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\begin{document}

\title{A Tour of Turkish Mesopotamia}
\author{David Pierce}
\publishers{Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul\\
\url{http://mat.msgsu.edu.tr/~dpierce}}

\date{\today}

\uppertitleback{\centering
A Tour of Turkish Mesopotamia\\
\mbox{}\\
This work is licensed under the\\
 Creative Commons Attribution--Noncommercial--Share-Alike
License.\\
 To view a copy of this license, visit\\
  \url{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/}\\
\mbox{}\\
\cc \ccby David Pierce \ccnc \ccsa\\
\mbox{}\\
Mathematics Department\\
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University\\
Istanbul, Turkey\\
\url{http://mat.msgsu.edu.tr/~dpierce/}\\
\url{dpierce@msgsu.edu.tr}
}
\lowertitleback{
As explained in the text, this document concerns a trip made in the
fall of 2008, when I was living in Ankara and working at Middle East
Technical University.  I created this report later in 2008.
Now, almost five years later, I have made cosmetic changes, such as
switching from A4 to A5 paper.  I have found little reason to change
much of the text itself.}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\section{Mathematics and history}\label{intro}
Ay\c se and I toured southeastern Turkey between Saturday, September 
27, and Saturday, October 4, 2008.  Since then, from the books that we
have at home, I have tried to learn more of the history of the places
that we saw.  This article is a result of my researches and
thoughts.\footnote{Photographs from our trip, and this article itself,
  are at \url{http://mat.msgsu.edu.tr/~dpierce/Travel/2008/Mesopotamia/}.}

In school, I had an uneasy relationship with history.  
Many people have an uneasy relationship with \emph{mathematics,} and
one reason for this may be that there is no arguing with mathematics.
If you're wrong, you're wrong.  But the inverse statement is equally
true:  If you're right, you're right.  The authority that determines
what is right is found within each of us.  As Descartes says in the
\emph{Discours de la M\'ethode} \cite{Descartes-T}:
\begin{quote}
  \emph{Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partag\'ee; car chacun
  pense en \^etre si bien pourvu que 
  ceux m\^eme qui sont les plus difficiles \`a contenter en toute autre
  chose n'ont point coutume d'en d\'esirer plus qu'ils en
  ont.}\footnote{As a source for this passage, I have cited the book
    \cite{Descartes-T} in the list at the end of this article, because
    the book is in my physical possession.  However, instead of
    actually typing out the text from the book, I cut and pasted it
    from \url{http://descartes.free.fr/} on October 29, 2008.} 
\end{quote}
Good sense, or \emph{reason,} is the best-shared thing in the world.
Mathematics is founded on this principle.  Disputes in mathematics
cannot be resolved by appeal to authority, or the use of force, but
only by the application of reason by all parties involved.  

Nobody else can do mathematics for you.  But in school, history is
precisely 
something done by other people.  It depends on outside authorities.
You may not know enough about the world to give meaning to the isolated
historical facts that you are supposed to learn.  That's too bad; you
still must learn the facts.  You \emph{can} learn them: it just
isn't very pleasant.  Therefore, as I said, in school I had an uneasy
relationship with history.

However, as my childhood years went by, certain kinds of history
became interesting.  My mother's 
brother and his wife had a nineteenth-century house in West Virginia.
As I visited there while growing up, I became
interested to learn that the place had a history.  I had
always been dimly aware of an old mill on the property.  I was
fascinated when my uncle pointed out that a sort of channel, now
overgrown with trees, was artificial: it had
been dug to lead water from the creek to the mill.  The visual
evidence of what had happened in the past helped to make that past
interesting.  

It also mattered that the vaguely discernible mill-race was in a place
that I already liked to visit.  When I first came to Turkey, in 1998,
Ay\c se took me to Fethiye on the Aegean coast.  We were in a gorgeous
region where you could bathe in the sea while gazing at the mountains
above.  So it was just icing on the cake to learn that
Herodotus had known the city as
Telmessus, whose soothsayers had advised kings of Sardis.

When people ask how I like living in Turkey, one of the reasons that I
give for enjoying life here is that it is where much of my culture
came from.  It is where Homer lived.  While I was fascinated by the
mill-race in 
West Virginia, I was bored in a high-school course, at an Anglican
school, called Christian Ideas.  I complained to the teacher that the
course seemed more like Christian Facts.  I was just not interested in
learning which theological doctrine was ruled heretical at which
general council of the Church.  But now I live in the country where
those councils happened; so they start to take on more interest.

There is also a history of this country of which I learned
almost nothing in school.  

Books for tourists may provide some interesting historical
information; but its validity may not be clear.  How do we \emph{know}
what happened on a particular site, one or two thousand years ago?
The books presumably get their information from other books;
but which ones?  The reader cannot usually tell.  Disappointed by
this inability, I intend in this document to be clear about where I get my own
information.  
%In this narrative, numbers in brackets refer to the bibliography at the end.

I shall not try to tell the whole story of the places we saw on our
trip.  Today's
Urfa or \c Sanl\i urfa (`Glorious Urfa') was Edessa in the time of the
Crusaders, and they occupied it for some decades.  A lot can be said about
it, but I shall not try, simply because it would have little to do
with our visit there---which was not very thrilling.  But Harran, south of
Urfa, was exciting, and it becomes more so when, almost by chance, I
learn from Gibbon and Plutarch about
what happened there.

Much information
 can be found on the internet, especially on Wiki\-pedia, but I prefer
 to confirm such information in print sources.  However, undocumented
 claims below may come from the internet. 

\section{Holidays}
Official holidays in Turkey fall into four classes.  One of these is
the class of weekly holidays: Saturday and Sunday.
In a class by itself is New Year's Day (\emph{Y\i lba\c s\i}),
January~1, which is practically a Turkish Christmas.  Colored lights
are displayed then, and gifts are exchanged.  The iconography of Santa
Claus may
appear.  Indeed, St Nicholas can be considered as a figure from
Turkish or at least Anatolian history: he was Bishop of Myra on the
southwestern coast of Asia Minor.

There are currently four national holidays on the civil,
Gregorian calendar:
\begin{asparaenum}[1.]
  \item
April 23 is \emph{Ulusal Egemenlik ve \c Cocuk Bayram\i} (National
Sovereign\-ty and Children's Day), on the anniversary of the opening in
Ankara in 1920 of the \emph{T\"urkiye B\"uy\"uk Millet Meclisi,} the 
Turkish Grand National Parliament.  Children come
to Turkey from around the world to observe this day as Children's Day.
\item
May 19 is \emph{Gen\c clik ve Spor Bayram\i} (Youth and Sport Day),
 on the anniversary of the landing of
Mustafa Kemal (the future Atat\"urk) at Samsun on the Black Sea coast
 in 1919.  This landing is considered as the beginning of the
 \emph{\.Istikl\^al
  Harbi} or \emph{Kurtulu\c s Sava\c s\i,} the Turkish War of
Independence---independence, that is, from the victors of the Great
War, who would have carved up Anatolia amongst themselves, and from
the Imperial Ottoman government, which agreed to this division.
\item
August 30 is \emph{Zafer Bayram\i,} Victory Day---victory over the Greek
forces at Dumlu\-p\i nar in 1922.
\item
October 29 is \emph{Cumhuriyet Bayram\i} (Republic Day), commemorating
the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923.\footnote{The
  afternoon of October 28 is also included in this holiday.}
\end{asparaenum}

Observation of these holidays is not adjusted to fall on weekdays.
In 2008, these holidays fall respectively on Wednesday,
Monday, Saturday, and Wednesday.

In Ay\c se's childhood, there was a holiday called Constitution Day,
commemorating the military \emph{coup d'\'etat} of May 27, 1960.  Also
May 1 was a holiday.  These holidays
were abolished after the military \emph{coup} of September~12,
1980 \cite[p.~278]{Zurcher}.  General Kenan Evren was
asked why he didn't declare September~12 a holiday.  He modestly
suggested that a later government should do this.  This has not
happened.  However, \emph{demonstrations} happen around September 12, in
support of the proposition that Evren and other \emph{coup} leaders
should be put on trial.

Finally, in the twelve lunar months of the Muslim year, there are
two festivals observed as official holidays: three-and-a-half days
marking the end of Ramadan, and four-and-a-half days commemorating
Abraham's aborted sacrifice of his son.\footnote{This son is Ishmael,
  in the Muslim account.}  In 2008, the
\emph{Ramazan Bayram\i} or, as secularists have it, the \emph{\c
  Seker} (Candy) \emph{Bayram\i,} began on Monday afternoon, September
29.  The 
government extended the festival to include Monday morning and
the following Friday.  Thus the country had nine consecutive days of
holiday,\footnote{That Monday and Friday would be
  holidays was
  not made official till very late, in the usual fashion.  Hence some
  bank-workers, for example, still had to work.  But Friday had always
been a holiday on our academic calendar; and it was unlikely that many
students would forego a longer holiday for the sake of Monday-morning
classes.} 
just a week and a half into the fall semester at our university in
Ankara.  This is when Ay\c se and I took our trip. 

\section{Departure}

We were to meet our bus by a school at the center of Ankara at 10 p.m.\ on
Saturday, September 27.  It was a drizzly evening.  Across
the street from the bus, a shop sold exercise equipment: there was a
tandem bicycle in the window, suggesting another way we
might travel some day. 

I did not know what our forty travelling companions would be like.
Somebody had told us of a similar tour made mostly by retirees.
In the event, at the age of 43, I was in the older half of our group.  There was
one man travelling with his adult granddaughter.  Two thirds
of our group were women. 

Ay\c se and I were given seats 7 and 8, one row behind the front seats on
the right.  We would keep our seats throughout the tour.  When we were
all on board, our guide,
Tolga, invited us to introduce ourselves.  I said in
Turkish that I was either David or Davut: this seemed to provide some
amusement.  There were two other foreigners on board, both
Frenchwomen; we would learn
on Sunday that they were teaching at the French-language school
in Ankara where our friend \c Sule teaches.\footnote{The school offers
  instruction in French \emph{where possible.}  This is why \c Sule has
  been sent to France to \emph{learn} French.  She has already taught
  at the school in Turkish for several years.} 

We would drive all night.  Tolga
encouraged us to sleep as much as we could.  However, some of our
companions went on talking a while after lights out.
It didn't much matter.
We had two drivers, Cemil and Ethem.  Cemil drove first, and while he
did, he talked loudly
on his cell phone.  It appeared that having
seats near the front of the bus might not be so desirable.  What was
worse, we were hit with a wave of smoke every few minutes, when Cemil
lit a fresh cigarette.  

I have enjoyed bus travel in Turkey ever since I
first came here ten years ago.  One reason why is that passengers 
do not smoke.
But drivers smoke.  A recent law bans smoking in all
enclosed public spaces, with restaurants excepted for the time being.  
The ban does apply to 
bus drivers; but how do you tell this to the man who has your
life in his hands?

We took a break in P\i narba\c s\i, beyond Kayseri in Cappadocia.
Cemil had not known where we could stop, until he telephoned another
bus driver for advice.
Several other busses were parked at the recommended facility, and
the dining room
was full.  Everybody was having \emph{sahur,} a
last meal before dawn, when another day of Ramadan fasting would begin.  

Ay\c se complained to Tolga about the smoking on our bus.  Don't
worry, said Tolga, Cemil will not smoke during the day.

So our driver was keeping the Ramadan fast.  Both of them
were.  And two days of fasting were left.  But the Qur'an says
travellers need not fast:
\begin{quote}
  O YOU who have attained to faith! Fasting is ordained for you as it
  was ordained for those before you, so that you might remain
  conscious of God: [fasting] during a certain number of
  days. But whoever of you is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast
  instead for the same] number of other days; and [in such cases] it
  is incumbent upon those who can afford it to make sacrifice by
  feeding a needy person. \hfill\mbox{\cite[2:183--4]{Asad}}
\end{quote}
Indeed, it should be incumbent on bus drivers
\emph{not} to fast, for safety's sake.  They
ought not to talk on the phone while driving, for the same reason.
That was \emph{my} point of view, but evidently I could not expect it
to be shared by our drivers.
Would the trip be a nightmare?  Would we \emph{survive} the
trip? 

