This city will take a few posts since we saw so many things here. I will begin with our visit to the fruit plantation owned by the family of the principal of Harmony School of Science (HSS) in Sugarland, Texas. But let me start with some background on Urfa...
Şanlıurfa (often simply known as Urfa in daily language), formerly cited as Edessa, is a city in south-eastern Turkey. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The urban population of Urfa is mainly Turkish while the outlying regions are mixed Kurdish and to a lesser degree Arabian. The city has been known by many names in history, although, prior to the Turkish rule, it was often best known by the name given it by the Seleucids, Εδεσσα, Edessa. 'Şanlı' means great, glorious, dignified in Turkish. The history of Şanlıurfa is recorded from the 4th century BC, but may date back to the 8th century BC, it was one of several cities in the Euphrates-Tigris basin, the cradle of the Mesopotamian civilization. Urfa is also known as the birthplace of Abraham, commemorated by a mosque in the city and the birthplace of Job.
Urfa was conquered repeatedly throughout history, and has been dominated by many civilizations, including the Ebla, Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Hurris, Armenians, Mittannis, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Macedonians (under Alexander the Great), Seleucids, Arameans, Osrhoenes, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, Crusaders.
The Temple of Nevali Cori - Neolithic settlement dating back to 8000BC, now buried under the waters behind the Atatürk Dam, but some artefacts relocated above the waterline. Gobeklitepe - The world's oldest known stone temples (dated to before 9000 BC)
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