Church of the Forty Martyrs and other Churches of Mardin - our pilgrimage draws to a close

 

Mardin from the approach road

The last full day of our pilgrimage is spent in Mardin with its many churches and much history:
First we visit the museum in Mardin, housed in what used to be the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate. The building was purchased by the Ministry of Culture who restored it and opened it as a museum in 2000. It reflects a typical Mardin house, on three floors with a U-shaped floor plan and facing South to the Mesopotamian Plain, It is small but has some fascinating artifacts, ranging from Assyrian to Ottoman times, reflecting some of the extraordinary history of this part of the world.
I feel we have too little time here, although not everyone agrees!
There are children playing in the ArkeoPark, an enclosure within the museum grounds, where they are being taught the principles of archaeology and the archaeological importance of the area in which they live through the power of play. They seem to be having a great deal of fun.

symbols of nature on a tomb stone

There is then just a short walk to the Kirklar Kilisesi, the Syrian Orthodox Church of the Forty Martyrs, originally dedicated in 569 to Mor Behnam and Saro, which is found up a side street behind the museum. After silence and prayer Father Gabriyel (Gabriel) is delighted to tell us about this lovely church and some of its history. He asks that we take no photos within the church, which is a shame as there are also no postcards to bring home to remind us of its beauty. I wonder why he takes this stance – perhaps it is for reasons of security?

Church of the forty martyrs

This fourth and fifth century building is the central church for Christian worship in Mardin. There are something like 80 Christian families across four (or was it five) different Christian churches in the town, representing Syrian Protestant, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean Catholic (Mardin was a diocese of the Chaldean Church from the sixteenth century to 1941 at which time the diocese ceased to exist). Father Gabriyel celebrates the Syrian Orthodox liturgy in them all in turn.

Picture of the 40 martyrs in the Chaldean Church

We hear from Father Gabriyel that the government is beginning to allow the teaching of Aramaic again, and that this church is also visited by many interested Muslims, which gives Father Gabriyel the chance to explain the full history and the importance of Christianity to this area. There are some lovely and interesting features in the church. Unusually for churches in this area, there are doors that open and close across the sanctuary, in addition to the usual painted cloth or sutoro that can be pulled across during the liturgy. There are also five ancient wooden altars in the church, although the high altar itself seems to be made of what look to me like concrete breeze blocks and I mean no offence by saying this. It simply reflects what I saw. Over the sanctuary in front of the altar hangs the traditional dove, pointing to heaven.

the Chaldean Catholic Church

As we are told the stories of the forty martyrs, to whom the church is dedicated, and the seven sleepers of Ephesus, we can hear clearly the mid morning muezzin call to prayer from the surrounding minarets, a reminder if one was needed that Christians are in a very small minority here in this secular state but very Muslim country. We admire the very old printing press. We had seen something similar at a previous monastery, where the monk dreams one day of building it together again into full working order.

Afterwards cay is served to us all in the former Patriarchal Residence in Mardin. I ask about postcards. Many of us, I say, would love to buy some. Instead we are given a plentiful supply of glossy illustrated leaflets, sadly not in English, but they are useful souvenirs for all that.

view over the Mesopotamian Plain from the restaurant 

Then it is just a short walk east along the main street to the Chaldean Catholic Church of Mor Hűrműzd – brilliant colors and certainly very different from the Orthodox style we have become accustomed to.

Lunch is in a great restaurant, Cercis Murat Konagi on the main street. The setting is authentic, a true mansion owned by an old Mardin family, the food excellent and the views over the Mesopotamian plain stunning. Then it is time to explore a little up into the old part of town. The narrow streets seem like a maze and it would be futile to try to follow any map. However any route upwards or downwards as appropriate will bring one back before too long to the main road running east/west through the middle of the town.

Donkeys are a common site, used to transport goods along these narrow streets.

a soap shop in Mardin

We have time for some gift shopping in the bazaar and along the main street,

sunset at the monastery

and finish with cay and baklavas in a pastry shop and café near the museum, 


and finally it’s back to the monastery to admire a fabulous sunset before going inside for evening prayer.