\section{Destination}

We were headed into a land that had been, at various times, Hittite,
Assyrian, and Persian.  We were roughly following the
Persian King's Road to Susa.
This is what I gather from a Turkish historical atlas
\cite{Dagtekin}.  This atlas is perhaps suspect, for a couple of
reasons:
\begin{asparaenum}[1.]
  \item
In a map of \emph{T\"urkler'in Anayurdu ve G\"o\c cleri} (Motherland
and Migrations of the Turks), arrows are shown radiating from central
Asia and reaching as far as Ireland.  No time-period is given, though
the next map in the atlas is of Mesopotamia in 3000--2105
\textsc{b.c.e.},\footnote{With dates, Turkish uses \emph{M.\"O.} and
  \emph{M.S.,} for \emph{Mil\^attan \"once} and \emph{Mil\^attan
    sonra,} which mean before and after the Birth.  I gather from Redhouse
  \cite{Redhouse} that \emph{mil\^at} or rather \emph{mil\^ad}
  is originally an Arabic word for birth; but it is now used mainly to
  refer to the birth of Christ.  A book called \emph{Jesus:  Prophet
    of Islam} does not appear to refer to Jesus as Christ, but does
  claim that Jesus was the promised
  Messiah~\cite[p.~280]{Jesus-Prophet}.  The first evidence for this claim
  is supposed to be the following.
  \begin{quote}
    For, indeed, We vouchsafed unto Moses the divine writ and caused
    apostle after apostle to follow him; and We vouchsafed unto Jesus,
    the son of Mary, all evidence of the truth, and strengthened him
    with holy inspiration.  \hfill\cite[2.87]{Asad}
  \end{quote}
All of this is to say that \textsc{b.c.}\ and \textsc{a.d.}\ may be more
literal translations from the Turkish than the \textsc{b.c.e.}\ and
\textsc{c.e.}\ that I am using.}
and the previous map, of \emph{\.I\c c Denizler ve
  T\"urkler'in Anayurdu} (Inland Seas and Motherland of the Turks), is
dated 20,000--10,000 \textsc{b.c.e.}  So I suspect that the map in
question represents not scholarship, but wishful thinking.
\item
The atlas omits all mention of Armenia and Armenians.  For example, in
a map of the Persian Empire, 553--330 \textsc{b.c.e.}, the area around
Lake Van is labelled simply as Urartu.  But this is the region
that Xenophon and the Ten Thousand crossed in 401
\textsc{b.c.e.}; Xenophon called the country 
\gk{<h Armen'ia}, and
its people,
\gk{o<i
>Arm'enioi}~\cite{Xen-Anab}.\footnote{Xenophon
  and the Ten 
  Thousand crossed the river Centrites, which separated Armenia from
  the land of the Carduchians (\gk{o<i
  Kardo'uqoi}).  There are apparently claims
  that the Carduchians are the predecessors of today's Kurds.
The Centrites is said by Umar \cite{Umar} to be today's Bohtan or
Botan. 
However, from just looking at a map, it is not clear that the Centrites
is not the Habur
(Khabour) River, which enters the Tigris along the border between
Turkey and Syria, south of the Turkish town of Cizre. 
Indeed, Umar would seem to have the Habur in mind.  He (or possibly
she) doubts that
the word Centrites comes, as sources claim, from the Armenian word for
separating, since he does not think an Armenian name would appear
south of Cizre.  But the Bohtan is north of \c Cizre.  In any case,
Umar seems to be confused, since he
says Xenophon encountered the Centrites while marching \emph{to} the
country of the Carduchians (not \emph{from} this country to Armenia).}
A map in the \emph{New Oxford
  Annotated Bible} 
\cite{OAB} refers to this area as `Armenia (Urartu)'.  Similarly, the
Turkish atlas gives the names \emph{Kilikya} and \emph{Kilikya Krall\i\u
  g\i} (Cilicia and the Cilician Kingdom) to what the \emph{New Penguin Atlas
of Medieval History} \cite{McEvedy} calls Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom.
\end{asparaenum}

To be fair, it may be pointed out that the \emph{New
  Oxford Annotated Bible} is suspect for mapping out the Exodus of the
  Hebrews from Egypt as if it were historical fact;\footnote{Shlomo
  Sand, `Comment fut invent\'e le peuple juif' (\emph{Le Monde
  diplomatique,} Ao\^ut 2008, p.~3):
  \begin{quote}
  \emph{Les d\'ecouvertes de la \guillemotleft nouvelle
  arch\'eologie\guillemotright{} contredisent la possibilit\'e d'un
  grand exode au XIII$^{\mathrm e}$ si\`ecle avant notre \`ere.  De
  m\^eme, Mo\"{\i}se n'a pas pu faire sortir le H\'ebreux d'Egypte et
  les conduire vers la \guillemotleft terre promise\guillemotright{}
  pour la bonne raison qu'\`a l'\'epoque celle-ci\dots\'etait aux mains
  des Egyptiens.  On ne trouve d'ailleurs aucune trace d'une r\'evolte
  d'esclaves dans l'empire des pharaons, ni d'une conqu\^ete rapide du
  pays de Canaan par un \'el\'ement \'etranger.}
  \end{quote}
  } and the \emph{New
  Penguin 
  Atlas of Medieval History} never refers to the Holy Roman Empire as
  such (it refers to the German Empire instead).

Alexander swept
through region of our travels (or rather south of it) in the fourth century
\textsc{b.c.e.}; his
general Seleucus gave his name to the dynasty that ruled over the
Asian portion of Alexander's conquests.  The earliest
remains we would see on our trip belonged to the Commagene Kingdom,
which split from the Seleucid Empire in
162~\textsc{b.c.e.}\ and was annexed by Rome under Emperor Vespasian in
72~\textsc{c.e.}\ \cite[p.~78]{Stoneman}.

In the early seventh century \textsc{c.e.}, the Persians under
Chosroes II conquered
Roman Mesopotamia.
Down south in Arabia,
the followers of Muhammad were worried to hear
of the losses of the Romans, since these, as Christians, were fellow
monotheists \cite[p.~617, n.~2]{Asad}.  
Why the new Muslims would not have supported the Persians as
monotheists, I don't
know, unless the Persians were too tolerant of other religions besides
their own Mazdaism
\cite[p.~7]{Rodinson}. 
In any case, the Prophet observed in 615/6:\footnote{About 7 years before the
  \emph{hijrah.}  But Rodinson \cite[pp.~136--7]{Rodinson} seems
  skeptical about the dating and interpretation of this passage.} 
\begin{quote}
  Defeated have been the Byzantines in the lands close-by; yet it is
  they who, notwithstanding this their defeat, shall be victorious in
  a few years; [for] with God rests all power of decision, first and
  last.  

And on that day will the believers [too, have cause to] rejoice in
God's succour: [for] He gives succour to whomever he wills, since He
alone is almighty, a dispenser of grace. \hfill\cite[30:2--5]{Asad}
\end{quote}
And so it was.  Emperor Heraclius (610--41) recovered the lost Roman
territories.  But soon they were lost again, this time to the new Arab
caliphate.  Henceforth Mesopotamia would be in various Muslim hands,
except for some inroads by the Crusaders in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. 

\section{Harput}

On the bus, I did get some intermittent sleep until 5:30, Sunday
morning.  Then 
there was enough light to see the landscape by, and I could not help
but look.  I saw the familiar barren hills of central Anatolia.
These hills might have supported forests, thousands of years ago. 
After countless generations of humans and their animals had lived off
the land, the only trees left were in low-lying
areas. 

The plain of Malatya was such an area.  It was green with apricot
trees.  We stopped in town at Hotel Av\c sar for breakfast.  Now we
had a chance to see our companions in the daylight.
Some of them bought dried apricots in the hotel lobby, after a man
touted their benefits to health.  Then we continued on to Elaz\i\u g.

The Ni\c sanyans \cite[p.~358]{Nisanyan} refer to Elaz\i\u g as `a bastion of
 conservative Turkish nationalism.'  It is a new city---new for
 Anatolia, that is: it was built during
 the reign of the Ottoman sultan Abd\"ul\-aziz (1861--76) as an
 extension of the old city, Harput.
Harput was our destination, up on a hill.  At the edge of the hilltop,
 there was an equestrian statue of Balak Ghazi.  Erected in 1964, the
 statue looked
 like concrete.  Balak himself had been an Oghuz Turk of the
 Artuqid dynasty.   

Turkic
peoples had been on the borders of the Roman Empire since the fourth
century, but their conquest of Anatolia is dated to 1071.  This is
when the Byzantine emperor
Romanus IV Diogenes was defeated by the Seljuq leader Alp Arslan at
the Battle of Manzikert,\footnote{Malazgirt today.} north of Lake Van.
The Seljuqs were 
Sunni Muslims.  Egypt at the time was under the control of the
Fatimids, who were Shi'ite Muslims; 
Alp Arslan's real aim
was to take Egypt from these heretics.  Norwich \cite[p.~242]{Norwich}
writes wistfully that, after the Battle of Manzikert,
the Empire might have kept most of its Anatolian
territories, had Romanus been allowed to keep his throne and fulfil
his treaty obligations to Alp Arslan.  As it was, Romanus was deposed, his
successor abrogated the treaty with Alp Arslan, and Seljuq Turks
occupied Anatolia. 

The Seljuqs were one of 24 Oghuz tribes \cite[p.~109]{Stoneman}.
The Artuqids were also Oghuz (or `Ghuzz'), and they created some of
the remains that we would be seeing on our trip. 
But most of my print sources\footnote{Including, surprisingly,
  \emph{The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History} \cite{Previte-Orton},
  which, despite its name, has 1200 pages.}
do not mention them.  Perhaps these sources
are too  Eurocentric.  The Rough Guide \cite{Rough-Turkey} names the
Artuqids in connection with some of their remains.  Runciman
\cite[pp.~28--30]{Runciman} does mention Artuq (calling him Ortoq) as
the viceroy in Jerusalem (by 1079) of the Seljuq (`Seldjuk') prince
Tutush, brother of Malik Shah, the son and successor of Alp Arslan.

From Maalouf \cite{Maalouf} I gather that Artuq was succeeded in
Jerusalem by his sons Sokman and Ilghazi; but they capitulated and
were released after an Egyptian siege of the city in 1098.  Jerusalem
was in turn taken by the Crusaders in the following year.

Ilghazi somehow became governor of Mardin, which we would visit.  In
1117, he was chosen to rule Aleppo.  At the Battle of Sarmada in
1119, he defeated the Crusader-led forces of Antioch; but then he
got drunk instead of attacking Antioch itself.  He died three years
later and was replaced in Aleppo by his nephew, the Balak of the
statue in Harput.

Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, had invaded Egypt in 1118, but fell ill.
He died on the way back to Jerusalem, and he was replaced there as king
by his cousin Baldwin, 
Count of Edessa (today's \c Sanl\i urfa).  Joscelin replaced Baldwin
as count.

Though he does not name Harput, Maalouf otherwise confirms and
elaborates on the placard beneath Balak's statue:  Balak managed
to capture Joscelin in 1122 and imprison him in Harput Castle, sewn
into a camel's skin. Baldwin II came to the rescue, but while encamped
somewhere in the plain below Harput, he rose early
one morning to engage in 
his new Oriental pastime of falconry.
Then Balak captured him too.

It was with this background that Balak became ruler of Aleppo.  At
this time, Tyre was beseiged by the Crusaders, and the Tyrians
appealed to Balak for help.  He set out for Tyre in 1124, first visiting a
fortress called Manbij, where one of his vassals was in rebellion.
There an arrow shot from the fortress killed him, but not before he
exclaimed, `That arrow
will be fatal for all the Muslims.'  The Tyrians then surrendered to the
Crusaders. 

