Day 232: Mardin

Nov 21 - Rather than move again, I decided the Mardin was feasible as a day trip from Diyarbakir. It is about one hour south. I’ve noticed that there are not many day tour offerings on the street corners. In retrospect, these were only easy to find on the southern coast and in Istanbul. They at least give a survey of the popular day trip destinations and prices from any particular city. In this case I had digital copy of the Lonely Planet, so from that, and making some inquiries, I figured out how it worked to get there ourselves.

First, the dolmuş from Gazi Street to the central bus station ($1/person). Once there, we sought out the minivan parking lot, which is separate from the big long distance buses. Here, squished into a van for the hour trip south ($3/person). The route starts out across fairly flat farmland and rocky plains. Then the rocks (basalt flows, some quite thin) disappear and the landscape begins to show more erosion and exposure of horizontal sedimentary beds. We have probably passed into the rock formations representing deposition in the Tethys Sea (discussed in Iran, Day 200).

Mardin has two parts, the modern city and the old town. They are almost completely separated, because the old city is perched on the side of a steep mountain and there was no room around for expansion. We arrive in the modern part and the minivan driver says he isn’t going to the old city. There is some confusion about our best course of action, and one of the remaining passengers thinks to call his friend (who speaks English) to sort us out, but at that moment I see a taxi stand so we disembark. I write a short itinerary into my phone translator and show the nearest taxi driver. He types in a price and off we go.

The city of Mardin is quite old, thought to date back to the 11th century BCE. It is easy to see why it was important, as it sits high on the side of a mountain with commanding views of a wide expanse of plains to the south, as well as the Tigris River. The hills around are steep and picturesque, and the old city almost blends in, being the same color as the rocks. The whole old town (called Artuklu) is a UNESCO protected site where new construction is forbidden.

I wanted to visit here partly from a numismatic standpoint. Mardin (means ‘fortress’ in Assyrian) was capital of one of the two Islamic Artuqid branches in the 11th to 13th centuries. They struck some unusual copper coins up until the Mongol invasions of the 1200’s. The coins had images of people on them, which is highly unusual for medieval Islamic coinage (and for Islamic art in general). This may have occurred because the coin designers were Armenian, thus had no problem creating such images, and they were given wide discretion by the local government.

The Artuqids ruled Mardin from the 10th century to the 1409, though the last hundred years or so they were vassals of the Mongols (and subsequent Mongol-based Islamic dynasties such as the Timurids).

For our impromptu taxi tour, we go first to the Deyrulzafran Monastery (Monastery of St. Ananian). The site was originally a temple to the Mesopotamian god Shamash, later a Roman temple, then converted to a monastery in 493 CE. From 1160 to 1932, it held the honor of being the seat of the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Take our taxi back to the old town, and have him drop us off at the east end of a long road that connects many of the larger historical buildings. This time with the taxi runs us about $22. Eat at a small café, where Odette says her soup is ‘wonderful’. The main streets of Artuklu are really cleaned up for the tourist trade, with numerous restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops. I have read that the government is making a big effort to make this a tourist destination. But its proximity to Syria and the constant security issues of this part of the country will probably hamper those efforts.

From the main plaza of Artuklu we get a taxi to the minivan station. Cram on to a bus to Diyarbakir just as it starts getting dark. Go through two checkpoints: the first checks for illegals from Syria (everyone’s ID card gets taken to an office for about 20 minutes), and the second appears to be focused on weapons or drugs that could be hidden in the bus itself (not on the passengers). It has been awhile since I sat on a bus, at night, while soldiers armed with automatic weapons stared holes into the passengers. I have not missed it!