Urfa, Turkey is a large dusty city set among low lying dry hills. It looks similar to a number of eastern Turkish cities. In the center, a reconstructed citadel containing a few surviving antiquities snakes along a ridge-like hill. The main streets below are filled with countless shops on the bottom floors of four to eight story buildings. Each one although often cramped is covered with advertising and a large brightly lit sign announcing the establishment. Cell phone outlets are everywhere. Down narrow alleys hatless men in golf shirts sit on small benches talking and sipping tea. Sometimes the remnant of ancient archways or stone walls survive. Some passageways lead to labyrinthine covered bazars, a twilight inner world where everything is for sale. Women, dressed in western fashion or traditional covering are seen shopping but not in the cafes. Indulged and well-loved children play noisily everywhere. At night, among the strolling families restless groups of young men four or five abreast fill the side walks or dodge the ever present traffic of cars, dolmuses, buses and trucks.
In every neighborhood city dwellers attended mosques built in the traditional Ottoman form of a central large dome surrounded with smaller ones and a varied number of minarets. Beyond the main thoroughfares small private dwellings in the old part or in the new giant apartment complexes stretch out into the countryside. Although street cleaners prowl the streets and modern city planners build parks, the crowded Turkish city is in a constant struggle with dust, garbage, plastic bottles and piles of broken pavement. And watching it all, from various heights in parks and roundabouts are statues of Mustafa Kemal Ataruk.
These cities have much in common but are still endlessly fascinating as an eastern Turkish version of modern real life. Yet, many like Urfa date back to the beginning of recorded history. Different versions of human experience have been lived here for a very long time. The people of Urfa like everywhere and every time spend their days in a great throbbing "sound and fury" called the present. What is remembered is selective, filtered and often actually just fiction. Aspects of the past are just plain forgotten in the Middle East and often for good and painful reasons. Even the names of the cities have changed; often the language and religion too. Set in the pathway of multiple conquerors over the millennium, Urfa has no doubt covered over a great deal.
The version of Urfan life I sought here has been well buried over the centuries. Yet this city, once called Edessa, was captured in 1098 by Baldwin of Boulogne, one of the leaders of the first crusade. It is worth remembering not only because it is a remarkable story but because the capture of Edessa probably saved the crusade from destruction. It is a story among many stories of this city that is worth remembering.
At the time, the main army of the Crusaders was bogged down in front of the daunting four hundred towers of Antioch with little hope of breaking in while a huge Moslem relief army was gathering at Mosul. Allies from the Armenian city of Edessa invited Baldwin who was then operating north of the Crusader army in Cilicia to assist them in resisting the Turks. With as few as eighty knights and a couple hundred men at arms he accepted their invitation. Upon his arrival in Edessa, Baldwin was invited by the unpopular Armenian ruler, Thoros, to become his adopted son. This involved a strange ceremony that required Baldwin to climb into a giant shirt and rub bare chests with Thoros. Next he did the same with Thoros wife. As profound experience as this adoption ceremony must have been it did not stop Baldwin from standing by as his new father was killed by a mob. Baldwin then stepped into the vacuum and Edessa became the first Crusader state and he styled himself Count. Almost immediately he was besieged by the huge Moslem relief army under Kerbogha, the Emir of Mosel, stopping to take Edessa while on its way to lift the siege of Antioch. For three weeks Kerbogha's army invested Edessa before abandoning the attempt and continuing its journey. The three week however, were crucial ones for the survival of the first Crusade. Only two days before Kerbogha's army arrived at Antioch the Crusaders bribed their way into the city. Besieged themselves for a time, they eventually broke out, defeated Kerbogha and successfuly marched on Jerusalem.
Back in Edessa, Baldwin established a Catholic hierarchy and granted lands and privileges to European knights and local allies as if he were a European feudal lord. The County of Edessa lasted almost fifty years before falling to an Islamic counter attack that put the entire Christian population to the sword. Today, with the possible exception of the walls of the citadel, no architectural evidence survives of Urfa's days as a Crusader state.
However, as I stroll through this typically modern Turkish city I am still thrilled to be here because I can feel the past under the pavement. Studying history, as tentative as the subject is, still gives one a sixth sense to tap the deeper and older vibrations of a place. It is the awareness of the often buried past while living firmly in the present that points to perennial truths. We humans are vital, creative, sometimes destructive but always transitory. Sensing the fascinating past while experiencing the exuberant present makes one feel very human.
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