Edessa
Edessa (
The city was situated on the banks of the
Ancient Edessa is the predecessor of modern
The
The city was a centre of Greek and Syriac theological and philosophical thought, hosting the famed School of Edessa. Edessa remained in Roman hands until its capture by the Persians during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, an event recorded by the Greek Chronicon Paschale as occurring in 609. Roman control was restored by the 627 and 628 victories of Heraclius (r. 610–641) in the Byzantine–Sasanian War, but the city was lost by the Romans again in 638, to the Rashidun Caliphate during the Muslim conquest of the Levant. It did not return to the Romans' control until the Byzantine Empire temporarily recovered the city in the mid-10th century after a number of failed attempts.[3]
The Byzantine Empire regained control in 1031, though it did not remain under their rule long and changed hands several times before the end of the century. The County of Edessa, one of the Crusader states set up after the success of the First Crusade, was centred on the city, the crusaders having seized the city from the Seljuks. The county survived until the 1144 Siege of Edessa, in which Imad al-Din Zengi, founder of the Zengid dynasty, captured the city and, according to Matthew of Edessa, killed many of the Edessenes. The Turkic Zengid dynasty's lands were eventually absorbed by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 after the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran.
Names
The earliest name of the city was Admaʾ (red)(also written Adme, Admi, Admum;
The ancient town was refounded as a
After Antiochus IV's reign, the name of the city reverted to Edessa, in Greek,
It was re-named Justinopolis during the Byzantine period in the early 6th century. According to some Jewish and Muslim traditions, it is the location of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham.
Geography
Edessa was situated on a ridge in the middle of a ring of hills surrounded by a fertile plain, and was therefore considered to be favourably situated.
History
Antiquity
In the second half of the second century BC, as the Seleucid Empire disintegrated during wars with Parthia (145–129 BC), Edessa became the capital of the Abgarid dynasty, who founded the kingdom of Osroene (also known as Edessa). This kingdom was established by Arabs from the northern Arabian Peninsula and lasted nearly four centuries (c. 132 BC to A.D. 214), under twenty-eight rulers, who sometimes called themselves "king" on their coinage. Edessa was at first more or less under the protectorate of the Parthians, then of Tigranes of Armenia, Edessa was Armenian Mesopotamia's capital city, then from the time of Pompey under the Roman Empire. Following its capture and sack by Trajan, the Romans even occupied Edessa from 116 to 118, although its sympathies towards the Parthians led to Lucius Verus pillaging the city later in the 2nd century.
Christianity is attested in Edessa in the 2nd century; the gnostic Bardaisan was a native of the city and a philosopher at its court.[3] From 212 to 214 the kingdom was a Roman province.
The Roman emperor Caracalla was assassinated on the road from Edessa to Carrhae (now Harran) by one of his guards in 217. Edessa became one of the frontier cities of the province of Osroene and lay close to the border of the Sasanian Empire. The Battle of Edessa took place between the Roman armies under the command of the emperor Valerian and the Sasanian forces under emperor Shapur I in 260.[6] The Roman army was defeated and captured in its entirety by the Persian forces, including Valerian himself, an event which had never previously happened.
The literary language of the tribes that had founded this kingdom was
Late Antiquity
According to the
Eusebius also claimed to quote the Letter of Abgar to Jesus and the Letter of Jesus to Abgar in the state archives of Edessa, foundational texts of the
A more elaborate version of the Abgar Legend is recorded in the early 5th-century Syriac Doctrine of Addai, purportedly based on the state archives of Edessa, and including both a pseudepigraphal letter from Abgar V to Tiberius (r. 14–37) and the emperor's supposed reply.[13] This text is the earliest to allege that a painting (or icon) of Jesus was enclosed with the reply to Abgar and that the city of Edessa was prophesied never to fall.[13] According to this text, Edessenes were early adopters of Christianity; the inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Carrhae (Harran), by contrast, were pagans. According to the Chronicle of Edessa, the early 5th-century theologian and bishop Rabbula built a church dedicated to Saint Stephen in a building that had been a synagogue.[3] The city was a site of major unrest in 449 due to an attempt to depose its bishop, Ibas.[14]
When Nisibis (Nusaybin) was ceded to the Sasanian Empire along with Arzanene, Moxoene, Zabdicene, Rehimena and Corduene in 363,[15] Ephrem the Syrian left his native town for Edessa, where he founded the celebrated School of Edessa. This school, largely attended by the Christian youth of Persia, and closely watched by Rabbula, the friend of Cyril of Alexandria, on account of its Nestorian tendencies, reached its highest development under bishop Ibas, famous through the Three-Chapter Controversy, was temporarily closed in 457, and finally in 489, by command of Emperor Zeno and Bishop Cyrus, when the teachers and students of the School of Edessa repaired to Nisibis and became chief writers of the Church of the East.[16] Miaphysitism prospered at Edessa after the Arab conquest.
