipporah after having to flee Egypt for killing an Egyptian who had been beating a Hebrew slave. Moses worked for Jethro as a shepherd for 40 years before returning to Egypt to lead the Israelites to Canaan. So it is written.

I really liked the very short time we were in Sanliurfa. It was a very peaceful place. It goes without saying that it hasn't always been peaceful. Once known as Edessa, everyone who was anyone has been though here. Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines and Crusaders. One of my sources for background information on the places I visited is www.allaboutturkey.com which says "The city was finally sacked by the Kurdish Zengi dynasty 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." I particularly like the phrase "Following the standard Mongol conquest.." It conjures up a sort of inevitability that the Mongols would have and did conquer the place. They laid waste to it in 1270 and it never recovered.

Practically the first place we visited was the cave where it is said that Abraham was born. Very good value at 1000TL. There's a spring in the cave and you can (and I did) take a drink of the water that rises up there. If the water has any special properties then I hope I have benefited from them.



Abraham was quite a thorn in the side of the authorities in his home town. The ruler of the city at the time was King Nimrod who was worshipped like a God. It is said that after Abraham had caused trouble at a temple dedicated to Nimrod and broke up idols there, Nimrod decided to punish him by catapulting him into a huge fire. The two tall corinthian columns that overlook the city where the castle stood were used to make the catapult.



Abraham was hurled into the fire but it was instantly replaced by a large pool and the firewood was turned into fish. Abraham was saved! This story seems to have been left out of the Old Testament as we know it. The place where this happened is called the Balikli Gol, literally "Fish Pond". A picture appears below followed by a picture of the descendents of those pieces of firewood that were turned into fish.





My notes tell me that some time was spent in a Cay Bacesi drinking tea. I remember being sort of pestered by a guy who said he was a Kurdish refugee from Iraq. He drank his tea in the traditional fashion by holding the lump of sugar between his teeth and drinking through it. Is is worth saying he had very bad teeth?

I remember that our evening meal was a picnic of sorts. We visited a communal/community bakery and bought some delicious bread straight out of the oven. In the bakery there were people queuing to have their home prepared food put in the oven.

The next morning I had the best breakfast I have ever had. This is the reason for my reference to the land of milk and honey in the title to this posting. I don't know if I have ever mentioned it before but the bread in Turkey is simply the tastiest white bread I've ever tasted. It is always as fresh as bread could be (probably baked in a bakery just like the one we'd been to the day the before). For breakfast in Sanliurfa I had black tea (as usual) with a plate of that lovely fresh white bread, cream and honey. Honestly it was fantastic. So simple but so delicious.

Our next port of call was Harran. I don't know where I picked up the information sheet pictured below but it is very informative. Give it a click to enlarge it and have a read.



Okay, the typing is not the best in the world and nor is some of the grammar or spelling. Nonetheless it gives a good history. There's mention of Tamerlaine (Tamburlaine) whom you wouldn't wish on anyone. From the pictures below it looked as if he had just been through.

Abraham lived here. It says so in Genesis Chapter 11:

31: And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
32: And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

This is the Chapter which mentions the Tower of Babel and sets out the generations of Shem, who begat whom, how old they were at the time and how long they lived afterwards. Perhaps some scholar has already explained how it comes about that Shem seems to have lived for 600 years. If you read the verses life seems to get shorter as you proceed through the generations. All the same, Abraham's father who died in Haran managed a good innings of 205 years.

In the light of the fact that this part of the world has a history such as it set out above I have to say I am surprised anyone lived anything approaching a long life.

If Harran looked like it did in my photographs then it is no surprise that Abraham took himself and his family to Canaan. It looks pretty bleak to me.



Perhaps Rudiger and I were there at the wrong time of year. The picture in my Guide to Eastern Turkey shows it in a better light and perhaps it explains why it might have been an attractive place to live. The agriculture looks good.



As Fred Schneider sang "There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia" and 5,000 years old Harran has a great many that are still in the process of being discovered. There used to be a very old pagan temple dedicated to the Moon God Sin, given that Harran was a center of Mesopotamian idolatry during centuries. The worship of the moon, sun and planets continued until the 9th century AD, a long time after the Omeyyad Caliph Merwan II made Harran its capital and the Grand Mosque was built (744-750). For this reason, the science of astronomy was quite advanced here and under the rule of the Abbassids, Harran became famous for its Islamic university, founded by Harun Rashid, where many theologians, scholars and scientists studied.



The eastern gate of the university is still standing as is the 33 m / 108 ft high square minaret made of stone and brick of the monumental Grand Mosque, first built in the 8th century, was restored and enlarged in the 12th century and bears both Omeyyad and Seljuk style ornaments.



Given the age of the place and the strange beehive dwellings originally dating from the early 19th Century it was worth a visit. It is just a shame that the Mongols made such a mess of the place.



