"Day 17: Mellow Mardin" Turkey Things to Do Tip by TheWanderingCamel

Photos:
1. Hillside city
2. Golden Mardin
3. Sabanci City Museum
4. Christian Mardin - 1&2. Forty Martyrs Church 2. The Chaldean Church of Mar Hirmiz 397 AD
5. Mardin snapshot


Leaving Diyarbakir, with its forbidding black granite walls and many black and white striped buildings, behind us, a 100 kilometres to the south, Mardin's golden sandstone and sunny hillside aspect was both a surprise and a contrast. Tumbling down a steep, south-facing, citadel-topped hillside and famed throughout Turkey for the skill of its stone carvers, the old town part of the cityis built of the local stone and everywhere you look as you walk around the town there is exquisite decoration on walls, around door and window frames, arches and pediments, domes and gateways - even the familiar red and white heart shaped logo of a popular brand of icecream is rendered in carved stone.

The town is laid out in a series of long east-west terraces, piled one on top of the other, the main street's traffic travelling west to east. Our first stop was the very new (and very glossy) Sabanci City Museum at the eastern end of town. A private enterprise, housed in a restored and remodelled cavalry barrack, the museum presents the history and culture of Mardin through a very well thought out and extensive collection of images, models, artifacts and text - it's the very model of a modern museum. It's also a million miles from the experience of getting out there in the streets and bazaars of the town but the day was very hot, the airconditioning gave welcome relief and by the time we had made our way through the exhibits we had learnt a lot about the life and times of Mardin and the people who lived there.

Mardin was for centuries a major centre of Christianity in an Islamic world and, even today, although the Christian community has shrunk to a minuscule number compared to the past, the town is known for the number of its churches - Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean, Armenian Catholic and more. After many years of uncertainty and persecution, the situation has improved for these communities but they still maintain a discreet, even hidden, presence, with most churches not open to public visits. The Syriac Church of the Forty Martyrs, in Turkish, Kirklar Kilesesi,was opened to us and two charming young men were on hand to engage with us and answer all our questions. Dating back to 569, the church is now the only church in Mardin with a resident priest. His congregation numbers about 100 people in a city of 65,000, mostly Kurds. Photos were not permitted in the church, the image of the Forty Martyrs included in photo 4 is in the Sabanci Museum. There were several of these lively painted cloth images in the church, a local tradition that only one elderly lady still practices.

A very late lunch at one of the several Mardin mansions-turned-hotels was followed by checking in at our hotel and time to wander, discovering aspects of the city for ourselves. Mosques and medressahs, soap and shops, donkeys and children playing in the shadowy tunnels, steep stairs and narrow alleys of back streets. I would have loved to have had more time to explore but we had a birthday party waiting for us back at our hotel and a monastery to visit in the morning before moving on to the next place on our tour, Sanliurfa.

Directions: We had only a few hours in Mardin. VTer Maykal has had the good fortune to have been there twice and had more time to see and do so much more. His Mardin page is definitely worth reading.