Page 15 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

2 THE BEGINNINGS
columns that still stand on the Citadel mount and slung the patriarch into the
valley. Where he fell, miraculously unharmed, appeared the pool known to
this day as Birket Ibrahim, the 'pool of Abraham', whose fish are the 'fish of
Abraham'. By the pool was erected the Halil Camii, the mosque of the
'Beloved [of God]', a Moslem epithet for Abraham. In a cavern beside
another mosque, Makam Ibrahim, or 'the place [of prayer] of Abraham', the
infant Abraham was hidden, so another tale relates, from the enmity of Nim-
rod. A third account tells how King Nimrod sought to destroy Abraham with
fire. Abraham knelt in supplication to Heaven; two springs of water emerged
at the places where his knees touched the ground and extinguished the
flames.1 These are the springs that feed the bahklar. One of the two pools is
called, as we have seen, the 'pool of Abraham'; the other is the 'pool of
Zulha' after, it is generally held, the wife of Potiphar, Zulaikha. But it is
difficult to see what Potiphar's wife is doing in this setting. Perhaps at one
time it was the pool of Sulkha, as Moslems name the mother of Nimrod.2
The identification of Orhay with Erekh stems, of course, from the Biblical
passage, 'and the beginning of [Nimrod's] kingdom was . . . Erekh' (Gen.
10:10). To the commentators the similarity of the names was irresistible.3
The theory is untenable, since we know now that Erekh (Uruk) lay in south-
east Mesopotamia, and over five hundred miles from Orhay. Modern
theories on the origin of the name Orhay are no less improbable.4 It can
hardly be a secondary form of the name Osrhoene, the province in which it
stood. Scholars have regarded Orhay as a mutilated form of xcxXXippori
'[the city of] beautiful flowing [water]'—or as derived from a Semitic root
wrh, water, Arabic, wariha, well-watered.5 These theories should be regarded
with caution since they assume that the city acquired its name only in the
Seleucid period.

1 Similar stories about Abraham and Nim- foundation of Orhay to Enoch 'whom the
rod are related by Tabari and other Moslem Greeks call Hermes Trismegistos'; it was, he
writers; they are found earlier in Jewish claims, the least of the cities which he founded.
legend. Elsewhere Bar Hebraeus regards Nimrod as
2 For another, and more probable, hypothe- the founder of Orhay.
sis, see p. 8 below. There may be an echo of 3 Strangely enough, this equation is offered
the name Nimrod in the 'Marud' mentioned by the author of a Life of the Edessan martyrs,
by Jacob of Edessa in the late seventh or early Shmona and Gurya, in the early fourth century.
eighth century. He states that the 'Chaldaeans' He writes, 'in the days of Qona, Bishop of the
—here the pagans of Harran—maintained that city of Erekh'.
'first everything was darkness and waters be- 4 It is a counsel of despair to accept the view
fore there were gods and men, and the spirit of one Syriac chronicler that Orhay was
hovered over the waters and created these founded by Orhay son of Hewya (i.e. Serpent;
seven [planets]. . . . And it made Bel first and see p. 106 below). It is unlikely, too, that
after him Marud as lords of the gods'. Nimrod Orhay is a by-form of the name Aryu, founder
may be referred to obliquely by Jacob of of the Edessan dynasty, p. 16 below.
Serug, 'On the Fall of the Idols', where among 5 This etymology would then be parallel
the gods of Harran are Bar Nemre and 'Mar[i] with the derivation of the name Edessa from
of his dogs'; but cf. p. 57 below on Marilaha. the Macedonian voda, water (cognate with
In one passage Bar Hebraeus attributes the Greek 05«p); see p. 6 below.

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