For the second time we cadged a lift back with a tour. 10.00 o'clock the next day we got the bus to Gaziantep. I left a blue Levi denim jacket on the bus.

Zippo Repair Update

I mentioned in the post about my visit to Ephesus that I had been taught how to flick open my Zippo one-handed.

The technique is the second one demonstrated in the You Tube video below.



I also mentioned that doing so tended to cause the hinge to break and that my original Zippo and its replacement were both being repaired. They were delivered back last week fully repaired with brand new innards.

I cannot praise Zippo highly enough. They advertise their product as having a lifetime guarantee and they mean it. This is what they say:

Zippo Guarantee

Any Zippo windproof lighter product when returned to our factory, will be put in first class mechanical condition free of charge, for we have yet to charge a cent for the repair of a Zippo windproof lighter, regardless of age or condition the finish, however, is not guaranteed

If you are UK RESIDENT, you can return your Zippo lighter to
Zippo UK - Repair Admin Dept
27 Grand Union Centre
336B Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AS
Tel: 020 8964 0666

Customers living outside the UK should contact their local Zippo distributor or return the lighter directly to the Zippo

Zippo Manufacturing Co. Repair Clinic
1932 Zippo Drive
Bradford
Pennsylvania 16701
USA

There is no charge for a Zippo repair, do not enclose any money.
Please allow 8 weeks for the return of your repaired Zippo lighter.
Please ensure that you provide us with your name and address when returning your lighter.
The Zippo Lifetime Guarantee only applies to the mechanical condition of its products, the finish is not covered by the guarantee.
When returning your lighter for repair, we recommend using insured post.

The Zippo Lifetime Guarantee only applies to Zippo Windproof Lighter. Other Zippo products (including the Multi Purpose Lighter) are not covered by a Lifetime Guarantee.

They really do repair them for nothing. The first time I sent off my original Zippo I actually sent it to Bradford PA. It came back in no time from the USA. This time I discovered that there is a Zippo servicing centre in the UK so I sent the original and the replacement I bought while the original was having its first repair done to the UK address. It took a bit longer than I thought it might (but Christmas and the New Year holiday did intervene) but they came back alright.

Well done the Zippo Manufacturing Company!

Diyarbakir, Mesopotamia

It depends on how you define Mespotamia. It could be said that I had already been in Mesopotamia for a little while. Most definitions I have seen say that, as the name suggests, it means the land between the rivers, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates.




A wider definition of Mesopotamia is the land that that lies between the Zagros and Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northern end, and the Arabian plateau and Persian Gulf to the south, corresponding to modern Iraq, eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey.



Writings from Mesopotamia (Uruk, modern Warka) are among the earliest known in the world, giving Mesopotamia a reputation of being the Cradle of Civilization, therefore it is regarded by some as the oldest known civilization. It is said that Mesopotamia was the place of the legendary Garden of Eden. On the spot where the Tigris meets the Euphrates Rivers the holy tree of Adam emerged symbolizing the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

There are thousands of pages on the web to access if you want to know more about Mespotamia. I don't have time to attempt to summarise it all here. There are many learned articles. I googlewhacked the word and in 4 hundredths of a second got the first 10 of 5,250,000 results. So there's plenty to read about if you want to.

Strangely the following was not in the first 10 nor in the first 50 results, I didn't look any further:



Turn your watch
Turn your watch back
About a hundred thousand years
A hundred thousand years
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's right, I want
For me in Mesopotamia
We're going down to meet it
I ain't no student
Feel those vibrations
Of ancient culture
I know a neat excavation
Before I talk I should read a book
But there's one thing That I do know
There's a lot of ruins In Mesopotamia
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's right, I want
For me in Mesopotamia
We're going down to meet it
Now I ain't no student
Hear those vibrations
Of ancient culture
I know a neat excavation
Before I talk I should read a book
Mesopotamia that's where I wanna go
But there's one thing that I do know
Mesopotamia that's where I wanna go
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
In Mesopotamia
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
They laid down the law
aa aa aa aa aa aaa
In Mesopotamia
aa aa aa aa aa aaa




Fred Schneider really says it all. "Before I talk I should read a book". How very true that is. "There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia". That's very true too.

Frankly I get a little angry when I think about how many more ruins there are in Mespotamia now than there were before 1997. I was in the area in 1990. The first Gulf War was just starting. The Air Offensive over northern Kuwait and Southern Iraq. I couldn't have known then how things might develop into the tragic situation we see today.

Perhaps in 100 years (if the planet lasts that long) there will be some information resource where an interested or curious soul will read about the history of the area and George W Bush will simply be added to the list of tyrants who have laid waste to the area.