Hasankeyf on the road to the Tur Abdin

The River Tigris

We are journeying, we are told, to the Syrian Orthodox area of Turkey, across the Tigris into Tur Abdin, and the traditional homeland of the Syrian Orthodox Church. The monasteries we will be visiting are supporting refugees of the current civil war, with their traditional monastic hospitality. We are warned by the bishop to display the very best of our natures to our hosts for this next stage of our pilgrimage, in view of our hotel experiences last night. Monasteries are not hotels! This is a timely reminder to us all.

As our journey takes us further south and we lose altitude, we can feel the climate getting ever warmer. We drive through a dramatic gorge following the course of the Bitlis river that will eventually find its way into the Tigris. I see small oil pumps in the distant fields. On the road through Kurtalan towards Batman we see a small convoy of tank transporters to remind us that all is not totally peaceful and well here. Earlier we passed an army checkpoint, but are waved through with no problem. Kurtalan and the surrounding area is colored orange on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office map for travel advice through Turkey; warning us that all but essential travel is not advised through this area. Looking at a map it seems it would have been hard to avoid this area and we came through unscathed.
We are crossing a high plateau amongst the mountains. The vegetation is noticeably increasing and we are driving into much larger scale arable farming than we have seen thus far. There are large scorched fields where the farmers have burnt off the stubble. At Ikikopru we drive over another small tributary of the Tigris, the Yanarsu Cayi. Here we are crossing the line between Eastern and Western Syriac Christianity. Army camps seem more frequent here. The large scale farms are using very old John Deere farm implements.
So we drive down off the plain towards Batman, which we see sprawling below us as the road hairpins down. Once a small village, this exploded in size following the discovery of oil in the 1940’s and it is now a vibrant town with the largest oilfield in Turkey located just outside the city.

Hasankeyf

It seems quite unbelievable that the Turkish government would want to flood and destroy a significant and beautiful part of their ancient heritage, which is such a tourist attraction as well. But this is what they intend for the Kurdish city of Hasankeyf, or Hasankale, on the River Tigris, when in 2015 they begin construction of the planned Ilisu hydro-electric dam. Local people face eviction; in fact over 37 communities will be displaced and in 2013 there are signs of the new city already being built to re-house the population. This is in spite of huge opposition to the plan, locally and internationally. We stop for a photo opportunity but sadly have no time to linger. Here we have one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages, with castle, mosque (once a byzantine church), palaces, thousands of cave houses, and the enormous ruined arches of the old bridge across the Tigris; and all in the beautiful honey colored rock of the region.

Hasankeyf

This is a simply heartbreaking place.
There are plenty of websites that can be visited and supported to try to stop this sacrilege. See for example the opposition from the Nature Foundation who have a petition online, and an excellent blog dedicated to Hasankeyf  which is a very good source of information on the site and a discussion of all relevant issues. Here also can be found a petition to make the site a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We are now into the Tur Abdin region,

The River Tigris

the South East region of Turkey flanked by the Tigris to the East, the Euphrates to the West, and stretching down to the Syrian border in the South. In Syriac the words translate as Mountains of the Slaves, although current romantic interpretations like to think of slaves as servants, and guide books often refer to the Mountains of the Servants of God. The area is significant for the number of monasteries and churches, and the majority of the inhabitants of the region live in small villages. Syriac Christians may be variously known as Syriac Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Assyrians, Arameans, Syriani; whatever we call them they are custodians of some of the earliest surviving churches in the world, and we are in their homeland, in what was once East Syria. On the coach we hear about the “sons and daughters of the covenant” committed to celibacy and ascetic lives but dedicated to church life within the community. They were an important part of early Syriac Christianity, forming the basis of the monastic system in the area, before the advent of the monasticism which developed in the deserts of Egypt. There is an invaluable spiritual tradition embodied in the Tur Abdin community and its spiritual and cultural value to the wider community is important and increasing, as we will see and hear for ourselves over the next few days.