Balak's statue in Harput was
adjacent to a \emph{caf\'e.}  There was a
great view of the plain below.  The \emph{caf\'e}
could have had many customers on such a beautiful cool yet sunny day.
But the \emph{caf\'e} was closed until \emph{iftar,} the evening breakfast.

The nearby tomb of Arap Baba had been built in 1279.  Supposedly this man
left an incorruptible corpse.  According to 
legend, at a time of drought, a woman named Selvi dreamt that she
could end the drought by throwing the head of Arap Baba into a
spring.  She did this, and enough rain fell to cause a flood.  Then
Selvi dreamt she could end the flooding by replacing the head.  That's
what the placard said anyway, in Turkish and English.  Further away
from the edge of the hilltop was the tomb of Mansur Baba, with an
octagonal floorplan and pyramidal roof.  Here the placard was only in
Turkish, but suggested a construction date of 1234.  Signs pointed to other
attractions, including an old church: 
supposedly Harput had been a locus for Christian missionary activity
in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.  But we did not pursue these
leads.  We were supposed to have lunch in Diyarbak\i r.

\section{Diyarbak\i r}

In Turkey, many stretches of the Euphrates and Tigris have been turned
into lakes by means of dams.  We crossed one of these lakes on a bridge.
Then we passed by a vast natural lake, Hazar, where the Tigris
originated.  We stopped to take pictures. 
Tolga said the water was 
good for drinking and agriculture, but there were only scrubby trees
on the hills above the lake.

The highway was being widened here from two lanes to four.  This would
often be true on our trip.  It meant we had to drive slowly on
dirt, while construction equipment sat idle for a week because of the
holiday.

We followed the Tigris southeast through a
spectacular gap in the Taurus Mountains.  This gap was reminiscent of the
Cilician Gates, which Ay\c se, my mother, and I had traversed on the
way to Antioch the previous winter, and which our bus would traverse
on our way back to Ankara 
the following Saturday.  Both gaps had railways, which required many
tunnels.  Tolga said the railway to Diyarbak\i r had been built by Germany
as part of the Istanbul-Baghdad Railway;
  but the map given in the Wikipedia article `Baghdad
  Railway'\footnote{Accessed November 11, 2008.}
  does not confirm this claim.

In the gap, first we saw a lot of trees.  Then these started to
disappear, and then the hills disappeared, and we were in the plain of
Diyarbak\i r. 
We had seen some signs of the Turkish military, though perhaps nothing
like what we might have seen a decade or two before, when the Kurdish
rebellion was raging.  
In the years 1000 and 1030, there was a Kurdish Emirate of Diyarbak\i
r (or `Diyarbekr'), according to the \emph{Penguin Atlas}
\cite{McEvedy}.  A corresponding map in the Turkish atlas
\cite{Dagtekin} indicates a Seljuq conquest of Diyarbak\i r in
1085, and indicates that the city had not then been part of the
\emph{Bizans \.Imparatorlu\u gu;} but there is no mention of Kurds as
such.  As we drove towards Diyarbak\i r,
a man in camouflage with a rifle walked along the road.
Soldiers watched the road from a bunker.  A military checkpoint caused
us to slow down, but the soldiers did not stop us.  As we entered
Diyarbak\i r, a sign welcomed us in Turkish and Kurdish.  Then we saw an
apartment complex, surrounded by barbed wire, across from a military
base. 

We drove through a breach in the old city wall where the Harput Gate
had been.  We drove counterclockwise along the inside of the wall,
through traffic both motorized and ambulatory,
then back out through the Mardin Gate to reach the
\emph{Gazi K\"o\c sk\"u} (Ghazi Kiosk) for a late lunch.  This was a
facility built around
a house once used by the Ghazi himself, Atat\"urk.  There were
fountains and lawns and little statues of animals; also a real peacock
and some bunny rabbits.  Looking away from the \emph{kitsch,} we could see
the black basalt walls of Diyarbak\i r on the horizon, sitting above
the lush green bottomland beside the Tigris.

At our meal, the woman sitting across from me turned out to be a math
teacher; the woman across from Ay\c se was a friend of the
\emph{patronne} of our favorite Ankara restaurant.  We usually found
some sort of connexion like this with any of our bus companions that
we talked to.  But we did not get to know everybody.

Our group were not the only customers at the restaurant.  That is, we were
not the only people in Diyarbak\i r who were not fasting.  However, a
\emph{buffet} was being prepared for \emph{iftar,} which was not far
off.  A sign said something like `Take only what you
want; waste is a sin.'

The \emph{Gazi K\"o\c sk\"u} itself was built of alternating black and
white courses of stone.  The top floor was mostly a terrace with a
view of the Tigris; indoors there was a bedroom, with the Turkish
crescent and star on the bed, and above, a photograph of a young Mustafa
Kemal, in fez and pointed mustaches, with his mother and
sister.\footnote{The photograph had presumably been taken in
  Salonica, now in Greece, where Atat\"urk was born and raised.}

After our meal, we had a look at the \emph{On G\"oz\-l\"u
K\"opr\"u} (Ten Eyed Bridge, that is, bridge with ten arches) over the
Tigris; then we drove back into 
the old city.  We crept north along \emph{Gazi Caddesi,} which was a busy
marketplace.  Clothing and shoes were a common article for sale on the
tables: people buy new outfits for the Ramadan festival.
Looking down on the scene through the glass windows of a bus was not
the best way to experience it.  Ay\c se and I would have to come back
on our own some day.  This would be true for most of the places we
were to see.

A
police officer let us double-park, and we walked
through the crowds to see the \emph{Ulu Cami} (Great Mosque) or at least its
courtyard.  Whoever built this mosque (the Seljuqs, it seems) probably
cannibalized Roman structures for the
Corinthian columns; but between
the columns there was more flowery carving that incorporated Arabic
lettering.  A square black minaret, unusual for Turkey, overlooked us
from the south.  On the north side 
was a fenced-off gallery; a man lounging there seemed to wave me away
when I approached with the camera.

In the fading light, we took an alleyway to the house of poet Cahit S\i
tk\i{} Taranc\i{} (1910--56).  The house itself was closed, but again
we could look at the courtyard, which was spectacular with its black
stone walls
inlaid with white.  What is apparently one of the poet's best-known
works \cite{Sitki}\footnote{I
  took the text from
  \url{http://cahitsitkitaranci.uzerine.com/index.jsp?objid=965} 
on October 9, 2008, but edited it slightly to agree with the print
version.  The translations of this and other Turkish texts are by me.} 
begins:
{\small
\begin{longtable}{l@{\quad}l}
   \emph{Ya\c s otuz be\c s! Yolun yar\i s\i{} eder.}
&Thirty-five years old!  It makes half way.\\
\emph{Dante gibi ortas\i nday\i z \"omr\"un.}
&Like Dante we are at the middle of life.
\end{longtable}
}
But Ay\c se favors
`Abbas' \cite{Sitki}\footnote{Again, I took the text from the web,
    \url{http://epigraf.fisek.com.tr/index.php?num=263},
    October 9, 2008; but I had to edit it to agree with the print
    version.}:
{\small
\begin{longtable}{l@{\quad}l}
\emph{Haydi Abbas, vakit tamam;}
&Come on, Abbas, it's time.\\
\emph{Ak\c sam diyordun i\c ste oldu ak\c sam.}
&You said evening; now it's evening.\\
\emph{Kur bakal\i m \c cilingir sofram\i z\i;}
&Set our drinking table, let's go;\\
\emph{Dinsin art\i k bu kalp a\u gr\i s\i.}
&Let my heart ache no more.\\
\emph{\c Su a\u gac\i n g\"olgesinde olsun;}
&Use the shade of this tree,\\
\emph{Tam kenar\i nda havuzun.}
&Right beside the pool.\\
\emph{Aya haber sal \c c\i ks\i n bu gece;}
&Tell the moon to come out tonight,\\
\emph{G\"or\"uns\"un \c s\"oyle g\"onl\"umce.}
&Let it be seen the way my heart\\
&\qquad\qquad desires.\\
\emph{Bas k\i rbac\i{} sihirli seccadeye,}
&Set the whip on the magic carpet;\\
\emph{G\"oster h\"ukmetti\u gini mesafeye}
&Show who is in charge of space\\
\emph{Ve zamana.}
&And time.\\
\emph{Kat\i p tozu dumana,}
&Put the pedal to the metal,\\
\emph{Var git,}
&Come on now, go,\\
\emph{B\"oyle ferman etti Cahit,}
&Cahit has spoken.\\
\emph{Al getir ilk sevgiliyi Be\c sikta\c s'tan;}
&Go get my first love from Be\c sikta\c s;\\
\emph{Ya\c samak istiyorum gen\c cli\u gimi yeni}
&I want to live my youth again.\\
\emph{\qquad\qquad ba\c stan.}&
\end{longtable}
}
The reluctance of Abbas to serve liquor to his master reflects the
situation in Diyarbak\i r and almost everywhere else we went on our
trip.  There had been no alcohol at the \emph{Gazi K\"o\c sk\"u;}
there would be none at our hotel that night.

\begin{comment}
   \begin{center}
   \includegraphics{sitki.eps}
 \end{center}
\end{comment}

From Cahit S\i tk\i's house we walked to the east of \emph{Gazi
  Caddesi} and 
saw the \emph{D\"ort Ayakl\i{} Minare} (Four Footed Minaret).  Perhaps
this had once been
a church bell-tower.  A sign nearby pointed the way to
some old churches.  We did not get to see them, because a police
officer in plain clothes told Tolga that the area was unsafe for us.
However, sundown was fast approaching, and boys were running through
the streets with trays of food for \emph{iftar.}
Perhaps our officer wanted to eat, rather than guard a
bunch of tourists.

Our hotel, Miro\u glu Hotel, was outside the walls on
  \emph{Elaz\i\u g Caddesi}, across from an upscale shopping center
  called Diyar Galeria.  We had a fine \emph{buffet} dinner.  One wall
  of the dining room featured painted low reliefs of the city's
  attractions.  There were the Ten Eyed Bridge, the city walls, and
  watermelons---again, \emph{kitsch,} as in the garden of the \emph{Gazi
  K\"o\c sk\"u.}  Here
  I understand \emph{kitsch} as art that adds nothing to its subject, but
  relies on that subject alone for any appeal it may have.
  Alternatively, I might just refer to the reliefs as Primitivist.

Since we had not had time on Sunday afternoon to explore the city
walls, on Monday morning we looked at them and climbed on them briefly. 
On the inner side, there was a nice green lawn, with trees and
benches; on the outer side, evidence of 
fires and the remains of an old truck.  There was sometimes a faint
smell of animal waste.  Something missing was empty beer cans and the
smell of human urine.  This is what you get in the Ankara citadel; in
Diyarbak\i r, perhaps, the sentimental poets are gone, and people's
minds are on other things than getting drunk. 

\section{Malabadi Bridge}

We headed east towards the town of Silvan through plowed fields.  Not a
tree was in sight, nor anything else green; but here and there, cows
looked for fodder.  We did not stop in Silvan, though the Ni\c sanyans
\cite[p.~197]{Nisanyan} recommend the Great Mosque there.  We
continued a bit further to the Malabadi Bridge, which had apparently
been built in 1147 by Ilghazi's son Timurtash, if this is the same
person as the \.Ilgazitimurta\c s named on the sign by the bridge.
According to Maalouf \cite{Maalouf}, 
Timurtash had replaced Balak as ruler of Aleppo; but he preferred to
live in his home town of Mardin.  He released Baldwin in exchange for
a ransom.  Baldwin then beseiged Aleppo, and Timurtash ignored the
Aleppans' pleas for help.  Still, if it was he who built the Malabadi
Bridge, then he did a good job.  The bridge remained intact for our visit,
still spanning with a single arch the Batman River, a tributary of
the Tigris, just below a modern dam.  The modern highway used an adjacent
bridge.  In the spandrels of the old bridge were rooms that may once
have served as a hotel for travellers.  Again, in another part of the
country, these might have been littered with beer cans and urine; here
they were not.  I am told that, on the walls of the \emph{caf\'e} by the
parking lot at the east end of the bridge, there were posters of Y\i
lmaz G\"uney and Ahmet Kaya: Kurdish artists of Turkish citizenship who
died in exile in France.