I can understand (or think I can understand) how in ages of widespread ignorance there could have been conquests by the various empires mentioned previously in this blog about my tour. I think I can comprehend how those things happened. I mentioned Tamburlaine in an earlier post. I'll concede that it is difficult to understand the scale of the killing in his case. All the same I would submit that people knew no better.

What I can't understand is how in this day and age, when vast amounts of information can be accessed at the touch of a button at lightning speed, anyone could justify a military campaign such as is going on in Iraq.

The tragedy of Mesopotamia I suppose is that as part of the fertile crescent in ancient times it was well worth fighting over because of the ability through irrigation techniques to grow a surplus of food. If you controlled the area you were rich.

The modern day tragedy is that it is sitting on top of a lake of oil. That's the only credible reason there can be for the US's desire to control the region. They don't care about democracy. All they care about is the wasteful American Way of Life. They talk about Saddam Hussein having been an evil dictator and sat in judgment on him for the attrocities he undoubtedly carried out. They pale into insignificance compared to Tamburlaine of course but the Americans have done more than their fair share of ethnic cleansing and in the not too distant past either.

A quick dip into the net produces this written by By Leah Trabich, Cold Spring Harbor High School, New York, USA in 1997 on a website put up by the Holocaust/Genocide Project called An End to Intolerance. The article is entitled "Native American Genocide Still Haunts United States".

There are some astonishing facts about the scale of mass killing on the Continent after the arrival of Columbus. Leah Trabich says: "By conservative estimates, the population of the United States prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand."

She goes on:"The discovery of gold in California, early in 1848, prompted American migration and expansion into the west. The greed of Americans for money and land was rejuvenated with the Homestead Act of 1862. In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of Indians by non-Indians during certain historic periods. In California, the decrease from about a quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is primarily due to the cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early settlers. Indian education began with forts erected by Jesuits, in which indigenous youths were incarcerated, indoctrinated with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual labor. These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times never saw their families until later in their adulthood. This was after their value systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace traditional leadership of the various indigenous nations with indoctrinated "graduates" of white "schools," in order to expedite compliance with U.S. goals and expansion.

Probably one of the most ruinous acts to the Indians was the disappearance of the buffalo. For the Indians who lived on the Plains, life depended on the buffalo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were an estimated forty million buffalo, but between 1830 and 1888 there was a rapid, systematic extermination culminating in the sudden slaughter of the only two remaining Plain herds. By around 1895, the formerly vast buffalo populations were practically extinct. The slaughter occurred because of the economic value of buffalo hides to Americans and because the animals were in the way of the rapidly westward expanding population. The end result was widescale starvation and the social and cultural disintegration of many Plains tribes."

So a little less than 120 years ago the U S Government was exterminating Native Americans.

Time is a funny thing. My trip started over 17 years ago. That seems a long time ago but it isn't really. In solicitors' firms the Partners measure their own performance and the performance of more junior fee earners month to month. I sometimes muse that I have only months left to live. It is true. I am 47 years old. I try to keep fit (but not as hard as I should). I try to eat healthy food (but I don't always). I really don't drink very much. I guess that I only drink to excess once a year. I do smoke and pretty unhealthy roll-ups at that. My dad is 75 next birthday. Suppose I live another 40 years for argument's sake? That is only 480 months. It doesn't seem to be a very big number does it? It was only 3 times as many months ago that the Native Americans were being wiped out.

I seem to have strayed some distance from Mesopotamia but when I arrived in Diyarbakir I was definitely there. Diyarbakir is on the banks of the Tigris.



Diyarbakir is also considered by some to be the "capital" of "Kurdistan". This is another difficult problem. Kurdistan does not officially exist. It is not an administrative area. It is a region which includes south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, north western Iran and small parts of Armenia and northern Syria.

In all honesty I am no scholar but it seems to be an area that has very little prospect of ever being allowed to declare itself a State in its own right. All of the States within which it "exists" at present have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. The only officially recognised Kurdish autonomous area is in Northern Iraq and the very fact is beginning to cause problems today. It seems that Turkey suspects that Kurdish terrorists (or freedom fighters, as you will - it depends who wins after all) are using the new autonomous area as a base from which to launch attacks in Turkey. Turkey has threatened to make incursions into northern Iraq in pursuit of them.

As a result of having to retrace our steps from Hakkari to Van and then change the plan and go to Diyarbakir instead we arrived there late and booked into the Pinar Hotel. As I recall the hotel was extremely dingy. We were assured the rooms were clean and the bedsheets likewise. When we inspected the sheets they were stained and we had to insist on fresh linen.

We checked out the next morning and after breakfast relocated to the Kaleli Hotel. I located the Turkish Airlines Office and swapped my last internal flight ticket for one from Adana to Istanbul. Rudiger and I didn't do very much. we sat around drinking tea and playing backgammon or "tavla" as I think it is called in Turkey. We also played the less serious version called Tric-Trac that I had learned when I was young.

