The Pond of Ibrahim in Urfa
An important religious place for Muslim pilgrims from Turkey and other islamic countries is the Pond of Ibrahim (Abraham) in Urfa, located in Southeastern Anatolia, with holy carp, a complex of different mosques, the Mausoleum of Job and the cave, where the prophet Ibrahim was born.

According to Islamic belief the King Nimrod wants to burn Ibrahim on a pyre, because he didn´t accept the old belief to different gods. In the Holy Koran is written: “They said: Burn him and protect your gods, if you are going to do anything.” (21:68) and “We said: Oh fire, be cold and peace (safe) for Ibrahim.” (21:69)

Since many hundreds of years people in Urfa and muslim pilgrims from others regions and countries believe, that Allah changed the fire into water and the burning firewood into fish (carp), so Ibrahim was saved.

Şanlıurfa, usually known as “Urfa” is the ancient city Edessa and located in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. The population in Urfa is mainly Kurdish, even Arabs and Turks live in the region. Most of them are Muslim, but also followers of other religions can be found like Jewish, Armenian, Zaza and Yezids. The region of Urfa has a very old history, archaeologists found various cult places from neolithic ages.

The traditional Urfa-Night
Who is walking in the old quarter of Şanlıurfa in Southeastern Anatolia (Turkey), may find some restaurants in historical houses, who offers a so called Urfa Night with traditional meal and live-music program. Once the “Urfa Night” was not only to have a nice evening, it was a reguarly meeting of a group of men. Every week another man had to invite his friends to have conversations and to eat together. They lent money each other for the business or helped in conflicts between families and clans.

On this meetings, which are even still held private, the men are cooking and eating a special meal, named “Çiğ Köfte”, which consists of raw ground meat from a ram, fine bulgur (boiled and pounded wheat), white and green onions, parsley and a spice mixture with a very sharp red pepper from Urfa. To knead the ground meat by hand and to make it ready to eat without cooking, needs a lot of power. The cook throws the formed meat under the ceiling and he knows, if small pieces will not fall down, the meal is ready.

People in Urfa say, that this recipe had survived from Abraham’s time. After they hunted gazelles, they crushed the meat on stones and made raw ground meat kneaded with bulgur.

Harran
Harran is located in Southeastern Turkey near the border to Syria and was an important commercial, cultural and religious center under the Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia. Harran is probably the city of Haran, where Abraham (for Muslims the prophet Ibrahim) lived.

Under the Arabic Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs in the late 8th and after the 9th century, the place was a centre for translations of astronomy, philosophy, medicine and natural sciences and the first Islamic University was built in Harran.

Today the people in the old and new part of Harran are ethnic Arabs, associated with their clans and mostly living from the work on the cotton plantations.
The special cone and cubic formed historical houses in Harran are made of brick and clay. They are very suitable for the hot climate of this region. Harran people are sleeping outside of their houses in blue colored beds to protect themselves of the scorpions, because for a scorpion the blue color is looking like fire.

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© Photos by Jens Helmstedt