EDESSA, the Greek name of an ancient city of N. W. Meso potamia (in 37° 21' N. lat. and 39° 6' E. long.), suggested perhaps by a comparison of its site, or its water supply,' with that of its Macedonian namesake. It still bears its earlier name, Urhai, modified since the 15th century (by the Turks?) to Urfa.
The oldest certain form is the Aramaic Urhai ("Western" pro nunciation Urhoi), which appears in Greek as an adjective as (perhaps also as a fortress with spring, as and in Latin as and (in the inscription on Abgar's grave) The Syriac Chronicle ascribed to Diony sius of Tell-mahre derives the name from a first king Urhai, son of Hewya (i.e. "Snake"), but neither this nor any other deriva tion hitherto suggested is satisfactory. The district name Osroene (for 'Opponv i) is in Syriac Beth-Urhaye. The Arabs pronounced the name er-Ruha, and that form prevailed till it gave place to Urfa in the 15th century.
According to Pliny, v. 86, Edessa was also called Antioch, and coins of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes with the legend "Antioch on the Callirrhoe" may imply that he rebuilt and renamed the place (so Ed. Meyer in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopddie, col. 66). Pliny indeed seems to call the city itself Callirrhoe, but K. Regling (Klio, i. 459, n. 1) may be right in his emendation which applies the title in Pliny to the sacred spring.
History.—Edessa-Urhai is important mainly as the earliest seat of Syriac-speaking Christianity. About 132 B.C., when the Hellenistic empire of the Seleucids was breaking up, a native non Greek dynasty succeeded in establishing a more or less independ ent State with Edessa as its capital on what came to be the frontier between the Roman and the Parthian dominions. The names of some 3o local kings survive, but little is known of its history, and the true tale of the planting of Christianity in this region is lost in the mists of legend. In A.D. I 14 king Abgar VII. entertained Trajan on his way back to Syria (Dio Cass. xviii. 21), but in 116 of ter a general rising the Consul L. Quietus sacked the city and made the State tributary. Hadrian, however, restored the dynasty of Edessa, but made it a dependency of Rome. When L. Verus (I63-I6) recovered Mesopotamia from Parthia, it was not Edessa but Harran that was chosen as the site of a Roman colony and made the metropolis by Marcus Aurelius (172). The fact that these decisive events have left no trace in the Christian traditions suggests that Christianity had not yet arrived at Edessa. The native religion of Edessa, according to Christian tradition, was connected with the Planets. In the Doctrine of Addai 24 Venus appears to be called Bath Nikal, a name for Ishtar of Babylonian derivation ("daughter of Nin-Gal" : see C. Winck worth in J. Th. St. xxv. 402). One or both of the pools below the citadel containing sacred fish may have been sacred to Atargatis (q.v.), an Ishtar-Venus deity. In the citadel itself are still stand ing two pillars—there may once have been more—both 5o ft. high; on one of them is a pre-Christian Syriac inscription, which states that it was set up for Shalmat the queen, daughter of Ma'nu 'So Appian, Syr. 57 ; cp. Steph. Byz., s.v. Toecraa • Sid T'iv Twv 6Mrcov kunv.
the viceroy (pasgriba), together with a bas-relief or statue, now effaced. The fact that this inscription is in Syriac is a testimony to the Semitic tone of the culture of the little state; "Syriac," in fact, is the dialect of Aramaic then spoken in Edessa and its neighbourhood.