At some stage we ended up in a carpet shop drinking tea there. I was cajoled into buying a very small piece of Kelim carpet. It didn't cost very much, about £11, I think. The very earnest salesman told me it was very old and that a percentage of the cost would be donated to the struggle of the Kurdish people. I hope it wasn't, not because I didn't have any sympathy for their cause (to be honest I didn't really know enough to have a sensible view about it, and probably still don't) but because I don't really want to think that I might have financed armed struggle/terrorism directly or indirectly.

Rudiger was much better at avoiding buying anything. He had done a bit of traveling in his time and knowing that after Turkey my next stop was India told me that based on my inability to withstand the sales techniques of Turkish rug sellers, I was likely to be parted with most of my money in no time when I got to India.

My Filofax notes say that we ate good food in a restaurant called Azure and I remember we had a drink in a posh Hotel that looked like a Kervansaray (Caravanserai). It's called the Deliller Hani. I've looked it up since and it's mentioned on A Silk Road Hotels website which gives the history of the place. I set out below exactly what it says (the English used is not mine):

"The Deliller Han was built by the second governer of Diyarbakir Hüsrev Pasha, to the front of Bezergan Han to serve to the merchants who were travelling go the countries on holy Hicaz and Silkroad , as Syria, Iran and India. The Han was built with mosque and medresse and whole building was consider as KULLIYE, it was constructed in 1521 and finished already in 1527. The Han consist of 72 rooms, 17 shops and a stall which has 800 camel capacity. The Han construction materials mainly were Local materials and mainly were black and white stones. Stones From Urfa. Black stones were brought from Kurtbogazi stonemine and white.

THE DELILLER HAN WHICH TEND TO BE DESTROYED HOW WAS IT CHANGED TO THE GRAND HISTORICAL KERVANSARAY HOTEL

The portion of the Han was occupied by vakiflar ad ministration in 1988 and given a contrat to the Hotel Grand Kervansaray for 49 years. This historical place previously had been used as bazar."

A touristic leaflet about Diyarbakir I picked up is a little more lucid (if shorter) in its description saying that it was built of black basalt and white limestone by Husrev Pasa, the second governor of the city to house the official guides who lead pilgrims from this point to Mecca.

So it looked like a Kervansaray because that's what it was. It's advertised as being a 5 star hotel and the rates at present seem reasonable (although they would have been completely beyond my budget when I was there).

The last word in my notes for Wednesday 10 October 1990 is "Watermelon". I can't remember exactly but I am sure that it was a good watermelon because Wikipedia says that Diyarbakir is famed for its culture, folklore and watermelons. The touristic leaflet I picked up says that watermelons (karpuz) deserve a special mention as the province produces the finest in all Turkey and they have come to be accepted as the symbol of the city. The finest specimens weigh in at 40 to 60kg! Big Melons!

The following day we went back to the Deliller Hani to take a picture. It had looked much more romantic in the dark with the arches softly lit. All the same I think it was worth a snap. If I ever went back to Diyabakir I think I'd stay there.



Walking around Diyarbakir felt a bit strange. In the previous week or so I hadn't spent much time in built up areas and the city was a bit edgy. As I walked around I flicked my Erzurum prayer beads constantly and this seemed to have a magical effect on the local children. In most other places the children would pester you for money or whatever but when they saw me flicking the beads they left me alone.

To tell the truth Diyarbakir did not set me on fire. We did a bit of wandering around but if there was anything really interesting to see I missed it. Below is a not very good picture of the courtyard of the Ulu Cami one of the oldest mosques in Anatolia being converted from a church in 639 after the Muslim armies took Diyarbakir. It suffered damage in an earthquake in 1115 and collapsed. Just under 50 years later it was rebuilt. After the Seljuk period the mosque was further repaired by Uzun Hasan a White Sheep Turkman (Akkoyunlu). In 1839 (after substantial repairs in 1824) the minaret was struck and knocked down by lightning and rebuilt.

The Outer Limit

Our plan was to catch the 8.00 bus the next morning to Hakkari right on the Iraq border and change buses there to travel close to the Syrian border and then to to Mardin.

The plan started alright. We got the service bus to Hakkari. As we approached we noticed vehicles with strange number plates heading in the opposite direction. These turned out to be refugees and foreign workers leaving Iraq while the first stage of the First Gulf War in Kuwait was under way.

When we arrived at Hakkari it proved impossible to get a bus in the direction we wanted to travel. There had been incidents recently involving the PKK the Kurdish terrorists/freedom fighters (depending on your standpoint, and I don't know enough to have one that is worthwhile). Apparently a bus had been attacked and passengers killed. This stopped us in our tracks. We had to turn around and head back to Van.

