Şanlıurfa

Few cities have been continuously inhabited for as long. The settlement below the castle rock was refounded as a Hellenistic military settlement named Edessa by Seleucus I Nicator, and from about 132 BC it was the capital of the small kingdom of Osroene, which straddled the frontier between Rome and Parthia. Edessa became an early centre of Christianity, with a tradition that its king Abgar corresponded with Jesus, and its Syriac-speaking school of theology and translation made it one of the intellectual centres of the late antique east.

Rome, Persia and Byzantium fought over the city for centuries; Arab armies took it in 639, and in 1098 it became the first of the Crusader states as the County of Edessa, whose fall in 1144 triggered the Second Crusade. Zengids, Ayyubids, Mongols and Turkmen dynasties followed, and the Ottomans took Urfa in the 16th century, when it settled into the role of a provincial market town at the meeting of the Anatolian and Syrian trade roads.

The First World War and its aftermath brought the massacre and deportation of the city's Armenian population, and a British and then French occupation in 1919–20 that ended with fighting; in 1984 the Turkish parliament added the honorific Şanlı, meaning glorious, to the name in honour of that resistance. In the second half of the 20th century irrigation from the South-eastern Anatolia Project transformed the surrounding plain, and the city grew very fast. The excavation of Göbekli Tepe from the 1990s, and of Karahan Tepe more recently, gave Şanlıurfa a new identity as the gateway to the world's oldest known monumental architecture.

Şanlıurfa is a religious city and wears it openly. Balıklıgöl is a pilgrimage site for Muslims, who come for the cave revered as the birthplace of Abraham and for the pools whose carp are protected by tradition; families arrive from across Turkey, and the gardens are busiest on Fridays and holidays. Mosques are full, dress is conservative, and the calendar of Ramadan and the two religious festivals governs social life more than the civil one.

The population is mixed, with Turkish, Kurdish and Arab communities long settled side by side, and all three languages can be heard in the bazaar. The city's own institution is the sıra gecesi, a men's evening gathering of the kind listed by UNESCO as a traditional sohbet meeting, in which a group meets in turn at each other's houses, eats, drinks bitter mırra coffee and sings long traditional songs to the saz and the drum.

Craft traditions persist in the bazaar — coppersmithing, felt-making, sheepskin work and the sewing of the striped cloth used for local dress — and shopkeepers still conduct business over tea at length. Manners are formal and hospitable: guests are pressed to eat, refusal is taken lightly and repeated offers are normal. Visitors are common enough not to attract attention, but the city expects them to behave with the modesty its own residents observe.

More than a million people live in the built-up city and about 2.2 million in the province, a population that has grown quickly through high birth rates and migration from the countryside, and which increased again after 2011 when the province took in large numbers of refugees from Syria. It is a young city: schools run in shifts, and the streets are full of children.

The plain around Şanlıurfa is the agricultural engine of the region. Canals and tunnels carrying water from the Atatürk Dam turned dry steppe into irrigated land growing cotton, wheat, maize and pistachios, and agriculture, food processing and textiles shape the local economy along with trade, construction and a growing tourism sector. Incomes are below the Turkish average, and unemployment among the young is high.

Daily rhythms follow the heat. In summer work starts early, the middle of the day empties the streets, and life resumes in the cool of the evening when families walk in the parks around Balıklıgöl and eat late. Winter is short and damp. Households are large and often multi-generational, neighbourhood ties are strong, and hospitality obligations take up much of the week. The 2023 earthquakes damaged buildings in the province and left a lasting caution about older construction.

Urfa's cooking is built on lamb, wheat and pepper. Isot, the local chilli, is picked ripe, sweated under cover and dried until almost black, giving a dark colour and a slow, oily heat that appears in nearly everything. Urfa kebab is minced lamb on a flat skewer grilled over charcoal, milder than Adana's version and served with grilled tomato and pepper, sumac onions and thin bread. Tandır lamb, cooked in a pit oven, appears at celebrations.

Çiğ köfte is the dish the city is most identified with: fine bulgur kneaded for a long time with isot, tomato and spices until it binds, shaped by hand and eaten wrapped in lettuce with lemon. The traditional version contained raw meat, but the meatless form is now standard in shops across Turkey. Other staples include içli köfte, bulgur shells stuffed with spiced meat and walnuts, lentil soups, stuffed vegetables and lahmacun from wood-fired ovens.

Sweets are heavy and syrupy. Şıllık, thin pancakes layered with walnuts and soaked in syrup, is an Urfa speciality, and künefe, shredded pastry over stretchy cheese, is eaten hot across the south-east. The signature drink is mırra, an intensely bitter coffee boiled several times and served in small handleless cups at gatherings — the cup is handed back rather than set down. Tea otherwise accompanies everything, and in summer cold ayran and sherbets are sold from the bazaar streets.