let's do this, okay we're at Sanliurfa which is an incredibly
historic place with 13 000 years of history stacked into one place
and goes all the way back to the stone age. It was also a prominent
city back during the Greek and Roman empires and for the first stop,
today we are going into a necropolis. So this is one of those places
where the Romans or the Greeks buried their dead.
Let's go in and take a look at the city of the dead.so
this stuff is super cool for a Greek
mythology nerd like me you can see that people were buried here in
these tombs but also there's figures from Greek mythology that I grew up
being obsessed with this is a original original sarcophagus? important person's
grave here had two doors.
what you just saw behind me with these additional
doors and special compartments is
what is supposedly the graves that belong to the
really rich people in the necropolis
which is why they had this additional layers of
security or extra doors leading to their graves
So one thing I learned from that last part is even in
death, the rich preserved their privilege back in ancient Rome in ancient
Greece. this uh this uh signature
is Jesus's signature white grave. this is really cool. You can see
from the different gravestones which group .the people belonged to: the
Greeks, the Syriacs. And this is a
little bit treacherous over here. we're jumping over literally these
tombstones I've been getting a personal tour from. an archaeologist at
the site. I'm guessing that's because not a lot of people are visiting
the site at this moment but yeah I'll take what I can get Now we're gonna
go to the Sanliurfa archaeology museu.
which is supposed to
be a super special place. Shout out to Ali for showing me Urfa while taking
classes online on his phone. yes.
Even as you're about to enter the museum you'll see these
coffins from the ancient Roman empire sitting right outside, which
by themselves would have been a pretty significant museum attraction just about
anywhere else .And this is some insane stuff. We just saw a statue
from 11 000 years ago which is the oldest .
yet discovered life-size statue. There's a lot of
other cool museums I've been to but most of them are bringing stuff from
places that are thousands of miles away but this one is bringing
everything from right here from this region or from the city.
There's a lot more in that museum than just stone age or the Neolithic age. There's a lot of stuff from the bronze age, the iron age or even the Islamic period that happened in this area but I had to leave in a hurry because I need to catch a bus to Gobekli Tepe. we've just arrived on the bus to Gobekli Tepe and this place is higher up elevation than the rest of Urfa for sure so it's a lot colder Definitely have to put on my jacket. Just met Yusuf from Mardin where I just came from.
Hello, it is starting to rain and this is starting to
feel a lot like one of my Hawaii hikes except it's a lot lot colder and
looks more like Scotland than anything else. They took my gorilla
pod because they said no tripods and I wasn't really sure how to explain
to them the difference between a gorilla pod and tripod so the post are
not good enough that's not my fault.
So at least there's shade from the rain over here and this is the main
part of Gobekli Tepe which is a Neolithic religious site or temple, and
for normal people who are wondering what that means and what makes
this group of pillars any more special than all the other ones you've seen
all around the world: the important fact here is that this one's from
9500 bc or eleven and a half thousand years ago. That's seven thousand
years before Stonehenge.
That's five and a half thousand years before the first
ever civilizations popped up in Mesopotamia and this place changed the way
we perceive history Before this place was discovered, no one had
any idea that people worshipped anything that long ago. It was widely
considered/believed that worshipping or temples started after human
beings had agriculture and civilizations.
Not anymore And if you're saying this doesn't look as
cool as the pyramids, I can totally see your point , but the
significance of this place is pretty damn high, especially for a history
nerd like me , all right I think I'm gonna go get some more views
and get back on the shuttle and head back ,because this is cold and
freezing and it's really painful for me. There's tears in my eyes right
now
so i just walking trying to get the next spot, and this car
that was broken down was being pushed uphill by I think three or four
people and then they asked me to join in and I was like: I guess I
don't speak Turkish but I can do that and we definitely pushed it up the
hill and it went down so I think I've definitely done my .my fair
share of workout for the day.
so i just came across some elderly gentlemen who were
extremely curious ,about me and were talking to me, asking where I was
from, in a very positive way and I'm sure if I had stayed for another minute they would have
offered me tea and food and I just want to say that I can only capture so
many of these incredible experiences that I'm having .in
southeastern Turkey but this has essentially been every interaction for me
in this place and it's not just me. If you follow any other vloggers
who've traveled to this part, this kind of hospitality ,in Turkey
especially.. hello! this kid is
starting at me.