On the way back we revised the plan.

Van

The pace of the traveling had certainly picked up. The Dolmus to Van wasn't actually going very fast but I seem to have covered quite a lot of ground in no time. Just 48 hours before I had been on the Black Sea coast and at about 5.30pm on Saturday 6 October 1990 I arrived in Van. Waiting for the Dolmus I struck up a friendship with guy called Rudiger Schliffke a German doctor spending 6 months in Turkey before doing his Houseman's stint back home.



Now here was another amazing place and another place that seems to have seen its fair share of empires come and go. Although there is plenty of earlier history (including prehistoric relics) it seems the real starting point in Van is the 9th century BC when the Urartians established a state during the reign of Sardur I with what is now Van as its capital. The name Urartia is derived from Assyrian sources. It was the name given to the the kingdom by its Assyrian rivals to the south. There is some authority for the proposition that the name has something to do with Ararat. In the Book of Jeremiah Ararat appears as the name of a kingdom.

I have to mention at this point that Dr Rudiger Schliffke was the second Python nut I met on the trip. He was more a Life of Brian nut in fact. This little bit of information doesn't seem very important but we did have a giggle remembering parts of the film and as I write this every time that I see a reference to Assyria all I can think of is Mr Cheeky being crucified next to Brian asking him if anyone was coming to get him down. Mr Cheeky says that his brother would usually come for him: "Oh, yeah. My brother usually rescues me, if he can keep off the tail for more than twenty minutes. Huh. Randy little bugger... up and down like the Assyrian empire!"

Anyway, below is a picture of Van Kalesi founded by the original king Sardur I. The picture is so far as I am aware the only photograph I have ever had published. This was thanks to Jane Tetslaff who was (and may still be, for all I know) working for publishers Dorling Kindersley. Their book called "Castles" has my picture in it. I sold the worldwide publishing rights to them for £50! Now I am breaching their copyright by publishing it here but I am sure they don't mind. The picture they published is a cut out of mine so they aren't quite the same.



As I was saying Van has seen a good number of empires come and go. This comes from an online encyclopedia based on the 1911 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

"The Biainian dynasty, of which Sarduris I. (c. 833 B.C.) was the first king, died out with Sarduris II., who in 645 B.C. entered into an alliance with Assur-bani-pal. Inscriptions of nearly all the kings exist, and the various excavations at Toprak Kale [an earlier name for Van Castle] show an advanced state of civilization and great technical skill (see illustrations in Maspero's Histoire ancienne, vol. iii., Les Empires). In the 6th century B.C. Van passed into the hands of the Persians, and shortly before it fell to Alexander the Great it was rebuilt, according to Armenian historians, by a native prince called Van. In 149 B.C. Valarsaces or Vagharshag, the first Armenian king of the Arsacidae, rebuilt the town, and a colony of Jews was settled in it by Tigranes (94-56 B.C.). In the middle of the 4th century A.D. it was taken by Sapor (Shapur) II., and became the capital of an autonomous province of the Sassanian Empire, until it fell into the hands of the Arabs (c. 640), under whom it regained its autonomy. About 908 the governor of Van or Vaspuragan was crowned king by the caliph Moktadir, and in 1021 his descendant Senekherim was persuaded by Basil II. to exchange his kingdom for the viceroyalty of the Sebasteian theme. After having formed part of the possessions of the Seljuks, Mongols, Tatars and Persians, Van passed in 1514, after the defeat of Shah Ismail by Selim I. at the battle of Kalderan, to the Osmanlis, who only occupied the town in 1543. In 1636 it was taken by the Persians, but soon recovered. In 1845 the town was held for a time by the Kurd chief Khan Mahmud, who eventually surrendered and was exiled."

This history ends before the beginning of World War I. The history of Van during and after World War I is far from glorious. The Resistance at Van was an insurgency against the Ottoman Empire's attempts to liquidate its Armenian population in the vilâyet of Van. It was one of the few instances during the Armenian Genocide where Armenians, in an act of self-defense, fought against the Ottoman Empire's armed forces. I refer you to Wikipedia and suggest you follow the link for "the Resistence at Van".



The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Van itself as follows: "The town itself is a poor place with flat-roofed mud houses, narrow winding streets, and surrounded by a ruinous mud wall". It had changed a bit since then. From Van Kalesi it looked like the picture above. It still wasn't much to write home about and my film was too precious to take any pictures.

Also taken from the "ramparts" were the following shots of the remains of the the ancient city.





My second day in Van saw Rudiger and I on a service bus at 7.30am heading in the direction of Hoşap Kale on the road to Hakkari. The castle is at a place called Güzelsu (which means "beautiful water" or "good water").

