Page 21 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

8 THE BEGINNINGS

approximately 400 by 80-120 metres, but it has been subject to reconstruc-
tion so often that we cannot hazard a guess as to its appearance under the
Seleucids. The two fish-pools lay below and due north of the Citadel mount.1
One is called today Birket Ibrahim, the pool of Abraham, the other Birket
Zulha, the pool of Zulha, named after Zulaikha the wife of Potiphar. It has
already been suggested that at one time the second pool was named Birket
Sulkha after the mother of Nimrod. But it is equally possible—and, indeed,
there is some evidence for this outside Edessa2—that the pool was originally
called Seloq, after Seleucus; the name of the reputed founder of the city was
in widespread use at Edessa.3
Beside the pools there stood in Seleucid times, according to tradition, a
great pagan altar. And nearby—possibly at the end of the second century
A.D.—was to be erected the church that came to be venerated far and wide as
the oldest Christian shrine of Edessa.

1 Frontispiece and PL ga. 2 See p. 55 below. 3 Cf. pp. 16 f., 28 n. 4, 42 n. 3.

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