\section{Hasankeyf}

We followed the Batman river south towards the city of that name.
Soldiers waved us 
through a checkpoint.  Between the highway and the river, there were
fields of tobacco stalks from which most of the leaves had been stripped.
We passed through Batman.  It did not look any different from any
other modern city in Turkey, although it was the center of Turkish
petroleum production.  South of the city, we stopped to photograph one
of several oil pumps, scattered among barren rocky
hills. 

We continued down a valley along a muddy ditch.  Here and there were
small settlements with a few trees.  We met
the Tigris at Hasankeyf. 

First we stopped at a ruined complex whose most notable remaining
feature was a cylindrical tower topped with an onion dome.  A placard
dated this to 1475 and said it was the tomb of the son of king Uzun Hasan, a
White Sheep (\emph{Akkoyunlu})
Turk; but the madrasah and caravanserai of the complex were
attributed to Artuqids, two centuries earlier.  The
construction material of the tomb was stone, faced with brick; some of
the bricks retained a cobalt and sky-blue glaze.  Local children
gathered around our group.
On the opposite
(southern or right) bank of the Tigris were vertical cliffs, topped by the
ruins of dwellings.  From these ruins, a stairway, carved into the rock,
zigzagged down  
to the river.  Perhaps in the past this stairway was entirely hidden
inside the rock.
At the base of the cliffs were restaurants for
tourists, with outdoor tables shaded by rushes.  Beyond the cliffs,
just downstream, was
the town of Hasankeyf, with its two minarets.

A boy told the story of these
minarets.  One of them was unfinished; the other concealed \emph{two}
stairways, forming a double helix.  In a contest, the former minaret
was built by a master; the latter, his apprentice.  When the master
saw his apprentice gloating from
the top of his finished minaret, he ran up one of the stairways with an
ax.  He did not know that there was another stairway until he reached
the stop and saw that his apprentice had escaped.  The master leapt to
his death.  So, I am told, is the story.

A romantic scene that I know from my youth is at Harpers Ferry, West
Virginia, where 
the Potomac River breaks through the Blue Ridge Mountains and receives
the tribute of the Shenandoah River.  Alongside the modern bridges there,
one sees the piers of ruined bridges.  Hasankeyf is
different.  The river valley is broader, and the dominant color is
brown, not green. 
But there are piers of an old bridge, telling the same story of the
power of nature and time.
Those piers were familiar from the photographs of Hasankeyf that had
made me want to visit.  The photographs had been published
because of the threat that the site would be drowned by the proposed
Il\i su Dam.\footnote{The rumor went around our group that, according
  to the Prime Minister, Hasankeyf was safe for now.  But the
  Wikipedia article on Hasankeyf, as of October 27, 2008,
  mentions a plan to \emph{move} Hasankeyf to higher ground.}

From the \emph{Akkoyunlu} tomb, we returned to the bus and crossed the
river on the modern bridge, 
just downstream of the ruined Artuqid bridge.  We alighted and wandered into
town along the main street leading away from the highway.  Beyond the
mosque, the street split: you could go right, down to the restaurants
along the river; or left, into a gorge behind the cliffs.  This 
gorge was lined with caves that had been dug out for human use, as in
Cappadocia.  We climbed 
up to the top.  There were the ruins of the old palace, and a cemetery
where men were praying.
We walked over to the river side and contemplated the
valley below.

Tolga had left us free in town for an hour and a half.  It was up to
us to find lunch.  But Ay\c se and I were vegetarians, and the riverside
restaurants served only meat.  Tolga had told us generally that, for our
lunches, Ay\c se and I might have to settle for \emph{g\"ozleme.}
Outside of
Ramadan, we could have found \emph{g\"ozleme} back in town; but it was
the last day of Ramadan, and the restaurants in town were closed.  So
we bought provisions in a small grocery store and a loaf of fresh
\emph{pide} bread at the bakery.  While waiting for our fellow
travellers to gather, we sat on stools by the road among the local
men.  These men 
would have been drinking tea in any other month.  Now that they were
fasting, we did not want to eat our food till we got on the bus.

\section{Yazidism}

We drove to Midyat, which touted its multiculturalism on a column
erected at a central intersection.  Depicted in low relief on the
column were two kinds of minarets, a church bell-tower, and a peacock.
The last presumably symbolized the \emph{Melek Tavus,} the Peacock
Angel
that, in the Yazidi religion, existed before creation and sent helpers
to this world to warn the chosen people and keep them from doing wrong
\cite[p.~54]{Sever}.
I knew of the Yazidis only
from \emph{On Horseback Through Asia Minor}, a
first-person account of a journey taken in 1876 by a British military
officer.  Captain Burnaby writes: 
\begin{quote}
  The Yezeeds' religion, if such it may be called, is based upon the
  following dogma: that there are two spirits---a spirit of good and a
  spirit of evil.  Allah, the spirit of good, can do no harm to any
  one, and is a friend to the human race.  The spirit of evil can do a
  great deal of harm, and he is the cause of all our woes.  From this
  starting-point the Yezeeds have been brought to believe that it is a
  waste of time to worship the spirit of good, who will not hurt them,
  and that the proper course to pursue is to try and propitiate the
  spirit of evil, who can be very disagreeable if he chooses.  To do
  so they never venture to make use of the name of the devil, as this
  they believe would be an act of disrespect to their infernal
  master.  \mbox{}\hfill\cite[p.~257]{Burnaby}
\end{quote}
It sounds like a religious doctrine as reasonable as any, if not more
so; but is Burnaby's account accurate?
After two more paragraphs, on specifics of Yazidi practice, he
attributes his information to Turks he talked to.  A Yazidi host
repudiates these claims. 
Burnaby then asks his host whether the devil is the Grand Vizier
of Allah.

Burnaby has just told us that the Yazidis do not name the devil.
Burnaby names the devil in their presence.  He is lucky to
escape alive.  It appears that Burnaby takes the Yazidi distress
on hearing the Unholy Name as justification of the Turkish account of
Yazidi doctrine.
Look up Yezeeds in his index, and you are told: `\emph{See}
Devil-worshippers.'  

It appears that another name for the \emph{Melek Tavus} is indeed
\emph{\c Seytan} (Satan):
\begin{quote}
  \emph{Yaln\i z Yezidiler'in tap\i nd\i\u g\i{} \c Seytan'\i n,
  isyankar mele\u gin \"urk\"un\c c de\u gil, iyi bir \c Seytan oldu\u
  gunu biliyoruz.} (However, we know that the Satan that the Yazidis
  worship, the rebel angel, is not fearsome, [but] a good Satan.) 
\mbox{}\hfill\mbox{\cite[p.~53]{Sever}}
\end{quote}
%In any case, perhaps there are very few Yazidis left in Turkey.
But why the name \emph{Melek Tavus?}  Wikipedia\footnote{In the
  article `Yazidi' (accessed November 28, 2008), though not the
  article `Melek Taus'.} suggests that \emph{tavus} (or rather
  \emph{taw\^us,} presumably the Kurdish form) has the same
  Indo-European root as the Greek
  \gk{Ze'uc}.  In
  that case, it is cognate with
  the Latin \emph{deus} and \emph{dies} and the English \emph{Tuesday,
  diary, journey,}
  and \emph{psyche\-delic} \cite{CID}.  But I have no printed
  confirmation of this
  speculation about \emph{tavus.}  In Turkish dictionaries, it just
  means peacock (or peahen).
Ni\c sanyan \cite{Nis-Et} derives
  the word from the Arabic \emph{\d
  t\=aw\=us,} and this from the Aramaic \emph{\d ta'\=us\=a;} these
  are said to be cognate with the Greek
  \gk{ta'wc}, 
  all of these probably originating, like the bird, in India.  Liddell
  and Scott \cite{LSJ} confirm this, suggesting that the Greek, the
  Latin \emph{pavo,} and perhaps the Hebrew \emph{tukk\^iy\^im}
  (peacocks) `may be borrowed from the same oriental source.'
  Moreover, the \emph{pea-} in \emph{peacock} and \emph{peahen} comes
  from the Latin
  \emph{pavo} \cite{OED}.  So, it turns out, does the obsolete English
  word \emph{po} for the birds.

Now something curious happens.  The \emph{Oxford English Dictionary}
also gives \emph{another}
obsolete word \emph{po,} of obscure origin, which meant a small
devil.  Does this possibly represent the same development whereby
\emph{tavus} means also Satan?

Another Turkish etymological dictionary \cite{Eyuboglu} does
not indicate any Arabic connection for \emph{tavus.}  But the Redhouse
dictionary \cite{Redhouse} does, and moreover lists a number of
`poetical' compounds, based on the `learned' form \emph{taus:}
\begin{compactdesc}
  \item[tausi ate\c sber] sun,
\item[tausi felek, tausi huld, tausi kudsi] angel,
\item[tausi ma\c sr\i k] rising sun,
\item[tausi sidre] angel Gabriel.
\end{compactdesc}
Something mysterious is going on here; that's all I can say.

\section{Mor Gabriel}

Our bus did not stop in Midyat, but we continued on towards Mor
Gabriel monastery.
We were in a land of low rolling hills covered with scrubby trees.
Here and there were vineyards, comprising separate bushes with no
trellises and no obvious 
irrigation. 
A sign from the main road pointed out the direction and the distance
to the monastery:
2.5 kilometers.  At a gate in the monastery's outer wall, a placard
gave the
foundation date as 397.  The Roman emperor Theodosius had died two
years before.  His sons Honorius and Arcadius had divided the Empire
between themselves.  Gibbon writes of the occasion, a bit absurdly:
\begin{quote}
  The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius,
  marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from
  the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks,
  subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years, in a state of
  premature and perpetual decay. \mbox{} \hfill\mbox{\cite[ch.~XXXII,
      vol. II, p.~237]{Gibbon}}   
\end{quote}
Mor Gabriel did not appear to have suffered from decay.
We drove along a tree-lined lane to a rather
large parking lot beside the inner gate to the monastery.  Nearby were
large, clean, beautiful rooms of toilets---the best toilets on the trip,
according to some. 

We had to wait before we could have a tour.  Adjacent to the
parking lot was an orchard of olive and pistachio trees.  Our fasting
driver Ethem hopped over the wall and broke off a branch of
pistachios.  I do not know whether anybody ever ate them.

Soon a young man in a black tee-shirt invited us in for a tour.  Above
the gateway was writing in two or three alphabets.  The name of the
monastery was written out in Turkish, using the modern Latin-derived
alphabet.  Higher up, the writing was presumably in the Syriac
alphabet.  But in an arc 
just above the name of the monastery, there were letters that I (who know
nothing of Semitic languages) would have taken for Hebrew.
In Mersin in 2005, Ay\c se and I had visited a church where the
liturgical language was Arabic.\footnote{We were told that the church
  also used Turkish, since young people were not learning
  Arabic.}  That 
church fell under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All
the East, though the patriarchate was physically located in Damascus.
The use of Syriac at Mor Gabriel was apparently a sign that the
monastery was Syriac Orthodox, ruled by a different patriarch of
Antioch.  

From appearances, there was no telling how old the monastery was.
Everything
was built from sandstone\footnote{I guess it was sandstone.  If I
  read correctly the Geological Map of Turkey that I have on my office wall
  for decoration, the stone around Midyat was laid down in the Eocene 
  epoch---from $55.8\pm0.2$ to $33.9\pm0.1$ million years ago,
  according to Wikipedia.} of a warm light-brown color that fit the 
landscape.  Inside the monastery, we could see 
nothing \emph{but} this stone, except for sky if we were in a
courtyard.  Given the monastery's defensive function, this was not
surprising. 
We were shown various rooms, one of them currently
used for worship.  Our companions seemed especially
interested in photographing the altar, in front of which was a
Bible with a silver cover.