The castle is built on a rocky outcrop on the north bank of the Hoşap River. The structure dates mostly from 1643 (1052 A.H.), when Mahmudi tribal lord and Hoşap's governor Sari Süleyman Bey rebuilt the castle and added a new entrance tower. A castle may have been built at this location as early as the Urartu Kingdom (see above); it is certain, however, that the structure was built early on and modified numerous times until the seventeenth century. The Mahmudi castle was damaged in two sieges by the Ottoman Beylerbeyi, or Governor General of Van in the 1650s and in 1839. It was restored between 1970 and 1973 and in 1986 by the Turkish Ministry of Culture.



Built by Sari Süleyman in 1643, the entrance tower is twenty-six meters in diameter including its four-meter-thick walls. Its west-facing door is set inside a tall, arched frame that contains the foundation inscription carved in black basalt stone. The inscription is set in a frame of muqarnas and cable molding and crowned with a large tear motif flanked by two lion figures in relief.



If I remember correctly I bought a very small souvenir from this place. It was a cylindrical piece of stone with what might possibly be Urartian cuneiform inscriptions on it. It might have been some kind of seal. I later added it to my jet prayer beads from Erzurum and Rudiger showed me how the locals do the trick they do all the time flicking the beads around their hands. This was something that came in very handy.



Eastern Anatolia, far eastern Turkey is a spectacularly beautiful place. When I was there the places I visited were almost deserted. Taking pictures of places never involved waiting for the scene to clear of other tourists. There was no-one else around.



So, after a little while looking around the castle and taking the pictures above we decided to move on. We got a minibus/dolmus to the crossroads and began to walk to Gurpinar. As we walked along a tour bus came along. So we were not entirely alone. Rudiger flagged it down and we hitched a lift with a German tour group and the "Diana Tour" bus. What a stroke of luck! It took us to Gevaş where we paused briefly to visit and photograph the Halime Hatun Kumbet, a mausoleum dating from 1358, the Karakoyunlu period.

The Karakoyunlu period refers to the the Black Sheep Turkmen mentioned before. Why is it that the history of this part of the world sounds so utterly fantastic? The Black Sheep Turkmen may sound an unlikely name for any group but they once controlled the Middle East. In the period of Cihan Shah, also sometimes spelled Jahan Shah, not to be confused with Shah Jahan (see a later, as yet unwritten section of this blog) , the Karakoyunlu State was at its greatest size. A website I came accross called OzTurkler.com has a slightly curiously worded article on the Karakoyunlu State. It says:

"The state established dominion in Azerbaijan, Erran, Iraq-ı Arab,Fars, Kirman and the Western Anatolia and the neighbouring states had become submissive to Karakoyunlu State. Cihan Shah who was one of the greatest rulers of the state was a firm and brave person. He was fond of alcoholic drinks and entertainment. Upon his death, the glorious period of the state came to an end and the Karakoyunlu State was dissolved after a short period. Hasan Ali who was the last Karakoyunlu ruler was a mentally retarded and greedy person. Pursuant to his death, Cihan Shah's son, Ebu Yusuf whose eyes were burnt out by Uzun Hasan tried to establish dominion in Farsi city, but he was caught by the Akkoyunlu prince, Ugurlu Mehmed. Therefore, the Akkoyunlu State abolished the dominion of the Karakoyunlu State that was their traditional enemy and possessed their countries".

Who were the Akkoyunlu? Yes, the White Sheep Turkmen.

Apparently there are few works of art that survive from the period of the Karakoyunlu State. OzTurker.com says that this is principally because the period was a kind of settlement period by Turkmen but it also seems that the hostility of the Akkoyunlu Turkmens, struggles with Tamburlaine's sons, and the conflicts with the Mameluke Sultanate (from Egypt?) had prevented the architectural activities of the Karakoyunlu rulers. So it's lucky that there was anything to take a picture of. The picture of the Mausoleum is the only picture of Gevas in Illan Aksit's book.

It is great fun filling in the gaps in this blog with stuff I never knew back when I was there. All I had was one slide that I could identify from a similar picture of it in Ilhan Aksit's book. The research has taken me on another voyage of discovery into the enormous territory that amounts to not only what I didn't know then but what I didn't know I didn't know. I appreciate I am straying into the terminological turf that belongs to Donald Rumsfeld but what I am finding out now is what he might call an unknown unknown.