Before Christianity arrived at Edessa the more important parts of the Old Testament had been translated into Syriac by Jews, either at Edessa itself or in Adiabene under the encouragement of the then reigning house (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 19, 4). This translation, slightly revised and supplemented, is still used by the Syriac-speaking churches and is known as the Peshitta (i.e. the Simple version). Tradition connects the founding of Christianity in Edessa with Addai, a missionary sent by St. Thomas himself, who converted Abgar the king and many of the inhabitants. As, however, he is also said to have brought the Gospel in the form of the Diatessaron, and we know from Epiphanius (Haer. 46) that Tatian, the author of the Gospel Harmony called Diatessaron, returned to his Mesopotamian fatherland about 170 as a mission ary, it seems reasonable to identify "Addai" with Tatian himself (see J. Th. St. xxv. 128-130). About the end of the 2nd century Edessene Christianity seems to have made a fresh beginning : the ordination of Pala by Serapion of Antioch may mean that things ecclesiastical took a westward trend, and it is possible that a complete version of the Four Gospels (the "Old Syriac") was now introduced. Mention should here be made of Bardaisan (q.v.; Bardesanes) known as the Aramaean philosopher. He became a Christian, and is famous for his cosmological specula tions (see C. W. Mitchell, Ephraim's Refutations, p.cxxii. ff.), but was reckoned heretical. He was a contemporary of Abgar IX., at whose court Iulius Africanus stayed for a while. A Syrian official record from this reign, preserved in the Edessene Chronicle, gives a somewhat detailed account of a violent flood (Nov. 201) of the Daisan river which did much damage, destroying amongst other things "the palace of Abgar the Great," rebuilt as a summer palace by Abgar IX., and "the nave of the church of the Chris tians." The form of this last statement shows that at the time of writing (206) the rulers had not adopted Christianity themselves. Abgar IX. is now commonly supposed to be the ruler to whom the famous legend was first attached (see ABGAR) ; but though he visited Rome there is no proof that he ever became a Christian (Gomperz, in Archdologisch-etigraphische Mitteilungen aus Oster reich-Ungarn, xix. 154-157). It was at Edessa that Caracalla, who made it a military colony (Colonic Marcia Edessenorum), spent the winter of 216-17, and near there that he was murdered. The religious philosophical treatise known as the Book of the Laws of Countries was produced at this time by a pupil of Bardes anes. The Acts of Thomas in its original form may have followed not long after : this work contains the finest Syriac poem extant, commonly called the "Hymn of the Soul." Bardesanes has been conjectured to have been its author on insufficient grounds (see Mitchell, op. cit., p.cxxix.).
Sassanian Period.—In 226 the Parthian empire gave place to the new kingdom of the Sassanidae, whose claim to the ancient Achaemenian empire led to constant struggle with Rome in which Edessa naturally suffered. The native State was restored by Gordian in 242; but in 244 it became again directly subject to Rome. The legendary Edessan martyrs Sharbel and Barsamya may have perished in the Decian persecution. In 26o the city was besieged by the Persians under Shapur I., and Valerian was defeated and made prisoner by its gates. Odaenathus of Palmyra (d.267), however, wrested Mesopotamia from the Persians; but Aurelian defeated his successor Zenobia at Emesa (273), and Carus, who died in 283 in an expedition against the Persians, and Galerius (297) carried the frontier again to the Tigris. During the Diocletian persecution Shmona and Garia (Nov. 15, 309) and Habbib (Sept. 2, 31o), the "Confessors of Edessa" were martyred ; but the bishop Qona, who laid the foundations of "the great church" by the sacred pool, somehow escaped. Edessa can claim no share in "the Persian Sage" Aphrahat (Aphraates) ; but Ephrem, after bewailing in Nisibis the sufferings of the great Persian war under Constantius and Julian, when Jovian in 363 ceded most of Mesopotamia to Shapur II., the persecutor of the Christians, settled in Edessa, which as the seat of his famous school (called "the Persian") grew in importance, and attracted scholars from elsewhere. He taught and wrote vigorously against the Arians and other heretics, and althougii just after his death (373) the emperor Valens banished the orthodox from Edessa, they returned on the emperor's death in 378. Rabbula, bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435, was a great organizer, but he won from the Nestorians the title of the Tyrant of Edessa. In particular he exerted himself to stamp out the use of the Diatessaron in favour of the four Gospels, of which he issued a revised Syriac translation, which is the final form of the Peshitta. The sojourn in Edessa of the "Man of God" (Alexis) belongs to Rabbula's episcopate, and the oldest surviving dated Syriac ms. was written in the year he became bishop. When Nestorianism was condemned at Ephesus (431) it began to gravitate eastwards, Nisibis becom ing its eventual headquarters; but Edessa and the western Syrians refused to bow to the Council of Chalcedon (451) when it con demned Monophysitism.' Zeno's edict (489) ordered the closing of the school of the Persians at Edessa, and East and West drifted apart more and more; Narsai, the leading Nestorian teacher, fled to Nisibis about 489. Till about this time Syriac influence was strong in Armenia, and some Syriac works have survived only in Armenian translations. In the opening years of the 6th cen tury the Persian-Roman War (502-506) found a chronicler in the anonymous Edessene history known till recently as the Chronicle of Joshua Stylites. Whether Edessa received from the emperor Justin I. the additional name of Justinopolis may be uncertain (see Hallier, op.cit. p.128) ; but it seems to have been renewed and fortified after the "fourth" flood in 525 (Procop. Pers. ii. 2 7 ; De aedific. ii. 7) . About this time, according to Noldeke, an anonymous Edessene wrote the Romance of Julian the Apostate, which so many Arab writers use as a history. Chosroes I. Anushirwan succeeded in 54o, according to the last entry in the Edessene Chronicle, in exacting a large tribute from Edessa ; but in 544 he besieged it in vain. A few years later Jacob Burd'ara (Baradaeus), with Edessa as his nominal bishopric, was carrying on the propaganda of Monophysitism, which won for the adherents of that creed the name of Jacobites (q.v.). The valuable Syriac Chronicle just referred to probably was compiled in the latter half of this century.
