Urfa, Prophet Abraham’s city in Southeastern Turkey, inspired Gothic style, the Urfa kebab and the concept of monotheism

"Where does Europe start? Can you see that yellow stripe on the horizon? That is its eastern edge. Beyond it lies the Syrian Desert," the moustachioed man says, as he fills up my car with gas. He’s dressed in a suit despite the midday heat; in this area that is a definite sign of being the boss.

We are in southeastern Turkey, at the end of Asia Minor. The high plateau of Anatolia is behind us, and we are now on the yellow plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Iran lies to the east and the border with Syria and Iraq is to the south, horizontally splitting Mesopotamia in two.

"We, the Kurds, are the guardians of European civilization," the man declares, swaying proudly. "But it will take quite some time before they grasp that in Paris and Brussels. I hope that you, the Bulgarians, will help us."

I shrug my shoulders and he motions with his hand towards the city in the plain below.

"Urfa is very beautiful, you'll see. Sanlıurfa (meaning 'Splendid Urfa')," he says as I climb back into the car.

It is hard to imagine a story more Balkan than the one relating to the origin of this name. In 1973 the Turkish parliament renamed the neighbouring town of Antep to Gaziantep (‘Heroic Antep’), to commemorate the bravery shown by its people during the Independence War. This wounded the pride of the citizens of Urfa deeply, who were placated only when the Turkish parliament agreed to add sanlı, or ‘splendid’, to the name of their town.

The first impression of Urfa, especially if you arrive from Turkey’s interior, is that you have entered the Middle East.



Hot and sizzling under the sun, Urfa is a conglomeration of modern concrete suburbs and a stunning old-fashioned city centre, whose meandering, ashy lanes are interspersed with filigreed mosques, nostalgic cemeteries and bustling markets. Here and there, the claustrophobic streets have been cleared out, with parks of megalomaniac design built in their place.

For the Muslim world this town is a great religious centre, the regional Mecca for people living within a radius of about 1,000 kilometres. They believe that Ibrahim, one of the main prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, was born in one of the caves located in the centre of the current town.

Ibrahim or Abraham The prophet, said to have been born in a cave underneath the Urfa Fortress, is revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Raised in the mythical city of Babylon, as a child he climbed around the pagan idols, crafted in his father's workshop, without a shred of respect. For this reason he later found it difficult to believe in them and had a witty argument with the idolaters, whom he managed to convert to the ways of the one "true" God. In Islam, Ibrahim was Allah's friend and the father of the prophets Ishmael and Isaac. In Judaism, under the name of Abraham, he is regarded as the father of the Jews. The Christians revere him as an important personage from the Old Testament, whose virtues Jesus Christ advised them to follow.

The cult towards him, in place for over a thousand years, attracts constant crowds of pilgrims to the city. On the spot where he is supposed to have seen the light of day for the first time stands Derga, a mosque rebuilt several times by pilgrims.

This is also Urfa's historical centre. The lovely complex of temples erected around the cave over the centuries surrounds a lush garden built as a stage set: a reconstruction of the legend of Ibrahim.

According to historical accounts, the local Assyrian overlord Nimrod decided to punish the prophet for his disrespect for pagan idols by burning him at the stake. Nimrod built a creative structure - a mountain of firewood so high that the birds could not fly over it, and a catapult with which to hurl the victim to its top. Allah himself intervened, preventing the terrible punishment. His miracle turned the fire into water and the burning embers into carp.

Instead of being engulfed by flames, the saint flew up into the sky and fell down upon a bed of roses.


The modern park between the temples, Gölbaşı, incorporates all the elements of Abraham's salvation: a lush rose garden, two pools between the picturesque, Syrian-influenced temples, and in the pools, what are probably the best-fed fish in the history of mankind: horrible and fat – but holy – carp, which converge around each morsel in a constantly moving jelly.

While visiting the mosques and making our way through the crowds of women draped in black and men whistling Turkish pop tunes, I wondered how this town would look as Europe's easternmost outpost, if Turkey were to join the EU some day.



Urfa is amongst the most conservative Muslim towns in Turkey. On the streets you will find scenes that seem more typical of Arab countries than of Atatürk's secular state. The oriental chaos, the dust that seems like a wall at times, the completely veiled women, the omnipresent male aggression: all that is typical of this place seems to contradict our ideas of what is "European."

But from beneath the layers of newer cultures, the deep roots of a common past are inevitably poking through. Cast your eye towards the minaret of Halilur Rahman Mosque, and you can make out the nave of a Byzantine church. On the upper floor of the town museum, the distinctive Ottoman rugs are mingled with plates taken from the former Christian churches.

Is the Gothic style European? Art experts from around the world still argue over what aspects of European architecture are of Oriental influence and how these aspects seeped into Europe. There is some consensus that the lancet arch – a key element not only of the aesthetics but also of the engineering ingenuity of Gothic art, was borrowed from Muslim architecture, after the Crusaders invaded the lands of present-day southeastern Turkey, Iran, and Syria. The colourful marble mosaics in many regions of Italy and Spain were also borrowed from the Orient without a doubt. They, however, were probably brought over in two ways: by Venetian merchants, who often joined the Crusaders, and by the Moors during their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.

A careful look at the exquisite, lace-like stone reliefs on the façade of the Rizvanie Vakfi Mosque calls to mind European Gothic art, and the similarity is not a coincidence. After the Turks, Arabs, Armenians, and Byzantines fought over the city between 944 and 1098, it was finally conquered by the First Crusade. At the end of his victorious expedition, its commander, Count Baldwin of Bouillon, founded a European feudal state here, under the direct rule of the pope. And although it existed for less than 50 years, the echo of this escapade reverberated in Europe more perceptibly than the conquest of Constantinople. The participants in the adventure had been so astounded by the East that it became the source of inspiration for an entire aesthetic and architectural age, popularly known as Gothic. Thus, the aesthetic of Urfa is all-pervasive in the appearance of present-day Cologne, Madrid, Paris, and Lisbon.

Baldwin of Bouillon also left a series of traces on the city, one of which is still visible today: the Selahattin Eyyubi mosque. In this exquisitely restored Muslim temple, the former location of the Christian altar is still easily noticed.



The town also reveals connections with Europe from a much later period, especially in its southeastern quarter. Though quick, our tour around the side streets surrounding Gölbası takes us past stone houses, the likes of which you can see on a smaller scale in the old parts of Sarajevo, Plovdiv and Belgrade. It turns out that what Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro each consider as their own national architecture is, in fact, a provincial replica of the large-scale construction in big Ottoman cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. "Panta rei and... nothing changes," as Michel Serres aptly put it in his Atlases.

Located at 1,200 kilometres away from Europe, Urfa is just one, albeit a remarkable, shred of evidence on Turkish soil that the Old Continent has long deemed the Middle East as a "source" and a "beginning" rather than an "end" – a phenomenon defined by European aesthetes and philosophers as the "dependence of the West on the East."

This is hardly what the Kurdish "guardian" meant when he was waving at the Syrian Desert. Still, his words were true. On my way back from the city, I pass by the same petrol station and I see the suited man blissfully snoring under a canopy, his jacket hanging on a broom shaft. Prophecy is a tiresome business, after all.