The local guide
explained the Syriac practice of fasting for lent.  He also said that,
by law, students
at the monastery had to attend Turkish public schools also.  They
could not be ordained in Turkey: they had to go to Syria for that.
I do not think the guide explained the origins of Syriac
Orthodoxy, as distinct from Greek Orthodoxy, in a disagreement over
the condemnation of Monophysitism at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.  

It seems that the Council of Ephesus in 431 had condemned
Nestorianism, according to 
which Jesus Christ was a person distinct from God.  As a result,
Orthodoxy held that Jesus Christ \emph{was} God, or at least one
person of God (the other persons being the Father and the Holy
Spirit).  Monophysitism held further that Jesus had, not just a divine
\emph{person,} but one divine \emph{nature} (\gk{f'usic}).  Chalcedon
said No, Jesus
had two natures, divine and human; but the Syriacs disagreed.

One of my sources for the story here is \cite{Spencer}, the text for the
course called Christian Ideas that I mentioned in \S\ref{intro}.  The teacher
of that course
admitted that the book was very bad, but said there was no
alternative.  Perhaps he meant that there was no alternative written
from the Anglican point of view.  The book ridiculed Judaism and Islam
(calling the latter `Mohammedanism') and also Roman Catholicism. 
I imagine that students at Roman Catholic schools have their own books
of Church history and doctrine, but that these books are at pains to
show that the Roman is the One True Church.

In any case, our book did not say much about the church in the East.
It did not, for example, mention James or Jacobus Baradaeus, Bishop of
Edessa, from whose name is derived the term Jacobites, which is what
Gibbon \cite[ch.~XLVII, vol.~II, p.~988]{Gibbon} uses for the
Monophysites.

\section{Eating, drinking, and smoking}

After the tour of Mor Gabriel, we headed west, back through
Midyat, towards our 
hotel in Mardin.  The sun was sinking, and our driver Cemil wanted to
reach the hotel before sundown so that he could break his fast there.

We were on a narrow two-lane road 
where the speed limit was presumably 90 kilometers an hour.  
Cemil went almost 120.  Up ahead there was an ambulance with lights 
flashing.  We seemed to be gaining on the ambulance.  I wondered: 
Will Cemil really pass an ambulance?
He did not.  But the ambulance sometimes took the middle of the road, 
as if to \emph{keep} Cemil from passing.

None of the women in our group wore headscarves; but it transpired
that three of them were fasting also.  As sundown approached, and we
were still far from our hotel, the fasters started getting food and
drink ready.  Non-fasters helped them.  I had a 
vision of tolerance.  
Most of our group were Muslims, at least nominally; and we were coming
from a friendly visit to a Christian institution.
No fasting person on the bus expected others to 
keep the same fast; eaters sympathized with fasters.  I also 
remembered that Ay\c se and I were on a perpetual meat-fast.  When the
others' fast was broken, my spouse even tolerated the drivers' smoking
of a cigarette.  But it did not happen again.

While passing through Midyat a second time, we did pause to photograph
the old city from a distance.  Tolga explained that the bus could not
actually go there, because of the narrow streets, and anyway it looked
just like Mardin.  A couple of church towers were visible, like those
of Mor Gabriel.

Even if we had reached our Mardin hotel by sundown, our drivers could
not have enjoyed their \emph{iftar} there.  On arrival, they
could not find the key to the luggage hold.  The rest
of us went into the lobby, where two young women in some sort of red
ethnic dress
offered us \emph{eau de Cologne} and bags of sweets.  From the balcony
of our room, I
saw a group of men gathered around our bus, collectively trying to
figure out how to get at our bags.  Eventually the bus drove off.
Apparently it went to a place where one of the locks could be drilled
out: when the bus returned, all of our bags came out through one door.

The Yay Grand Otel was in Mardin's \emph{Yeni\c sehir} (New City).  It
had a large dining room, with tables labelled for several
different tour groups.  Many dishes were available at the
\emph{buffet,} and we had a good meal.  But there were ashtrays on the
tables, and some people put them to use, despite the big No Smoking sign
on the wall.  I and others
complained to the staff, but they said there was nothing they could
do.  The experience would be repeated.  I think hotels put up these
signs because the law requires it; but they do not enforce the signs,
either because they do not want to lose customers, or because their
sense of hospitality does not permit them to tell anybody
\emph{not} to do something.  But this cannot be the whole story.

The Yay Grand Otel had been given four stars by the
authorities.  It could not get the fifth star because it did
not serve alcohol.  

`Why not serve alcohol then?'  asked one of our
companions.  

`Then local people would come and disturb guests like you' was the reply.

More likely, either the owners took the Qur'an seriously, or else they
were being pressurized by other people who did.  In the ceiling of our
room was a small arrow labelled as \emph{K\i ble,} the
direction of prayer (namely, the direction of Mecca).  There was a
prayer rug in the wardrobe.

But what does it mean to take the Qur'an seriously?  In what is
supposedly one of the last \emph{surah}s revealed to the Prophet, we
find 
\begin{quote}
  (5.90) O you who have attained to faith!  Intoxicants, and games of
    chance, and idolatrous practices, and the divining of the future
    are but a loathsome evil of Satan's doing: shun it, then, so that
    you might attain to a happy state!  (91)  By means of intoxicants
    and games of chance Satan seeks only to sow enmity and hatred
    among you, and to turn you away from the remembrance of God and
    from prayer.  Will you not, then, desist?  \hfill\mbox{\cite[p.~162]{Asad}}
\end{quote}
A note from the translator, Muhammad Asad, suggests that an intoxicant
is anything 
that obscures the intellect.  It seems to me that cigarettes obscure
the intellect.  Most smokers know, intellectually, that their smoking
is harmful to themselves and their bank
accounts; but the craving for a cigarette obscures this knowledge and
prevents them from acting on it.

Moreover, it appears that the Qur'an presents intoxicants as being
dangerous, but not strictly forbidden.  Compare a verse earlier in the
\emph{surah:}
\begin{quote}
  (3) Forbidden to you is carrion, and blood, and the flesh of swine,
  and that over which any name other than God's has been invoked\dots
  As for him, whoever, who is driven [to what is forbidden] by dire
  necessity and not by an inclination to sinning---behold, God is
  much-forgiving, a dispenser of Grace.
\end{quote}
Even here, though certain foods are expressly forbidden, exceptions
are still possible.  Indeed, several passages in the \emph{surah} warn
against asceticism:
\begin{quote}
  (93)  Those who have attained to faith and do righteous deeds incur
        no sin by partaking of whatever they may, so long as they are
        conscious of God and [truly] believe and do righteous deeds\dots
\end{quote}
In a note, Asad mentions an interpretation according to which this
verse refers to those who lived \emph{before} the `prohibitions' of
intoxicants and such.  Asad himself finds `a much wider meaning,'
according to which \emph{no} believers should deny themselves of what
has not been prohibited.

I would propose an even wider meaning, as suggested by Jesus of
Nazareth in the Gospel according to Mark:
\begin{quote}
  7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him
           can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those
           are they that defile the man.

16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

18 \dots   Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without
           entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;

19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly,
           and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?

20 \dots That which cometh out of the man, that defileth
           the man.

21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil
           thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,

22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an
           evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:

23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the
man.\footnote{King James version, from a Project Gutenberg mirror
  \url{ftp://pandemonium.tiscali.de/pub/gutenberg/etext05/bib4110.txt}, 
  accessed October 27, 2008.}
\end{quote}
What you eat or drink does not matter, as long as you watch what you
\emph{do.}  Jesus does
have a warning about intoxicants, in Luke:\footnote{I found this
  passage by noting Drunkenness on the list of `Teachings about some
  of life's problems' at the beginning of a Gideons New Testament.}
\begin{quote}
  21:34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be
           overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of
           this life, and so that day come upon you
           unawares.\footnote{King James version, from a Project
           Gutenberg mirror
           \url{ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/mirror/ibiblio/gutenberg/etext05/bib4210.txt},
           accessed October 27, 2008.} 
\end{quote}
Again though, watch what you \emph{do.}

\section{Deyrulzafaran}

Rain fell in the night and through breakfast on Tuesday morning; then it
mercifully stopped.  It was the first full day of the \emph{bayram.}
Before we left the hotel, our group did \emph{bayramla\c sma,} an
exchange of holiday greetings.  We formed a queue to make sure that
each person greeted everyone else with a handshake or kiss.

Our first stop in the old city of Mardin was the \emph{Kas\i miye
  Medresesi,} built
(according to the placard) by the \emph{Akkoyunlu} ruler Kas\i m
  \emph{Bey} in
the fifteenth century.  We were on a slope facing south over the
Syrian plain.  The courtyard of the madrasah was open in this
  direction, except for 
a mesh of iron bars.  On the other side, a fountain
in a tall and deep niche fed a stream that emptied into the pool at
the middle of the courtyard.  Such places are an image of heaven.
  Then we were told that the red stains in the
niche were the blood of victims slain in battle. 

The old city of Mardin is laid out on the hillside above and east of
the madrasah.  Tolga had us dropped off on \emph{Yeni Yol,} the `New
Road' running below the city: as we walked along, we could gaze up at
and photograph the old stone houses of the city. 
Then we drove to Deyrulzafaran monastery, four kilometers away.

Mor Gabriel had had a parking lot and toilets for tourists.
Deyrulzafaran had a whole visitors' center, with gift shop and
\emph{caf\'e}.  There were books for sale in Turkish and Syriac and
English.  I might
have bought a Christian Bible in Turkish, but its covers
were not well 
made.  (There were several New Testaments, in various languages or
combinations of languages.)
Ay\c se selected some books in Turkish about the monastery and the area;
I bought a tee-shirt.  Then we sat outside at the \emph{caf\'e} and waited for
our tour.  The monastery could hold only so many visitors, and there
had been other busses in the parking lot.  On a wall was a letter
from the local metropolitan, offering Ramadan greetings to Muslim
visitors. 

Like Mor Gabriel, Deyrulzafaran was Syriac Orthodox.  Having somewhat
obscurely named Severus as a Monophysite patriarch of Antioch in the
sixth century,
Gibbon mentions Mardin and the monastery:
\begin{quote}
  The successors of Severus, while they lurked in convents or
  villages, while they sheltered their proscribed heads in the caverns
  of hermits, or the tents of the Saracens, still asserted, as they
  now assert, their indefeasable right to the title, the rank, and the
  prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch: under the milder yoke of the
  infidels, they reside about a league from Merdin, in the pleasant
  monastery of Zapharan, which they have embellished with cells,
  aqueducts, and plantations.  \mbox{}\hfill\mbox{\cite[ch.~XLVII, vol.~II,
  p.~988]{Gibbon}} 
\end{quote}
Gibbon is out of date on one point:  The patriarchate was moved to
Homs, Syria, in 1933.

The monastery seemed still to be full of visitors when we
entered.  We were shown a high vaulted room where priests were
buried sitting up, facing east towards the rising sun.  The stone
walls used to be gilt, until Tamerlane came 
and melted down the gold.  If a monastery could survive Tamerlane, I
supposed it could hope to survive modern Islamic fundamentalism.

We had a brief look at the church, but then we had to make way for a
service.  However, at least one member of our group stayed behind to
photograph this. 

The monastery had apparently been founded atop a temple of the sun.
We were shown this temple, a subterranean chamber with a slit in the
wall through which the sun might shine.  However, as the opening was
then configured, the sky was not visible through it, but only a
hillside.  The ceiling of the room was flat.  The stones composing it
were said to be two meters thick, and slanted appropriately, with
keystones in the middle, on the principle of an arch.