For instance, although not strictly relevant to my travels, I looked up Tamburlaine referred to above and discover more stuff I didn't know. It is information that resonates with magical names and places and the most astonishing facts. Check out this from Wikipedia (NB Timur is another name for Tamburlaine):

"He ruled over an empire that, in modern times, extends from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, North-Western India, and even approaching Kashgar in China. Northern Iraq remained predominantly Assyrian Christian until the destructions of Timur. When Timur conquered Persia, Iraq and Syria, the civilian population was decimated. In the city of Isfahan, he ordered the building of a pyramid of 70,000 human skulls, from those that his army had beheaded, and a pyramid of some 20,000 skulls was erected outside of Aleppo. Timur herded thousands of citizens of Damascus into the Cathedral Mosque before setting it aflame, and had 70,000 people beheaded in Tikrit, and 90,000 more in Baghdad. As many as 17 million people may have died from his conquests. Timur is historically considered to be a contradictory and controversial figure, as was the case even during his lifetime. He was a patron of the arts, but also destroyed the great centres of learning during his conquests."

That puts the record of some more recent evil dictators into perspective. I do wonder whether the recent US led military "adventures" in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been contemplated for very long had Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheyney and Condoleeza Rice spent a few days reading some history of the region. It does seem that barbarity and terrible slaughter has been a regular feature since time immemorial. The lesson hasn't been learned. Only today (14 January 2008) a speech in Saudi Arabia by President George W Bush is being reported. In the speech he seems to be spoiling for a fight with Iran.



Having taken the picture above we boarded a ferry to Akdamar Island. It's a 90 minute trip and 3 km accross the lake to the island. The Lake is the largest body of water in Anatolia and the second largest in the Middle East. It covers an area of 1,434 square miles (3,713 square km) and is more than 74 miles (119 km) across at its widest point. I remember reading in my Lonely Planet Guide that the high sodium carbonate and sodium sulfate content of the water meant you could wash your clothes in the water without using soap. My quick web research reveals that the salts are actually extracted by the process of evaporation and used in the production of detergents.

The Lake is very deep, 451 meters at its deepest. It seems that the same year I was there scientists were examining the bottom of the lake because the sediment could provide climate information. This work has obviously continued and the results could give the creationist writer, Mr Northrup, that I mentioned before something of a headache. According to "Science Daily" an international team of researchers headed by the University of Bonn have been exploring the bottom of the lake. They have found that every year a layer of sediment about an inch thick is formed on the bottom of the lake. The layer is formed in stages according to the season. They think that this means there is information there going back 800,000 years. They want to tap the information for the last 500,000 years at least. Clearly this kind of claim ought to make creationists uncomfortable but then I remember that the simple answer to these discoveries is that God put the layers of sediment there as a test of faith when he created everything about 7,000 years ago. I forgot that. Doh!



On Akdamar Island stands the 10th century Church of the Holy Cross or Akdamar Kilesi. According to www.sacredsites.com: "The name given to the island, Aght'amar, is explained by a local legend. A nobleman who fell in love with a beautiful girl named Tamar visited the island every night to see her. As he was crossing the lake one stormy night, his boat capsized and fighting the waves, he drowned uttering the words "Ach Tamar". Tamar, awaiting the arrival of her loved one, grieved deeply upon hearing the news of his death and died soon after. Hence, the island was called "Ach Tamar" (Aght'amar) ever since. Local folklore also tells that the lake is enchanted and that angels go in and out of the water." I think the legend would be easier to understand if we knew what the word "Ach" might mean. This site also says that Lake Van is Turkey's third largest lake. So perhaps the information is not entirely reliable.

The piece on the www.sacredsites.com begins "Breathtaking in the beauty of its surroundings, the ruined church of Akdamar Island in Lake Van represents one of the most sublime examples of Armenian religious architecture. The church is the sole remaining building of the palace of Aght’amar built by the architect Bishop Manuel between 915 and 921 AD. Constructed during the reign of the Armenian King Gagik Ardzrouni of the Vaspurakan dynasty, the complex of buildings originally included streets, gardens and terraced parks surrounding the palace and church. Constructed with a cruciform plan (cross-shaped) and a conical roof domed on the inside, the building is made of red colored tufa stone brought to the island from distant quarries."





When I took this picture of one of the reliefs on the exterior of the church I had thought it might be St George slaying the dragon but from what Ilhan Aksit's book tells me it is probably Samson in combat with a serpent.



The view of Akdamar Kilesi on the Lake with the mountains in the distance ranks as one of the most spectacular of my trip up until that point.

So we returned to Van and over a few games of backgammon we planned the next leg.

Dogubeyazit

There are basically two reasons for visiting Dogubeyazit. İshak Paşa Sarayı and Mount Ararat. According to the Lonely Planet Guide the best time to see Ararat is just after dawn before it is obscured by clouds. With that in mind I set the alarm for 6.00am. Furthermore mindful of how cold it might be so early in the mortning and how cold it had been in Artvin the night before I put on another bit of kit that it was suggested I should take along namely thermal underwear a thermal vest and longjohns.

It was a 5km walk from my hotel to İshak Paşa Sarayı and along the way there were superb views of Mount Ararat along the way. I particularly like the one of the mountain with tanks in the foreground. I remember that a soldier hove into view after I took my picture and wagged a disapproving finger at me. I didn't try another one.




