from the emperor Justin I. the additional name of Justinopolis may be uncertain (see Hallier, op. cit. p. 128); but it seems to have been renewed and fortified after the “fourth” flood in 525 (Procop. Pers. ii. 27; De aedific. ii. 7). About this time, according to Nöldeke, an anonymous Edessene wrote the Romance of Julian the Apostate, which so many Arab writers use as a history. Chosroes I. Anushirwān succeeded in 540, according to the last entry in the Edessene Chronicle, in exacting a large tribute from Edessa; but in 544 he besieged it in vain. A few years later Jacob Baradaeus, with Edessa as centre of his bishopric, was carrying on the propaganda of Monophysitism which won for the adherents of that creed the name of Jacobites (q.v.). The valuable Syriac Chronicle just referred to probably was compiled in the latter half of this century.
Islam.—In the first decade of the next century Edessa was taken by Chosroes II., and a large part of the population transported to eastern Persia. Within a score of years it was recovered by the emperor Heraclius, who reviewed a large army under its walls. The prophet of Islam was now, however, building up his power in Arabia, and although Heraclius paid no heed to the letter demanding his adhesion which he received from Medina (628), and the deputation of fifteen Rahāwiyīn who paid homage in 630 were not Edessenes but South Arabians, a few years later (636?) Heraclius’s attempts, from Edessa as a centre, to effect an organized opposition to the victorious Arabs were defeated by Saʽd, and he fell back on Samosāta. The terms on which Edessa definitely passed into the hands of the Moslems (638) under Riyād are not certain (Balādhurī). As it now ceased to be a frontier city it lost in importance. In 668 occurred another destructive flood (Theophanes, p. 537), and in 678 an earthquake which destroyed part of the “old church,” which the caliph Moʽāwiya I. is said to have repaired. To the latter part of the century belongs the activity of Edessa’s bishop Jacob, whose chronicle is unfortunately lost. It may have been the impulse given by the final supremacy of the caliphate to the long process which eventually substituted a new branch of Semitic speech for the Aramaic (which had now prevailed for a millennium and a half), that led Jacob to adopt the Greek vowel signs for use in Syriac. A century later Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785), author of a lost history, translated into Syriac “the two books of the poet Homer on the Conquest of the city of Ilion.” When the Bagdād caliphs lost control of their dominions, Edessa shared the fortunes of western Mesopotamia, changing with the rise and fall of Egyptian dynasties and Arab chieftains. In the 10th century al-Masʽūdī, writing in the very year in which it happened, tells how the Mahommedan ruler of Edessa, with the permission of the caliph, purchased peace of the emperor Romanus Lecapenus by surrendering to him the napkin of Jesus of Nazareth, wherewith he had dried himself after his baptism. The translation of the Holy Icon of Christ from Edessa is commemorated on the 16th of August (Cal. Byzant). A few years later Ibn Ḥauḳal (978) estimates the number of churches in the city at more than 300, and al-Moḳaddasī (985) describes its cathedral, with vaulted ceiling covered with mosaics, as one of the four wonders of the world. In 1031 the emperor recovered Edessa; but in 1040 it fell into the hands of the Seljuks, whose progress had added a large element of Armenian refugees to the population of Osrhoëne. There is no reason, therefore, to discredit Maqrīzī’s statement that it was three brother architects from Edessa that the Armenian minister Badr al-Gamāli employed to build three of the fine city gates of Cairo (1087–1091). The empire soon recovered Edessa, but the resident made himself independent. Thoros applied for help to Baldwin, brother and successor of Godfrey of Bouillon in the First Crusade, who in 1098 took possession of the town and made it the capital of a Burgundian countship, which included Samosata and Sarūǵ, and was for half a century the eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem.[1] The local Armenian historian, however, Matthew of Edessa, tells of oppression, decrease of population, ruin of churches, neglect of agriculture. With the campaign of Maudud in 1110 fortune began to favour the Moslems. Edessa had to endure siege after siege. Finally, in 1144 it was stormed, Matthew being among the slain, by ʽImād ud-Dīn Zengī, ruler of Mosul, under Joscelin II., an achievement celebrated as “the conquest of conquests,” for laying the responsibility of which not on God but on the absence of the Frankish troops, an Edessan monk, John, bishop of Ḥarrān (d. 1165), brought down upon himself the whole bench of bishops. Edessa suffered still more in 1146 after an attempt to recover it. Churches were now turned into mosques. The consternation produced in Europe by the news of its fate led to “the Second Crusade.” In 1182 it fell to Saladin, whose nephew recovered it when it had temporarily passed (1234) to the sultan of Rūm; but the “Eye of Mesopotamia” never recovered the brilliance of earlier days. The names it contributed to Arabic literature are unimportant. By timely surrender (1268) it escaped the sufferings inflicted by Hūlākū and his Monguls on Sarūǵ (Barhebraeus, Chron. Arab., Beirūt ed., 486). Mostaufī describes a great cupola of finely worked stone still standing by a court over a hundred yards square (1340). Ali b. Yazd in his account of the campaigns of Tīmūr, who reduced Mesopotamia in 1393, still calls the city (1425) Ruhā. In 1637, when Amurath IV. conquered Bagdād and annexed Mesopotamia, it passed finally into the hands of the Turks, by whom it is called Urfa.
The Modern Town.—Urfa lies north-east of the Nimrud Dagh. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened by square towers at distances of 18-20 steps, probably dating in its present condition from medieval Mahommedan times. On a height in a corner towards the west, overtopping the town by 100-200 ft., are the remains of the old citadel, and the two famous Corinthian columns[2] known as “the Throne of Nimrūd.” In the hollow between this height and the town rise two springs which form ponds, the farther removed of which from the citadel is known as Birket al-Khalīl, doubtless the Callirrhoe of the classical writers, and contains the sacred fish, estimated by J. S. Buckingham at 20,000, and the nearer as ʽAin Zalkha (i.e. Zuleikha, the wife of Potiphar). On the north edge of the Birket al-Khalīl (see plan in Sachau, p. 197) is the great mosque of Abraham, the interior of which is described by J. S. Buckingham (Travels, pp. 108-110). Diagonally opposite the mosque is a house with a square tower, which is locally believed to occupy the place of the famous ancient school. The waters of the two pools make their way in a single stream southwards out of the town. The once dangerous stream Daiṣān (Σκιρτός) no longer flows southwards through the town, but encircles it on the north and east in the channel of the old moat. This stream, now called Kara Kuyun, and the other are exhausted in the irrigation of the gardens lying south-east of the town, except when fuller than usual, when they reach the Balīh. Not far east of the sacred pool is the largest building in the town, the recent Armenian Gregorian cathedral, whose American bells were first heard during Sachau’s visit in 1879. About the middle of the town is the largest mosque, Ulu Ǵamī (parts of it probably pre-Islamic), which probably occupies the site of the Christian church reckoned by the early Mahommedan writers as one of the wonders of the world. In the bazaar, which lies between the chief mosque and the sacred pool, and contains several streets, are displayed not only the native woollen stuffs, pottery and silver work, but also a considerable variety of European goods, especially cloth stuffs. The principal manufactures are fine cotton stuffs and yellow leather. The streets are of course narrow and winding; but the houses are well built of stone. The outskirts are occupied by melon gardens, vineyards and mulberry plantations. The fertile plain south of the town is noted for its wheat and fine pasture. The climate is healthy except in summer; the “Aleppo button” (see Bagdad, vilayet), a painful boil, is common. The rocky heights south and west of the town, whence the building material is largely obtained, are full of natural and artificial caverns, once used as dwellings, cloisters and graves, where are most of the