Other attractions in the compound included a model of the monastery
made of matchsticks.\footnote{Mor Gabriel had had a similar model,
  apparently by the same person.}

Why did the patriarch no longer reside at Deyrulzafaran?  According
to one of the books from the monastery \cite{Bilge}, the patriarchate
had been there continuously since 1293.  In 1922, patriarch III.\
\.Ilyas \c Sak\i r went to Ankara to congratulate Atat\"urk on the
founding of the national parliament.  This patriarch died on a visit
to India in 1932.  His successor, Afrem I.\ Barsavm, was chosen by the
metropolitans of the church at a meeting in Homs in 1933.  Then, the
book says discreetly, because the new patriarch could not meet the
conditions of living in Turkey, the patriarchate itself was moved to
Homs.  But what were those conditions?  The book does not
say.  Perhaps they were the same conditions laid on the patriarch of
Constantinople:  He should be Turkish, and he should not claim
authority over anybody outside Turkey.

\section{Mardin}

Back in Mardin, Tolga arranged for a local boy to show us around.
Besides \emph{Yeni Yol,} the old town had
just one other road accessible to cars: \emph{Birinci Yol} or First
Street.  Otherwise one got around 
through a maze of stairways and alleyways.  Since it was a holiday, we
had these mostly to ourselves, though we walked among a lot of
shuttered storefronts.

In Hana Makhmalbaf's recent movie, \emph{Buddha Collapsed
out of Shame,} boys play at fighting with each other and
subjecting girls to the burqa.  By way of rifles, the boys use sticks.
The setting is Bamyan, home of the Buddhas dynamited by the Taliban.
Had Makhmalbaf shot her movie in Mardin, she could have filmed the
gang of boys who followed us around. 
Their guns were plastic toys, which they enjoyed aiming at each other.  

They also enjoyed smoking cigarettes.
Indeed, they 
asked me to photograph them as they did this.  This happened in the
courtyard of the Great Mosque.
Their attitude to life drove some of our companions almost to tears.
But Ay\c se just talked cheerfully to the boys, and they taught her
some Kurdish. 

Higher up in the city, we visited the \emph{Zinciriye Medresesi,}
built by Artuqid leader Melik Necmeddin \.Isa Bin Davud in the
fourteenth century.  At the top of the hill was an old fortress, but
this had been declared off-limits by the Turkish military.

Otherwise, we could wander as we wished until meeting the bus at
4~p.m.  Many people wanted to visit a silversmith's shop, 
and Ay\c se and I went along to see.  There were pictures of Jesus on
the walls.  Afterwards, as we walked along First Street, Ay\c se was
greeted by some girls who turned out to call themselves \emph{Grup \c
  Surup}---the Syrup Group.  When I started taking pictures, the girl
whose shirt said `You're not dreaming, I'm real' insisted on seeing
the pictures; so Ay\c se took her email address.

We learned that a particular silversmith would sell you wine if you
asked for it.  Indeed, 
he offered us a taste before we bought.  We bought two bottles.  The
wine was called Asuri: Hand Made Syriac Wine.

At the museum, housed in the former Syrian \emph{Catholic} Patriarchate,
there was not a whole lot to see, apart from the great stone building
itself, and the view of the Syrian plain.  But the museum keeper was
reading Mehmed Uzun, who wrote in Kurdish and who
lived in exile in Sweden until returning to Turkey
to die of cancer in Diyarbak\i r. 
The museum keeper's little girl latched 
onto us and could hardly stop talking.  Then she
took us through the alleyways to a Syriac Orthodox
church.\footnote{The placard called it Syrian Orthodox; but according
  to the Wikipedia article `Syriac Orthodox Church' (accessed October 27,
  2008), a synod of 2000 ruled that `Syriac' was the correct
  name in English.}  

The church itself was accessible from a small inner courtyard.  Some
children were horsing around there, and one of them said in English,
`Stop it, Andrew!'  I speculated that they were living in the UK or
the US, but had come to their ancestral home for a visit.  However, I
did not ask.

We went to our bus and, at a nearby kiosk, while we waited for
everybody else to show up, 
Ay\c se bought another bottle of wine, this time unlabeled, but said
to be from Midyat.  We drove to \c Sanl\i urfa in the setting sun.
The way was flat, but the old road had just two lanes.  Once I cried out
when a donkey wandered into the road and I was sure we would hit it.
We did not: Cemil swerved, and the donkey also stepped back.  Another time,
Cemil went to pass 
a car, then decided he could not, \emph{then} decided it was too late
to give up the attempt.  We barely missed the oncoming car.

\section{Harran}

The Asur Hotel in Urfa was older and less pretentious than Mardin's
Yay Grand Otel.  It was across the street from a commercial block of
shops selling things like toys in wholesale quantities, or crop
irrigation equipment.  But we were walking distance from city
center.  

Although Tolga had told Ay\c se that all of our dinners would be open
\emph{buffet,} dinner in Urfa was not.  Nor would any more of our dinners
be.  Ay\c se went to talk to the kitchen staff to see if
they could serve us a decent vegetarian meal.  People asking me about
life in Turkey assume that it must be hard to be a vegetarian
here.  I have always said that, on the contrary, it is easy.  There
are not many vegetarians as such; but good meatless dishes are
commonly available.  But now I must revise this claim: it is not valid
in the east.

On Wednesday morning we drove south to Harran.  This is possibly the
city named in Genesis as Haran:
\begin{quote}
  11:27 	\P{} Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah
  begat Abram, 
  Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.

28 	And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his
  nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

29 	And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife
  was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of
  Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

30 	But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

31 	\P{} 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.

12:1 	Now the \textsc{Lord} had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country,
  and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that
  I will show thee:

2 	and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee,
  and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 

3 	and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that
  curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be
  blessed.

4 	\P{} So Abram departed, as the \textsc{Lord} had spoken unto him; and
  Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he
  departed out of Haran. 

5 	And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and
  all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they
  had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of
  Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.\footnote{King James
  version, from \url{http://www.bartleby.com/108/01/},
  accessed October 25, 2008.}
\end{quote}
In any case, the Harran that we visited was
\gk{Kar<rai}
to the Greeks~\cite{Umar}, and hence Carrhae to the Romans.  To some
Turks, it has apparently been known as Alt\i nba\c sak (Golden Ear [of
  Grain]).  At least, it is so called in one Turkish atlas \cite[p.~30]{Duran},
which was approved on January 1, 2001, by the \emph{Harita Genel
Komutanl\i\u g\i} [Map General Command Headquarters] of the Ministry
of Defense.  Perhaps the name was introduced in a project to Turkify
place-names in Turkey.  However,
a more recent atlas,\footnote{\emph{T\"urkiye Co\u
    grafya Atlas\i{} [Turkish Geographical Atlas]} (\.Istanbul: Do\u
  gan Burda Dergi, 2006), a spiral-bound volume serving as a promotion
  for Oyak Bank.}  approved by the
same body on March 9, 2005, says Harran.

Harran is known for its
mud-brick houses.  There being no wood for rooves, the bricks are
built into domes, rather as igloos are built I suppose.  Lack of trees
suggests desert conditions, which perhaps prevailed a few decades
ago.  Apparently they prevailed two millenia ago as well.  Plutarch
describes the campaign of Crassus against the
Parthians, in which the Romans crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma, then
followed the river south, until they were tricked by an Arab chief
named Ariamnes:
\begin{quote}
  He drew him from the river into vast plains, by a way that at first
  was pleasant and easy but afterwards very troublesome by reason of
  the depth of the sand, no trees, nor any water, and no end of this
  to be seen; so that they were not only spent with thirst, and the
  difficulty of the passage, but were dismayed with the uncomfortable
  prospect of not a bough, not a stream, not a hillock, not a green
  herb, but in fact a sea of sand, which encompassed the army with its
  vastness.\\
\mbox{}  \hfill\cite[pp.~664--5]{Plutarch} 
\end{quote}
The army was headed towards its defeat near Carrhae/Harran in 53
\textsc{b.c.e.}~\cite[p.~91]{Harvey}.  
The Rough Guide \cite{Rough-Turkey} claims that Crassus was crucified
and had molten gold poured down his throat.  Indeed, this would be a
poetic end to one who suffered what, according to Plutarch, was
Crassus's main vice:
\begin{quote}
  People were wont to say that the many virtues of Crassus were
  darkened by the one vice of avarice, and indeed he seemed to have no
  other but that; for it being the most predominant, obscured others
  to which he was inclined. \hfill\mbox{\cite[p.~650]{Plutarch}}
\end{quote}
As for these other inclinations, Plutarch does mention that `later in
life he was suspected to have been too familiar with one of the vestal
virgins' \cite[p.~650]{Plutarch}; but this was only because he wanted
to buy some property from her.
Plutarch says nothing about death by gold.  At Carrhae,
the Parthians induced Crassus
to treat with them, and then
\begin{quote}
Crassus was killed by a Parthian, called Pomaxathres; others say by a
  different man, and that Pomaxathres only cut off his head and right
  hand after he had fallen.  But this is conjecture rather than
  certain knowledge, for those that were by had not leisure to observe
  particulars, and were either killed fighting about Crassus, or ran
  off at once to get their comrades on the hill.
  \hfill\cite[pp.~673]{Plutarch} 
\end{quote}
The head of Crassus was delivered to Armenia, where the Parthian king
Hyrodes had made peace with the king of Armenia.  The head arrived in
the middle of a performance of a scene from the \emph{Bacchae} of
Euripides.  Naturally, it was the scene where, in a drunken frenzy,
Agave tears off the head of her own son Pentheus, thinking him
a wild animal.  This is the punishment of Dionysus for the strict
opposition, by both mother and son, to what he has to offer.  The
actor incorporated the head 
of Crassus into his performance.
 
Today Harran is not in a desert.
It is surrounded by green
fields of corn and cotton, all irrigated by waters of the
Euphrates collected behind the Atat\"urk Dam.  

From the bus, we saw remnants of the old city walls.  Then we drove inside,
alighted from the bus, and were surrounded by children.  The children
sold decorative strings of seed-pods of \emph{Peganum harmala,}
`Syrian rue' \cite[p.~144]{Nisanyan}; or they just asked for money.
The ground
was mostly bare earth, with two  
archeological sites fenced off.  One site consisted only of foundations,
unexciting to the untrained eye.  The other held the remains of the
Grand Mosque, built (according to the placard) in 744--50 by the last
Ummayad caliph, Mervan II.  Some walls and arches remained, but most
striking was the square minaret.  The site is also billed as the `first
university of Islam', and the minaret was supposedly used as an
astronomical observatory.

A local man explained that Harran was misunderstood by outsiders.  It
was not true, he said, that men took several wives and sat at the
teahouse all day while the women worked.  There was not a teahouse in
Harran
anyway; and the local women knew all about popular culture, which
showed that they had plenty of time to sit at home and watch TV.
Also, in Ankara, when a man wanted to sleep with another woman,
he told his wife some lie; but in Harran, the man brought the woman home
to meet his wife, to see if the two could get along; only then did he
take her as a second wife.  When confronted with his contradiction about
polygamy, the man just said that not many men in Harran actually took
a second wife.\footnote{Polygamy is technically illegal in Turkey.}  

Outside the walls, there was a compound of dome houses set aside for
tourists.  Tea was available, and \emph{m\i rra,} a strong bitter
coffee; also an assortment of the colorful robes
apparently favored by the local women: some of our companions tried
these on.

At a nearby house, Ay\c se talked to some children about
growing up speaking Arabic and learning Turkish only in school.  At
least, she talked to those children who had managed to learn Turkish
already.  When
we had to leave, some of the children asked for money.
There was a ruined castle, but we did not stop there.  

\section{Urfa}

We drove back to
Urfa to see the \emph{Bal\i kl\i{} G\"ol,}  the Pool of the
[Sacred] Fish.  Urfa is supposed by some to be the hometown of Abraham:
the Ur of the Chaldees mentioned in the Genesis passage above.  When
Nimrod tried to burn Abraham alive for his monotheism, the burning
logs turned into fish.  Those are the fish in the \emph{Bal\i kl\i{}
  G\"ol.}  
They stick their mouths out of the water to receive the food that you
can buy from the sellers standing by.  

As it was a holiday, there were many fish-feeders.  Tolga proposed to
take us to the cave where Abraham was born; but the queue was so long
that we did not bother.  Above us were the ruins of the citadel.  People
were walking up there, but Tolga said there was not much to see, and I
accepted this.
We just went and had lunch.  