Under the Sassanian emperor Kavad I (r. 488–531), the Sasanids attacked Edessa. According to Joshua the Stylite the shrine outside the walls set up in the 340s was burnt by his troops.[3]
Edessa was rebuilt by Justin I (r. 518–527), and renamed Justinopolis after him.[17] The Greek historian Procopius, in his Persian Wars, describes the inscription of the Letter of Jesus's text on the city gates of Edessa, which he stated made the defences impregnable.[13]
An unsuccessful Sasanian siege occurred in 544. The city was taken in 609 by the Sasanian Empire, and retaken by Heraclius, but lost to the Muslim army under the Rashidun Caliphate during the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 638.
Early Christian centre
The precise date of the introduction of
According to a legend first reported by
Addai was succeeded by
A Christian council was held at Edessa as early as 197.
As metropolis of Osroene, Edessa had eleven
The Eastern Orthodox episcopate seems to have disappeared after the 11th century. Of its Jacobite bishops, twenty-nine are mentioned by Le Quien (II, 1429 sqq.), many others in the Revue de l'Orient chrétien (VI, 195), some in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft (1899), 261 sqq. Moreover, Nestorian bishops are said to have resided at Edessa as early as the 6th century.
Islamic rule
The Armenian chronicler Sebeos, bishop of Bagratid Armenia writing in the 660s, gives the earliest narrative accounts of Islam in any language today.[citation needed] Sebeos writes of a Jewish delegation going to an Arab city (possibly Medina) after the Byzantines conquered Edessa:
Twelve peoples [representing] all the tribes of the Jews assembled at the city of Edessa. When they saw that the Iranian troops had departed ... Thus Heraclius, emperor of the Byzantines, gave the order to besiege it. (625) ... So they departed, taking the road through the desert to Tachkastan to the sons of Ishmael. [The Jews] called [the Arabs] to their aid and familiarized them with the relationship they had through the books of the [Old] Testament. Although [the Arabs] were convinced of their close relationship, they were unable to get a consensus from their multitude, for they were divided from each other by religion. In that period a certain one of them, a man of the sons of Ishmael named Mahmet, a merchant, became prominent. A sermon about the Way of Truth, supposedly at God's command, was revealed to them... he ordered them all to assemble together and to unite in faith... He said: "God promised that country to Abraham and to his son after him, for eternity. And what had been promised was fulfilled during that time when [God] loved Israel. Now, however, you are the sons of Abraham, and God shall fulfill the promise made to Abraham and his son on you. Only love the God of Abraham, and go and take the country which God gave to your father, Abraham. No one can successfully resist you in war, since God is with you.
Muslim tradition tells of a similar account, known as the second pledge at al-Aqabah. Sebeos' account suggests that Muhammad was actually leading a joint venture toward Palestine, instead of a Jewish-Arab alliance against the Meccan pagans toward the south.
Middle Ages
The Byzantine Empire often tried to retake Edessa, especially under Romanos I Lekapenos, who obtained from the inhabitants the "Image of Edessa", an ancient portrait of Christ, and solemnly transferred it to Constantinople, August 16, 944. This was the final great achievement of Romanus's reign. This venerable and famous image, which was certainly at Edessa in 544, and of which there is an ancient copy in the Vatican Library, was looted and brought to the West by the Republic of Venice in 1207 following the Fourth Crusade. The city was ruled shortly thereafter by Marwanids.
