The Saffron Town Mardin

Overlooking a spring green and brown plain, Mardin encircles a buttress-like fortress with narrow streets and old buildings: mosques, medreses, homes, and a hidden monastery. The plain descended imperceptively into Syria as the sun set over Mesopotamia.

Among these buidings was a thirteenth century kervansarayi called Artuklu, where Prince Charles stayed a few years ago. This is where I stayed, with atmospheric arched hallways and saffron-colored stone.

The kervansarayi housed travelers hundreds of years ago, as they wandered between the plains to the south and the mountains of Anatolia. This was also a junction between east and west, with people coming from Persia to Constantinople and beyond.
Ancient Syriac Cross Carving
Ancient Syriac Cross Carving

Behind rocky hills a few kilometers out of town was the Saffron Monastery--Deyrul Zafaran, probably named after the building stonework. Fifteen hundred years old, the monastery was still active. On the hilltop, carved in the rocks, was the ruined monastery of St. Mary's, dating to the beginnings of Christianity. Newly-plowed reddish fields surrounded the monastery.

I arrived on Sunday to hear Aramaic chanted during the service, with a vocal style similar to Muslim prayers today. Aramaic inscriptions adorned the inside of the church as a few children--orphans at the monastery--cleaned the room after the services.

In the monastery was a room with the Patriarch's throne: this was one of the earliest Christian churches in the world, part of the Syriac Orthodox Church, better known maybe as the Jacobites. The first bishop of this lineage was Saint Peter, who in 33 AD began the first Christian Church in Antioch, where I'm writing this right now.

The throne was made of old walnut. Today, there wasn't a walnut tree in sight. The friendly attendant and guide, who was Aramaic, said that a long time ago there were walnut trees and forests here, but the ancient landscape had been completely deforested and tamed Aramaic Inscriptions, Crypt
Aramaic Inscriptions, Crypt
.

Around town, I ate lamacun baked in a charcoal oven at the Izmir Pide Firini and walked the narrow and steep streets between mosques and medresesi, with their intricate minarets and charm. The town was quiet as it was the Sabbath, with most places in the bazaar closed. Children played outside, one group yelling "touriste" and "tssst tssst" or "money, money" and others saying kindly "welcome to my town," in English.

Despite the beauty in Mardin, still the streets displayed a modern dirtiness: a used disposable diaper in the middle of the street, plastic bags everywhere. The current transition between old and new here is not clean. At the same time, shopkeepers swept in front of their doorways in the morning.

Leaving Mardin in the evening, everyone on the bus watched Austin Powers fighting "Dr. Shaitan" (Satan), but the channel was changed as news of the Turkish assault in Northern Iraq continued. The television presented the fighting against the PKK terrorists as if it were a movie, with dramatic music and special effects!