Hope Waddell Hogg

“ Edessa can claim no share in “the Persian Sage” Aphrahaṭ or Afrahaṭ (Aphraates) ; but Ephraem, after bewailing in Nisibis the sufferings of the great Persian war under Constantius and Julian, when Jovian in 363 ceded most of Mesopotamia to Shapur II., the persecutor of the Christians, settled in Edessa, which as the seat of his famous school (called “the Persian”) grew greatly in importance, and attracted scholars from all directions. ”

“ 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. [22] The local Armenian historian, however, Matthew of Edessa, tells of oppression, decrease of population, ruin of churches, neglect of agriculture. ”

“ He taught and wrote vigorously against the Arians and other heretics, and although just after his death (373) the emperor Valens banished the orthodox from Edessa, they returned on the emperor’s death in 378. Under Zenobius, disciple of Ephraem, studied the voluminous writer, Isaac of Antioch (d. circ. 460) . Rabbūla perhaps owed his elevation to the see of Edessa (411–435) , in the year which produced the oldest dated Syriac MS., to his asceticism, and it was to his time that the sojourn there of the “Man of God” (Alexis) was assigned ”

“ The form of this last statement shows that at the time of writing (206) the rulers had not adopted Christianity themselves. Abgar IX. is now commonly supposed to be the ruler to whom the famous legend was first attached (see Abgar) ; but though he visited Rome there is no proof that he ever became a Christian (Gomperz, in Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn, xix. 154-157) . It was at Edessa that Caracalla, who made it a military colony under the style of Colonia Marcia Edessenorum, spent the winter of 216–217, and near there that he was murdered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 district name Osroēnē for Ὀρροηνή, is Greek, perhaps due to analogy of Chosroes. It occurs but rarely in Syriac (Uzroina) ; e.g. Chronicle of Edessa. § 35; [10] elsewhere Bēth-Urhāyē (e.g. Cureton, Spicileg. Syr. 20) . In the time of Tiglath-pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.) the name seems to have been “District of (not Edessa, but) Ḥarrān” (Annals, vi. 71) . The Arabs pronounced the name er-Ruhā (see above) , and that form prevailed till it gave place to Urfa in the 15th century.
The Greek name Edessa appears in the Jerusalem Targum to Gen. x. 10 as Hădas (הדס‎, myrtle) ”

“ Whatever may have been the ethnographical type of the early inhabitants, it must by the beginning of the second last millennium B.C. have included Hittites in the large sense of the term, probably Aryans, and certainly Semites of some of the types characteristic of early Assyrian history. ”

“ W. of Eski-Ḥarrān, in 1906 a very interesting 6th-century Assyrian inscription (see Mesopotamia) .
In the later Assyrian empire the population was largely Aramaic-speaking; but S. Schiffer’s theory (Beiheft I. zur Orientalistischen Litteratur-Zeitung) finds contemporary evidence of Israelites settled in the neighbourhood of Edessa in the second half of the 7th century B.C. At the fall of Nineveh many towns in Mesopotamia suffered severely at the hands of the Medes. The period remains dark, notwithstanding the obscure light that has been thrown on it lately (Pognon, Inscriptions) . ”

“ Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice said that before December 1895 it was close on 65,000, of whom about 20,000 were Armenian, 3000 or 4000 Jacobites, Syrian-Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Maronites and Jews, and the remaining 40,000 Turkish, Kurdian and Arab Mahommedans. Two barbarous massacres occurred on the 28th and 29th of October and the 28th and 29th of December 1895; 126 Armenian families were absolutely wiped out. He believes that 8000 Armenians perished in the second massacre. The Deutsche Orient-Mission has its chief seat in Urfa, and there have for years been American and French missions. ”

“ Duval, Hist. d’Édesse, 23) to derive Edessa from Aram. הדת, as though = Carthage, New Town; but Syriac writers, when they occasionally [11] use the name (Edessa, אדסא‎; so Yāqūt, Adāsā) , show no suspicion of its being Semitic. According to Pliny, v. 86, Edessa was also called Antioch, and coins of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes with the legend “Antioch on the Callirrhoe” may imply that he rebuilt and renamed the place (so Ed. Meyer in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, col. 1933, 66; otherwise Duval, Hist. 23; cf. art. Osroene) . ”

“ Till about this time Syriac influence was strong in Armenia, and some Syriac works have survived only in Armenian translations. In the opening years of the 6th century the Persian-Roman War (502–506) found a chronicler in the anonymous Edessene history known till recently as the Chronicle of Joshua Stylites. Whether Edessa received 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) . ”