Reflections on the Road: A Mosque and a Monastery in Southeastern Turkey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Old Mosque

The Hazreti Suleyman Camii is a twelfth-century mosque in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir that sits not far from the Tigris River. It houses the tombs of heroes from long-ago wars and is particularly active on Thursdays, when hundreds fill the courtyard to pray around the tombs.  My own visit also occurred on a Thursday.
            I found a ledge to sit on and immediately an old woman came hobbling my way.  When she reached me, she dropped two crackers into my hands and then faded back into the crowd, trailed by several children to whom she also dropped crackers.  A moment later, a man tapped my shoulder and pushed a Turkish delight into my palm.  He was tall with compassionate eyes, and not far away I saw his young children watching us.  He would return to me later in the hour to offer a piece of cardboard for me to sit on, which made a difference on the cold stone.  And later still, when he had finished his prayers and gathered his family, he approached a final time.  "Where are you from?" he asked.  He nodded at my answer and then quietly disappeared.
            Sheikh Kishk, a blind Egyptian cleric who had memorized the Qur'an by age eight and went on to became famous for his fiery sermons, would not have been pleased with the goings on here at the Hazreti Suleyman Camii.  The sheikh, who died in 1996 but whose sermons live on through the distribution of audiocassettes in cities like Cairo, declared it wrong for a Muslim to touch the hand of a Christian.  I was quite glad that he was not here, for a religion such as his is like a bucket of cement slung around by one who cannot see, thus producing a most unsightly structure.

 

 

 

An Even Older Monastery

It was bitterly cold as the minibus ascended onto the Tur Abdin plateau, leaving behind the early morning fog that lifted off the Tigris.  Snow lay on the roofs of Kurdish villages and in the fields, but precipitation wasn't the only thing on the ground.  Soldiers on foot patrol, one group backed by an armored personnel carrier, trudged along the highway.  I had read that a few weeks earlier, thousands of police, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, carried out a weeklong siege of Kurdish rebels hiding in cotton fields outside the city of Diyarbakir.
            In the afternoon I reached Mar Gabriel, a monastery founded in A.D. 397 and the first of three that I would visit.  I entered the compound's fortress-like walls and asked permission to spend the night. Referring to my backpack, a layman employed at the monastery said, "We can't turn you away with such a heavy burden."
            Evening vespers were held in a room built in A.D. 512, making it one of world's oldest functioning churches.  Inside the stone walls darkness was broken, just barely, by two candles.  The congregation of monks, nuns, and students--about 25 people--chanted together in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.  The archbishop stood before the congregation wearing a robe that has changed little in over a thousand years.  The entire setting was like having stepped out of a time machine, a lesson in the history of the Church well before Christians ever made it to America and thought up things like seeker-friendly services.
            But what struck me most was how they prayed: on their knees, faces to the floor.  It was a form of prayer that demanded something of the body and not just the mind.  And it was also a reminder that when Islam was starting out, it borrowed much from Christianity.  Except for the sign of the cross, which the congregants made between prostrations, and the presence of women in the same rows as men, this prayer could have been in a mosque.

 

 

 

 

TWO MORE PHOTOGRAPHS...

 
Kurdish women in Diyarbakir

Some of the gifts I was given in the mosque

 

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		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several publications, including the Kansas City Star, Christian Science Monitor, and The Best Travel Writing 2008.   Currently his agent is seeking a publisher for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia. If interested in learning more about Joel or purchasing photographic prints, visit http://joelcarillet.com/. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.