I carried on my march up to Isak Pasa Sarayi. Ilhan Aksit in the book I bought is right when he says: "Perched on the cliffs like an eagle's nest five kilometers from Dogubeyazit, the Serai of İshak Paşa is a structure that in every sense is worth seeing". It is a very photogenic site indeed. A picture postcard palace. Here's a postcard I bought and sent home.



Of course the site was not chosen for its photogenic nature not least because photography had not been invented at the time. It was selected so as to control the trade route, the silk road, between Iran and Anatolia. The location is close to the present day Armenian, Azerbaijani and Iranian borders. It was completed in 1784 being commenced by Cildiroglu Colak Abdi Pasha and completed by his heir İshak Paşa.

I quote from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture: "The complex is an intentional Seljuk revival example with many Turkish Baroque elements. Situated on a long spur overlooking the Ararat plateau, the saray is divided in the traditional Ottoman manner into three sections: the first is service court; the second is the selamlik court; and the third is the haramlik court. The splendid decorative program is an eighteenth century interpretation of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries Seljuk precedents, and is all achieved in stone carving."

It is said that the magnificent gate in main entrance (facing east) was appropriately embellished with gold-plated doors but that they were removed and carried off by the Russians. Due to its proximity to the Russian and Persian borders of the empire, Iİshak Paşa Sarayı suffered serious damage during several wars, beginning with the Russian seige in 1828. Stones were removed from the abandoned palace during the re-location of the city in 1934. The upper wooden structure also vanished during this period.

Ilhan Aksit says: "They also say that once the Persian ambassador stayed in this imposing palace as a guest and later when he came to Topkapi Sarayi in Istanbul he mentioned the reigning sultan (Selim III) how magnificent Ishak Pasha serai was and that as a result, Ishak Pasha fell from favour owing to the sultan's displeasure"



It took something like an hour to get from the town to the palace. So I was there around 7.00am. I think I can recommend this time as a very good time to visit since there was absolutely nobody else around.



The setting of the palace is terrific and I scrambled around to get views from further away to put it in its context.



Here's a view from even further away...



..and finally from even further away still one from a mosque. I think that far enough away now.

Having been abandoned and neglected at least until the mid 1960's the interiors aren't much to look at. Ilhan Aksit tells me that the general plan follows that of Ottoman palaces but there are traces of Seljuk influences in the monumental portals. Excluding the terraces the building is 115m x 50m an area of 7,600m squared in which there are two internal courtyards around which are masterfully located buildings such as a U-shaped structure containing the men's apartments, a mosque, the harem, the kitchens and baths. It is said that the two-storey serai had 366 rooms.



The picture below shows the mosque, mausoleum and portal to the harem. I think the octagonal structure in the corner before the mosque is the turbeh where Abdi Pasha and Ishak Pasha are buried.



Below is a picture of the inner courtyard in the harem.



The following picture could very well be a corridor leading to the interior of the mosque. I didn't make it very clear on the slide. The one below that is the ceiling of the mosque.





In my researches to plug the holes in my memory and pad out the sketchy knowledge i had I came across this video. By the look of it there may have been some serious restoration work done since I was there just over 17 years ago.



So by now it must have been about 8.15am and the sun was beginning to warm up. I couldn't really say that it was very cold anyway. Around 8.30 I began the march back to the town. Below an image I like very much taken as I walked along in my trekking trainers wrapped up against the non-existent cold.



I had made two mistakes. First, throughout the time I was up at İshak Paşa Sarayı, upon my return and for the rest of the time I was in Dogubeyazit the summit of Mount Ararat was clearly visible with scarcely a wisp of cloud anywhere near the summit. So perhaps I needn't have got up so early. Second, by the time I got back to the hotel I was sweltering. I couldn't get the thermals off fast enough.



So there it was. It's amazing what you can achieve if you get up early enough. By midday I had showered, repacked and had checked out of the hotel and was on a Dolmus to Van, once the capital of the 9th Century BC Kingdom of Urartia.



Below are two postcards I sent back of Mount Ararat the traditional resting place of Noah's Ark. It might actually be up there. I don't see why it would be nor why any of it would have survived the thousands of years up there if it had been there. It is something that causes me a degree of annoyance that at the time I was there and no doubt today teams of climbers were/are clambering over the mountain (or perhaps expertly climbing it, whatever) sponsored by churches who think that it is worthwhile to try to locate some relic of Noah's Ark. To me, it is indicative of doubt in what some may profess to believe that compels them to try to prove themselves right. Does it really matter? I suppose to those who think that what they believe is right and that non believers are worse than wrong it does matter. They really need some evidence that the biblical story is literally true to validate their faith. Somehow I think this misses the point.