Urfa somehow was not very pleasant.  It was swarming with people,
perhaps because of the \emph{bayram.}  They
seemed to be conscious of us as intruders: they were constantly 
saying `Hello,' but (perhaps unfairly) I understood this to mean,
`What are you doing here?'  It
did not help that Ay\c se and I did not have a map of the city.  We did
know roughly how to walk back to the hotel; this we did, and had a
nap. 

Tolga arranged a \emph{s\i ra gecesi} that evening.  Perhaps
traditionally this was a social gathering where children learned how
to behave in public.  For us it meant going back to the same
restaurant (\emph{\c Cardakl\i{} K\"o\c sk}) where we had had lunch;
this time we listened to the music of a local band.  In Athens, it is
desirable to spend one's evening in view of the Acropolis.  In Urfa,
we could see the citadel behind the band.  I felt
better about Urfa after hearing the music.  The singer
had shaggy hair, not the
militaristically short hair on all the other men around.  The
singer said the band had spent a month playing around \.Izmir.
Audiences there must have enjoyed \emph{rak\i} along with the music.
In Urfa, all we were offered to drink was tea and \emph{ayran.}  But I
didn't mind; it was impressive if an audience could be
intoxicated by the music alone.

\section{Euphrates}

Urfa was the only place where we stayed two nights in the same hotel.
On Thursday morning, we drove west through a desert landscape, but on
a good divided highway, to Birecik on the Euphrates, home of some of
the world's last
bald ibises.  We saw them in a cage, where they are kept during what
would normally be their time of migration.  When
birds are released for migration, some die or are killed on the way.
This was explained by a man who expressed hope of teaching the birds
to migrate again after the captive population was large enough.  But
one thing that kills the birds is pesticides.

The next stop was upriver at Halfeti.  This town is half drowned
behind a dam.  You go there to take a boat further upriver, in
order to see the Roman castle carved into the cliffs on the opposite (west)
bank of the river.  The castle was a spectacular sight, but I was
mightily disappointed when our little boat just turned around without
docking.  

`Tourists don't go to the castle' said Tolga.

This tourist wanted to.  There had been nowhere for me to sit on
the boat, perhaps because a few people not in our group had also got
on.  And the boat badly needed to be scraped and painted.  Perhaps the
locals were so bitter about losing their land to the waters of the
dam that they did not care about maintaining their boats.  Anyway, I
wanted to see the castle from solid ground.  As with so many other
possibilities on this trip, that will have to wait for another time.

We expected to eat lunch in Halfeti.  There was even supposed to be a
place to eat
that served alcohol.  But Tolga had somehow miscalculated.  He told us
we would eat an hour and a half later, at Atat\"urk Dam.

We took a short cut there.  This meant driving slowly on poor roads
through small villages surrounded by pistachio trees.  I don't know
how often the villagers saw tour busses; most of these must stick to
the main roads.  We needed to ask directions sometimes.  But when we
did finally reach the highway below the dam, we saw a bus that Tolga
said had left Halfeti an hour before ours.

The military guards would not let us into the best overlook from which
to view the Atat\"urk Dam.  We went to another.  There was a monument
to the workers killed in making the dam.  There was a man selling
tea.  There was no food.  

`We shall eat in K\^ahta,' said Tolga.

Some of us were enraged.  We had not been fasting as long as one did
during Ramadan.  But we had not chosen to fast.  In an area of low
population density, in the middle of a holiday, it might be hard to feed
a busload of tourists.  But it was Tolga's job to do this.  Maybe it
should not have been: maybe the job of entertaining tourists and
informing them about the sights required different
skills from arranging for food and lodging.  Maybe these
jobs should have been done by different people.  I think food just was
not very important for Tolga, and he assumed it was not important for
us. 

Tolga proposed eating at a fish restaurant 5 kilometers
beyond our hotel in K\^ahta.  Once we were there, and my hunger
headache was going away, I thought the day was not turning out so
badly.  Our tables overlooked the lake that had once been the valley
of the Euphrates.  Various dishes of vegetables were brought to us:
\emph{\c coban salatas\i, semizotlu cac\i k} (yogurt with purslane),
grilled onions, grilled tomatoes, grilled and peeled eggplants.  Ay\c
se and I also had cheese 
\emph{pide} and \emph{menemen.} 
Alcohol was served, and other guests besides our group were drinking
it, moderately.\footnote{Some guests were also listening to music of
  the leftist band Grup Yorum.  Later, back in K\^ahta, Ay\c se would
  visit a shop with a poster of the revolutionary martyr Deniz Gezmi\c
s.}  The grandfather in our group politely declined an offer of 
\emph{rak\i,} indicating that he was a \emph{hac\i,} a pilgrim to
Mecca. 
Beyond the tables was a rudimentary playground where
three children from our group passed the time.  I walked beyond them
into the fields, away from the noise and into the roaring silence.
There was a sliver of new moon in the west.  It was almost time to go
to our hotel and---have dinner.

At Nemrut Hotel, I had to revise my notion that Thursday was turning
out well.  The hotel was initially impressive.  It had a square plan,
with several floors of rooms arranged about an atrium.  Stairs rose up
the middle of the space.  But when I tried to have a short nap before
eating, I was
disturbed at irregular, but frequent, intervals by something like a
slamming door.  When I got up and went out myself, I learned the
problem.  Our doors could be locked only by pressing the little button
on the inner knob.  Then the door could not be closed without
slamming.

We would be rising at 2:30 to ascend Mount Nemrut.  In our room after
dinner, when we wanted to sleep, Ay\c se and I could hear something
like a radio, and then somebody talking on the telephone.  The sounds
were coming from the direction of the window.  But they were not
coming from outside: they were coming through an airspace between our
room and the one above.  The glass outer skin of the hotel was not
actually connected to the floors.  Ay\c se confirmed this by
telephoning the room above; I could hear the phone ring and the guest
answer. 

I went to find Tolga, who went with me to reception.  The man there
had two days' growth of beard, a cigarette, and a cataract in his right eye.
He listened to my complaints and offered us another room, in a wing
that used to be a separate hotel.  I looked at the room, which was
larger than our original room.  The floor and ceiling met the walls in
the usual fashion.  As far as I know, nobody else from our group but
Tolga was staying in that wing.

Next day, I heard complaints from others that their rooms had been
filthy.  Our original room had been clean, but the
shower leaked onto the bathroom floor.  Before we left the hotel for
good, around noon on Friday, I used the men's room in the lobby and
found both of the toilet bowls smeared with shit.  I considered asking
the man at reception whether the toilets in his own house looked like
that.

\section{Mount Nemrut}

Meanwhile, everybody did get moving promptly in the pre-dawn; we all
piled into four local minibusses and left K\^ahta around 3:00.  It
would become clear why we did not just use our own big bus.  We drove a
while on decent roads before the turnoff to Mount Nemrut.  Once we were on
our way up, we stopped at one facility where the lights were on, but
there was no tea.  There was tea at the next stop.  After a break, the
busses continued to climb in the darkness.  Guards let us into the
National Park
proper, and the road became brick.  Eventually we reached a parking
lot.  Some people entered the facility there, for more tea and perhaps
a smoke.  The rest of us waited outside.  It was dark and very cold: I
wore a wool sweater, a fleece jacket, a windbreaker over that, and a
wool hat.  I was glad to have all of these, and sorry that I had not also
brought gloves.  The stars were brilliant.

We started hiking the rest of the way to the top at 5:00.  We
were on a stairway of large stones, and it
was good that some people had brought torches.  Eventually our eyes
adjusted, and also the twilight began.  It took half
an hour to reach the top.  Many people were already there, milling
about or settling in on the ancient altar and modern helipad, waiting
for the sun.  A number of people were wrapped up in blankets from
their hotels.
In the dim light, we could see the colossal heads, set
up now at the feet of their bodies, which were seated facing east---as
Ay\c se observed, just like the priests buried at Deyrulzafaran.   

As the light grew stronger and we sat down to wait for the sunrise,
Ay\c se and I noticed that one man in our group had 
brought a bottle of \emph{kanyak:} his daughter brought us some
in plastic cups.  (This was the man whom we had asked not to smoke at the
dinner table the night before.)  At around 6:00, people raised their
cameras to the rising sun; I raised my camera to them.  In Side in
2006, there had been applause when the sun was totally eclipsed by the
moon.  On Nemrut I rather expected applause when the sun rose, but
there was none (except from me).

In the sunshine, we could better see the colossal heads and bodies.
Perhaps most impressive was the tumulus behind the
statues: an enormous mound of gravel, every piece presumably placed
there to cover the grave of the Commagene king Antiochus.  Guards blew
their whistles whenever anybody walked around the statues or started
to climb the tumulus.

We went around to see the statues and reliefs on the west side of the
tumulus, but it was so cold in the shade there that we soon began our
descent back to the busses.  New busses of tourists were arriving as
we left: they would have a warmer visit.

We descended the mountain by a different route, taking some hairpin
turns for which the driver practically had to stop the car.  He was
very careful.  We saw the smaller monuments at Arsameia and
peeled off the layers we had worn at the top.  I spoke to a man who
turned out to be from Spain and who had tagged along from Nemrut in
one of the other minibusses.  I don't know how he had got to the top
to begin with; but he was on holiday from his regular job of
organizing international tours to the Far East.

\section{Septimius Severus}

The fertile valley
below was idyllic.  Tolga tried to point out the bridge we would
visit next.  Now called \emph{Cendere K\"opr\"us\"u} after the river
it crossed, it had been built in the reign of Roman emperor Septimius 
Severus (193--211) and was still standing.\footnote{However, some
  restoration work had evidently been done.}  

A golden age of the Roman Empire ended with the death of
emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180.  He had been the adopted son of his
predecessor Antoninus Pius, who had been adopted by \emph{his}
predecessor, Hadrian.  Marcus made the
mistake of passing the empire
on to his biological son, Commodus.  The example shows that virtue
cannot be taught.  Commodus was a disaster and was
ultimately killed, but only after thirteen years of rule.  His successor
Pertinax was a prudent man who set about to restore the empire to its
former good condition; but this offended the Praetorian Guards, who
killed him after a reign of about three months.
The Guards then
\emph{sold} the empire to a rich senator, Didius Julianus.  

Such treatment of the Empire was
unacceptable to the Roman armies in Britain, Pannonia, and Asia.  In
particular, the Pannonian army declared their leader Septimius Severus
to be emperor; he marched to Rome, dismissed the Praetorian Guards,
and deposed Julian before vanquishing the other two armies (whose
leaders had similar designs on the Empire).  My source is Gibbon, who
again displays his prejudices: 
\begin{quote}
 The military labours of Severus seem inadequate to the importance of
 his conquests. Two engagements, the one near the Hellespont, the
 other in the narrow defiles of Cilicia, decided the fate of his
 Syrian competitor [Niger]; and the troops of Europe asserted their usual
 ascendant over the effeminate natives of Asia.  The battle of
 Lyons, where one hundred and fifty thousand Romans were engaged,
 was equally fatal to Albinus [leader of the British army]. The valour
 of the British army 
 maintained, indeed, a sharp and doubtful contest with the hardy
 discipline of the Illyrian legions. The fame and person of Severus
 appeared, during a few moments, irrecoverably lost, till that warlike
 prince rallied his fainting troops, and led them on to a decisive
 victory.  The war was finished by that memorable day. \hfill\mbox{\cite[vol.~I,
 p.~141]{Gibbon}}\footnote{Instead of typing out this and other
 quotations from Gibbon, I
 have cut and pasted from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
 \url{http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume1/chap5.htm},
 November 27, 2008.}   
\end{quote}
Gibbon observes generally that since such wars were not fought over
principle, at least on the part of the soldiers, they were not
protracted affairs.  Soldiers would quickly desert a lost cause.
Gibbon notes Byzantium as an `honourable exception': it held out three
years against the forces of Severus.  