Hi.
For those of you who haven't seen my ,last post about
how I ran into Ali on a bus and how I ended up staying with him, you
definitely should. That should tell you everything you need to know
about Turkish and Kurdish hospitality, Tourist! English? What is your name?
Nadir (laughs) Yes it's a Turkish name officially in the historical old
city of Sanliurfa and you just got a very good demonstration of how
much I suck at football or soccer. I swear , I'm a lot better in
basketball. I'm at this very historic mosque that was built in the 12th
century over here and supposedly it was built on top of a very prominent
church in this region and apparently that church was built on top of
a prominent synagogue in the region back in the 6th century.
So that last sentence right there should give you a good
idea of how much history and how many different kinds of groups of
people this place has seen just in the last 1500 years and then you
start doing the math and you realize that the temple that we just saw is
10 000 years older than when this synagogue used to exist right
here. So this place really has seen it all look at that.
it's so cool. So I'm at a spot right now that is
considered holy to a lot of people, Prophet Abraham or in Islam you might know
him as Hazrat Ibrahim alaihissalam was supposedly born in the city
of Sanliurfa and there's a little bit of debate of that. From what i
looked up no one's really exactly sure where he was born Some people
say it's here some people say it's in Iraq. A story that is believed by a
lot of people here at least is that he was born in a cave where his
mother came to seek shelter from a king that was trying to kill him.
This cave has become a place of worship for a lot of
people that believe that part is true and that cave is behind me
right there, which I went into take a better look. And you know there's other
people who are religious Jewish Christian whatever, they all believe
in Abraham or Hazrat Ibrahim alaihissalam but they don't necessarily
believe that this part of the story is true.
Okay so another very important part of this site is
this lake over here. So correct me if I'm wrong
but i know that in the Quran there's something written
along the lines of God telling fire not to touch Hazrat Ibrahim
alaihissalam. The legend of the story.. and this is a lot of people
even ,who live here think it's just a legend.. is that people tried
to burn prophet Abraham but the fire turned into water and this is the
lake of that water, and the myth or the legend here goes further and
it says that the fish in this lake are actually holy fish so if you eat
it you're gonna go blind. I believe these are the holy fish that I
was just talking about
good thing I don't even eat fish, It's raining again which makes things complicated .means that I need
to hurry up and finish my vlog asap. Just for the record guys, I'm just
repeating stuff that I read and heard here, not making any ,statements
about whether I think they're true or untrue. So I'm not trying to offend
anyone.. oh a cat
now it's time to go to our very last spot of the day
and of course I'm gonna have to go on a hike to get to this
place oh there's a rainbow over the city, I am at Urfa Castle or Urfa
Kalesi. i'm not a fan of that name because it reminds me of Khaleesi and
the absolute [ __ ] show that was the last season of Games of Thrones. I
don't think I can go to the top. I might be wrong but there's actually a moat around it and I don't see a
bridge. I think I'm gonna end the vlog here because ,
it's almost dark and I have this epic view of all of
Urfa behind me. I'll zoom in in a second for those , better shots, but
yeah it's a pretty sweet view of the whole city, whenever it's not
blocked by these trees that is. So my friend Ali kept telling me
that this is not a view worth hiking up to and he's totally wrong. This is
the best view of Sanliurfa that I've seen the whole time and you
should definitely come here. If you want to see more about how I came to
Sanliurfa and met Ali and all about that Turkish hospitality, watch the
vlog right before this…
0 Comments