Page 85 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

72 THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
with which ancient Edessa had association: the well near Harran, the spring
of Ephca at Palmyra, the fountains, the fish-pools, and also a celebrated well
at Hierapolis.1 So too at Edessa there were the two fish-pools each fed by a
fountain. More important was the well outside the south wall of the city, now
the Bir Eyiip,2 the well of Job, whose healing qualities are well attested.
It was near by that were built the shrines of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the
physician-martyrs, and an infirmary and hospice. Not far away was the leper
hospital of Bishop Nona to which reference has been made. It may be signifi-
cant too that it was in the south of the city that the church of Michael the
Archangel stood, and possibly also another dedicated to St. Dometius, both
popularly associated with healing. Zangi, conqueror of Edessa in 1164, bathed
in the waters of Bir Eyiip to cure his gout. In the twelfth century, the well was
called the 'well of those who suffer from elephantiasis'.3 So popular were its
supernatural qualities that it was in the open country behind the well that, in
the thirteenth century, Christians of all denominations assembled, when the
city was affected by drought, and for four days made supplication for rain.
To the present day the sick pass the night at the well, particularly those
suffering from skin ailments,4 and this quarter of Urfa is called the Eyiip
Mahallesi, the quarter of Job.
It is not fortuitous, then, that 'Abdu bar 'Abdu, the deputy of Abgar in
the Acts of Addai, is said to have been cured of gout by the Apostle. What was
Abgar's 'incurable disease' is not related in the early versions of the legend.
Procopius in the sixth century maintains that the king, like his deputy,
suffered from gout. At a later date, certainly in the ninth century, it was held
that he was afflicted with leprosy, and that he was called the Black by way of
euphemism. Perhaps, on the other hand, he had been smitten by blindness,
and received his epithet for that reason.5 It will be recalled that Abgar saw a
vision on the face of Addai, to the surprise of his courtiers to whom the
miracle was not vouchsafed.6 A story is told of a deacon who was healed

1 See p. 48 above. who visited Urfa in the eighteenth century,
2 Did this originally carry the name of reported that its waters would heal 'all foul and
Jacob? Compare Julius Africanus, Chrono- scrophulous disorders'. In the middle of the
graphy, 'the shepherd tent of Jacob at Edessa, seventeenth century, Thevenot, an acute ob-
which had survived to the times of the Roman server, noted that men and women bathed at the
Emperor Antoninus, was destroyed by fire.' well and that its waters healed leprosy.
Job was associated with healing by the waters 5 Syriac, ukkatna, black, may be related to
of a spring, cf. the well at the mosque of Eyiip kmh which is used of both blindness and black-
at Constantinople, and particularly Koran, ness, opposed to hiar which is employed of both
xxi, 83 f.; xxxviii, 41 ff. PI. 38. sight and whiteness. A visitor at Urfa in 1838
3 The form of leprosy called elephantiasis and 1839 records the popular belief there that
Graecorum is termed in Syriac, aryatta, leo- anyone who eats fish from the pool of Abraham
nine. The latter term is scarcely to be connected will be smitten by blindness.
with the name of Aryu, the founder of the 6 This is curiously echoed in the tenth cen-
dynasty of Edessa. tury. When the portrait of Jesus arrived at
4 See Badger, Nestorians, 326. This was Constantinople from Edessa in 944, the sons of
confirmed by me recently at Urfa. Pococke, the usurper Romanus Lecapenus were unable

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