Having consolidated his power,
`by gratitude, by misguided policy, by seeming necessity, Severus was
  induced to relax the nerves of discipline' in the soldiers
  \cite[vol.~I, p.~145]{Gibbon}.  Being from the provinces
  (specifically, Africa), 
Severus had no sense of the value of the Senate:
\begin{quote}
  He disdained to profess himself the servant of an assembly that
  detested his person and trembled at his frown; he issued his
  commands, where his request would have proved as effectual; assumed
  the conduct and style of a sovereign and a conqueror, and exercised,
  without disguise, the whole legislative as well as the executive
  power. \hfill\mbox{\cite[vol.~I, p.~147]{Gibbon}}
\end{quote}
This leads Gibbon to a grave assessment:
\begin{quote}
 The contemporaries of Severus, in the enjoyment of the peace and
 glory of his reign, forgave the cruelties by which it had been
 introduced. Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his
 maxims and example, justly considered him as the principal author of
 the decline of the Roman empire. \hfill \mbox{\cite[vol.~I, p.~148]{Gibbon}}
\end{quote}

Maintaining an empire was not so satisfying as acquiring one.
Severus's interests turned to his family.  His second wife, Julia,
\begin{quote}
possessed, even in an advanced age, the attractions of beauty,
  and united to a lively imagination a firmness of mind, and strength
  of judgment, seldom bestowed on her sex. \hfill\mbox{\cite[vol.~I,
    p.~150]{Gibbon}}
\end{quote}
Gibbon cannot resist a bit of gossip; nor then can I:
\begin{quote}
If we may credit the scandal of ancient history, chastity was very
  far from being the most conspicuous virtue of the empress Julia.\\ 
  \mbox{}\hfill  \mbox{\cite[vol.~I, p.~150]{Gibbon}}
\end{quote}
Julia bore two sons, Caracalla and Geta.  I see no
hint in Gibbon of when the \emph{Cendere K\"opr\"us\"u} might have
been constructed; but today it has three columns:
two columns at one
end, and one at the other.  These (according to the placard) were in
honor of Severus, Julia, and Caracalla.  

The brothers Caracalla and Geta hated each other.  Severus treated
them equally and made them both co-emperors with him.  He tried to
improve their relations or at least their discipline by taking them
along to deal with an invasion of Roman Britain by `the barbarians of
the North'.  Severus never returned from this campaign, but died at
York in the eighteenth year of his reign.  There was some notion that
his two sons might divide the Empire between themselves, with Geta
taking the east and living in Alexandria or Antioch.  The thought
horrified everybody else, including Julia.  She induced her sons to
visit her apartments to be reconciled; but there Caracalla had
arranged for Geta to be killed.

Caracalla's guilty conscience induced him to erase the memory of
Geta.  Hence, apparently, a fourth column on the \emph{Cendere
  K\"opr\"us\"u,} in honor of Geta, was removed.  But a guilty
conscience is a strange thing.  Caracalla almost killed his mother for
weeping over her other son's death.  He had twenty thousand people
killed for having been friends of Geta.

Caracalla was not content to stay in Rome, but travelled about the
Empire, abusing his power.  Of interest for our own journey is where
he met his death.  He was travelling from Edessa to visit the temple
of the moon at Carrhae.  The various tourist books, including
\cite{Edmonds}, indicate that there was indeed a temple
of the moon god Sin at Harran.  The exact site seems to be unknown:
the Rough Guide \cite{Rough-Turkey} claims the castle was built over
it, but the Lonely Planet \cite{LP-Turkey} reports this merely as
hearsay.  In any case, Caracalla was headed to
the temple when he stopped for a pee (Gibbon calls it `some
necessary occasion').  His guards kept `a respectful distance,' and he
was killed by the agent of the man who would be his successor.

Back at the Cendere, we walked across the old bridge,
while our busses took the new bridge.
There was one more stop before going back to our hotel for breakfast.
The Karaka\c s Tumulus was a Commagene tomb surrounded originally by
three pairs of columns topped by animal statues.  An eagle still
looked down at us from one of these columns.  On the horizon we could
see the tumulus atop Nemrut.

\section{Antep}

After our late breakfast at Nemrut Hotel on Friday, we drove to
Gaziantep and saw the Zeugma mosaics in the museum without having
lunch.  These mosaics were spectacular, though perhaps not more so
than those in Antakya.  One displayed mosaic had a large missing
piece, and the placard excoriated the thieves who had taken this
piece.  No mention was made of those who decided to flood the remains
of Zeugma behind the Birecik Dam.

Our hotel, Tilmen, was comfortable and was in the city center.  Ay\c
se and I went out to look for a late lunch, but what we had been told
at reception
seemed to be true: it was impossible to find cooked vegetables.  It
was even impossible to find a cheese \emph{pide;} `We don't eat \emph{pide}
here' said somebody.  A Turkish guide that Ay\c se had brought
\cite{Bortacina} 
mentioned the chickpeas served by somebody at the (raw!)\ vegetable
bazaar; we found the bazaar and the chickpea man, but he used meat
stock to cook the peas.
We settled for \emph{simit.}  Dinner as usual would not be long.
Unfortunately yet again our tour company had arranged for the
(cheaper) set menu, rather than the open \emph{buffet.}  We
vegetarians got some insipid canned vegetables.  The meat eaters
did not do much better.  In a city known for its \emph{kebap}
and \emph{baklava,} our companions were given chicken and fruit.

On Saturday morning, instead of following Tolga to the ethnographic
museum, a few of us wandered over to the castle; but it was closed for
restoration.  In a nearby shop selling \emph{sedef} (mother-of-pearl)
handicrafts, two people in our group of five made purchases, and we
were all given tea.  On the way back to the bus, we bought \emph{katmer,}
greasy sheets of dough folded around a sweet pistachio paste.

\section{History and mathematics}

We returned to our hotel and drove to Ankara.  First we were supposed
to have lunch somewhere in a park; but to save time, Tolga just took us
to an \emph{et lokantas\i} (meat restaurant) right by the road.  It
was fine; Ay\c se and I had \emph{ka\c sarl\i} and \emph{domatesli
  pide} and grilled eggplants.  

Once we were out on the highway, Cemil fidgeted at the wheel.
He complained to Tolga about not being able to smoke.  Our first rest
stop came soon.  Cemil told Ay\c se that he was committed
to not smoking, although it did not make sense to him.

One of the little boys on the bus, G\"orke, had taken a liking to Ay\c
se; he came to play with her when we were on the road again.  When we
reached the Cilician Gates, we had to leave the divided highway.  All
of the holiday traffic slowed to a crawl at the toll
gate.  G\"orke was able to hop off the bus for a pee by the side of
the road.

We were supposed to have dinner on the road; but Tolga observed that
all of the restaurants seemed to be full.  He suggested just
going straight through to Ankara, and nobody seemed to mind.  We
arrived around 10:30 p.m., as planned.  

On the way, I had finished reading
Collingwood's \emph{Principles of History}.
Collingwood removes the distinction I drew at the beginning between
mathematics and history:
\begin{quote}
  Like every science, history is autonomous.  The historian has the
  right, and is under an obligation, to make up his own mind by the
  methods proper to his own science as to the correct solution of
  every problem that arises for him in the pursuit of that science.
  He can never be under any obligation, or have any right, to let
  someone else make up his mind for him.  If anyone else, no matter
  who, even a very learned historian, or an eyewitness, or a person in
  the confidence of the man who did the thing he is inquiring into, or
  even the man who did it himself, hands him on a plate a ready-made
  answer to his question, all he can do is to reject it: not because
  he thinks his informant is trying to deceive him, or is himself
  deceived, but because if he accepts it he is giving up his autonomy
  as an historian and allowing someone else to do for him what, if he
  is a scientific thinker, he can only do for himself.  
\hfill\mbox{\cite[ch.~1, \S~3,
    p.~11]{Collingwood-PH}}~or~\mbox{\cite[p.~256]{Collingwood-IH}} 
\end{quote}
The historian must reject a ready-made answer, I think, just as a
calculus student, faced with the problem of finding a primitive for
the function $\sec^3x$, must reject the answer
\begin{displaymath}
  \textstyle\frac12\bigl(\sec x\tan x+\log\left|\sec x+\tan x\right|\bigr)
\end{displaymath}
if she finds it in a book.  It may well be the correct answer; but the
point is to know \emph{that} it is correct, and even to know \emph{why} it is
correct, or how it is obtained; this requires
independent reasoning on the part of the student.

In this narrative, I have engaged in what Collingwood denigrates as
scissors-and-paste history.  This is the kind of non-scientific
history that \emph{does} rely on ready-made answers supplied by
authorities.  The scientific historian may refer to the research of
others, but the newer the better; the scissors-and-paste historian
seeks the oldest works he can find, as being potentially the most
authoritative.  

But none of the works I cite is an incontrovertible authority.  If I
cite old authors like Gibbon and Plutarch, it is because they tell a
good story, and a story that every other historian will want to come
to terms with.  Indeed, the author of the \emph{Penguin Atlas}
\cite{McEvedy} writes
\begin{quote}
  The theme of the medieval centuries is not the decline and fall of
  the Roman Empire but the emergence of Islam and western
  Christendom.  It is a better theme than Gibbon's.
\end{quote}
He is probably right.

%\end{multicols}

\setbibpreamble{\smaller}

%\bibliographystyle{amsplain}
%\bibliography{../../../../TeX/references}

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\providecommand{\MR}{\relax\ifhmode\unskip\space\fi MR }
% \MRhref is called by the amsart/book/proc definition of \MR.
\providecommand{\MRhref}[2]{%
  \href{http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=#1}{#2}
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\providecommand{\href}[2]{#2}
\begin{thebibliography}{10}

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\bibitem{Redhouse}
Robert Avery et~al. (eds.), \emph{New {R}edhouse {T}urkish-{E}nglish
  dictionary}, Redhouse Press, \.Istanbul, 1991.

\bibitem{Rough-Turkey}
Rosie Ayliffe, Marc Dubin, and John Gawthrop, \emph{Turkey: the rough guide},
  3rd ed., Rough Guides, London, 1997.

\bibitem{Bilge}
Yakup Bilge, \emph{Tarih ve ya{\c s}am: Deyrulzafaran manast{\i}r{\i}
  [{D}eyrulzafaran monastery: History and life]}, Ger{\c c}e{\u g}e Do{\u g}ru
  Kitaplar{\i}, \.Istanbul, 2008.

\bibitem{Bortacina}
{\^A}zer Borta{\c c}ina, \emph{K{\"u}lt{\"u}r{\"u}n ger{\c c}ek toni{\u g}i:
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  culture]}, Ekin Grubu, {\.I}stanbul, 2007, third printing.

\bibitem{LP-Turkey}
Tom Brosnahan, Pat Yale, and Richard Plunkett, \emph{Turkey}, 7th ed., Lonely
  Planet Publications, 2001.

\bibitem{Burnaby}
Frederick Burnaby, \emph{On horseback through {A}sia {M}inor}, Oxford
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\bibitem{Collingwood-IH}
R.~G. Collingwood, \emph{The idea of history}, revised ed., Oxford University
  Press, Oxford and New York, 1994.

\bibitem{Collingwood-PH}
\bysame, \emph{The principles of history}, Oxford, 2001.

\bibitem{Dagtekin}
H{\"u}seyin Da{\u g}tekin, \emph{Genel tarih atlas{\i} [{G}eneral history
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\bibitem{Descartes-T}
Rene Descartes, \emph{Y{\"o}ntem {\"u}zerine s{\"o}ylem [{D}iscourse on
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\bibitem{Gibbon}
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\bibitem{Harvey}
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\bibitem{LSJ}
Henry~George Liddell and Robert Scott, \emph{A {G}reek-{E}nglish lexicon},
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\bibitem{Maalouf}
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\bibitem{OAB}
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\bibitem{McEvedy}
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\bibitem{CID}
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\bibitem{OED}
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\bibitem{Norwich}
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\bibitem{Plutarch}
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\end{thebibliography}


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