In 1031 Edessa was given up to the Byzantines under
The
Subsequent history
Edessa was subsequently controlled by the Safavid dynasty, and from 1517 to 1918 the Ottoman Empire.[34]
Under the Ottomans in 1518, the population of Edessa was estimated at a mere 5,500; likely due to the Ottoman–Persian Wars. By 1566, though, the population had risen to an estimated 14,000 citizens. In 1890, the population of Edessa consisted of 55,000, of which the Muslim population made up 40,835.[34]
Syriac literature
The oldest known dated Syriac manuscripts (AD 411 and 462), containing Greek patristic texts, come from Edessa.
Following are some of the famous individuals connected with Edessa:
- Jacob Baradaeus, an ardent Miaphysite who preserved the (Oriental) Orthodox church after the persecution subsequent to the Chalcedonian controversy Jacobites
- Jacob, Bishop of Edessa, a prolific writer (d. 708);
- Theophilus, an astronomer, who translated into Syriac verse Homer's Iliad and Odyssey;
- Stephen Bar Sudaïli, monk and pantheist, to whom was owing, in Palestine, the last crisis of Origenism in the 6th century
- The anonymous author of the Chronicon Edessenum(Chronicle of Edessa), compiled in 540
- The anonymous writer of the story of "The Man of God", in the 5th century, which gave rise to the legend of St. Alexius, also known as Alexius of Rome (because exiled Eastern monks brought his cult and bones to Rome in the 10th century).
- Basil bar Shumna (d. c. 1170) bishop who wrote a chronicle of the city's history (now lost)
- Cyrus of Edessa, 6th century Syriac Christian writer
- John bar Aphtonia, a key figure in the transmission of Greek thought and literary culture into a Syriac milieu
- Thaddeus of Edessa, Christian saint and one of the seventy disciples of Jesus
- Maurelius of Voghenza, Syrian priest
See also
References
- ^ Harrak 1992, p. 209-214.
- ^ Keser-Kayaalp & Drijvers 2018, p. 516–518.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Keser-Kayaalp & Drijvers 2018, p. 517.
- ^ Harrak 1992, p. 212-214.
- ^ Harrak 1992, p. 209.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Lieu 1997, pp. 174–175.
- ^ a b c Gray & Kuhrt 2012.
- ^ Everett-Heath 2018.
- ^ Harrak 1992, p. 211.
- ^ Harrak 1992, p. 209–214.
- ^ Healey 2007, p. 115–127.
- ^ Bauer, Walter (1991) [1934]. "1. Edessa". Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. U Penn.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-866277-8, retrieved 2020-11-28
- ISSN 0950-3110.
- ^ Curran 1998, p. 79.
- ^ Labourt, Le christianisme dans l'empire perse, Paris, 1904, 130–41.
- ^ Evagrius, Hist. Eccl., IV, viii
- ^ von Harnack, Adolph (1905). The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. Williams & Norgate. p. 293.
there is no doubt that even before AD 190 Christianity had spread vigorously within Edessa and its surroundings and that (shortly after 201 or even earlier?) the royal house joined the church
- ^ Herbermann, Charles George (1913). The Catholic Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Press. p. 282.
- ^ {Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine, Book 1 Chapter 13 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.vi.xiii.html}[permanent dead link]
- Macmillan and Company. p. 58.
- ^ von Gutschmid, A. (July 1887). "Untersuchungen über die Geschichte des Königliches Osroëne" [Studies on the history of Royal Osroene]. Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg (in German). 35. Saint Petersburg.
- ^ Shahid, Irfan (1984). Rome and the Arabs. Dumbarton Oaks. pp. 109–12.
- ISBN 0-310-28011-7.
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia ecclesiastica, V, 23.
- ^ Chronicon Edessenum, ad. an. 201.
- ^ Ed. Gian Francesco Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, 62 sqq.
- ^ Échos d'Orient, 1907, 145.
- ^ Oriens christianus II, 953 sqq.
- ^ El-Azhari 2016, p. 91.
- ^ Steven Runciman (1951), A History of the Crusades, Volume II: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100–1187, Cambridge University Press, p. 240.
- ISBN 978-90-04-09896-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4384-0727-2.
- ^ a b al-Ruha, Suraiya Faroqhi, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. VIII, ed. C.E.Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs, G. Lecomte, (Brill, 1995), 591-593.
Sources
- Adai, Jacob (2005). "Edessa and the Syriac Language". The Harp. 18: 331–336. ISBN 9781463233068.
- Adler, William (2013). "The Kingdom of Edessa and the Creation of a Christian Aristocracy". Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 43–62, 277–282. ISBN 9780812208573.
- Barnard, Leslie W. (1968). "The Origins and Emergence of the Church in Edessa during the First Two Centuries A. D." (PDF). Vigiliae Christianae. 22 (3): 161–175. S2CID 161640016. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2020-02-12.
- Walter Bauer 1971. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 1934, (in English 1971): Chapter 1 "Edessa" (On-line text)
- ISBN 9789953003436.
- ISBN 9780521875813.
- ISBN 9783447068857.
- Curran, John (1998). "From Jovian to Theodosius". In Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History: The Late Empire, A.D. 337-425. Vol. XIII (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 78–110. ISBN 0-521-30200-5.
- Drijvers, Hendrik J. W. (1980). Cults and Beliefs at Edessa. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004060502.
- El-Azhari, Taef (2016). Zengi and the Muslim Response to the Crusades: The Politics of Jihad. Routledge.
- Everett-Heath, John (2018). "Şanlıurfa". The Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names (4 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191866326.
- Fafinski, Mateusz (2024). "A Restless City: Edessa and Urban Actors in the Syriac Acts of the Second Council of Ephesus". Al-Masaq: 1–25. .
- Farina, Margherita (2018). "La linguistique syriaque selon Jacques d'Édesse". Lesauteurs syriaques etleurlangue. Paris: Geuthner. pp. 167–187.
- ISBN 9780813205960.
- S2CID 166480216. Archived from the originalon 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
- S2CID 212688514.
- A. von Gutschmid, Untersuchungen über die Geschichte des Königliches Osroëne, in series Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg, series 7, vol. 35.1 (St. Petersburg, 1887)
- Gray, Eric William; ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.
- Harrak, Amir (1992). "The Ancient Name of Edessa" (PDF). Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 51 (3): 209–214. S2CID 162190342. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2014-08-09.
- Healey, John F. (2007). "The Edessan Milieu and the Birth of Syriac" (PDF). Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. 10 (2): 115–127.
- Keser-Kayaalp, Elif; Drijvers, Hendrik J. W. (2018). "Edessa". The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 516–518. ISBN 9780192562463.
- Lieu, Samuel (1997). "Edessa". Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. 8. pp. 174–175.
- ISBN 9780440017691.
- ISBN 9780674778863.
- ISBN 9780807855201.
- ISBN 9780807876657.
- ISBN 9780520253919.
- .
- .
- Reinink, Gerrit J. (1995). "Edessa Grew Dim and Nisibis Shone Forth: The School of Nisibis at the Transition of the Sixth-Seventh Century". Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-modern Europe and the Near East. Leiden: Brill. pp. 77–89. ISBN 9004101934.
- Ross, Steven K. (2001). Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire, 114-242 CE. London-New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781134660636.
- ISBN 9780198215455.
External links
- Old and new Images from Edessa
- Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Antioch by the Callirhoe, later Justinopolis (Edessa; Urfa) Turkey"
- Andre Palmer, in e-journal Golden horn: Journal of Byzantium An essay on Egeria's escorted visit (April 384), and the bishop's tall tales
- Chronicle of Edessa
- Ancient Coins of Edessa at wildwinds.com
- Livius.org: Edessa Archived 2013-09-24 at the Wayback Machine