after his baptism. The translation of the Holy Icon of from Edessa is commemorated on Aug. 16 (Cal. Byzant) . A few years later Ibn Haukal (978) estimates the number of churches in the city at more than 300, and al-Mokaddasi (985) describes its cathedral, with vaulted ceiling covered with mosaics, as one of the four wonders of the world. In 1031 the emperor recovered Edessa; but in Io4o it fell into the hands of the Seljuks, whose progress had added a large element of Armenian refugees to the population of Osrhoene. Maqrizi tells us that the Armenian minis ter Badr al-Gamali employed architects from Edessa to build three of the fine city gates of Cairo (1087-91). The empire soon recovered Edessa, but the resident made himself independent. In 1098, in the First Crusade, Baldwin, brother and successor of Godfrey of Bouillon took possession of the town and made it the capital of a Burgundian countship, which included Samosata and Sarug, and was for half a century the eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem.' The local Armenian historian, however, Matthew of Edessa, tells of oppression, decrease of population, ruin of churches, neglect of agriculture. With the campaign of Maudud in IIIo fortune began to favour the Moslems. Edessa had to endure siege of ter siege. Finally, in 1144 it was stormed, Matthew being among the slain, by Imad ud-Din Zengi, ruler of Mosul, an achievement celebrated as "the conquest of con quests," for which an Edessan monk, John, bishop of Harran (d.1165) laid the responsibility not on God but on the absence of the Frankish troops. Edessa suffered still more in 1146 after an attempt to recover it. Churches were now turned into mosques. The consternation produced in Europe by the news of its fate led to "the second Crusade." In 1182 it fell to Saladin, whose nephew recovered it when it had temporarily passed (1234) to the sultan of Rum ; but the "Eye of Mesopotamia" never recov ered the brilliance of earlier days. The names it contributed to Arabic literature are unimportant. By timely surrender (1268) it escaped the sufferings inflicted by Hulaku and his Monguls on Sarug (Barhebraeus, Chron. Arab., Beirut ed., 486). Mostaufi de scribes a great cupola of finely worked stone still standing by a court over a hundred yards square (134o). Ali b. Yazd in his ac count of the campaigns of Timur, who reduced Mesopotamia in 1393, still calls the city (14 2 5) Ruha. In 1637, when Amurath IV. conquered Baghdad and annexed Mesopotamia, it passed finally into the hands of the Turks, by whom it is called Urfa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-W. Wright, Joshua the Stylite (1882) ; R. Duval, Bibliography.-W. Wright, Joshua the Stylite (1882) ; R. Duval, Histoire d'Edesse, (1892) ; I. Guidi, Scriptores Syri, ser. 3., vol. iv., Chronica Minora (1903) ; E. Rahmani, Chronicon civile et ecclesias ticum (of about A.D. 1200), (1904). F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, 0904), contains views of Edessa. PLAN in F. C. Burkitt, Euphemia and the Goth, (1913), p. 46: that in Wright's Joshua, taken from Niebuh r (178o) , is not to be trusted owing to wrong identifica tions of the Gates. (F. C. B.) Modern City.—The city occupies an important position as one of a line of frontier forts which hold the entrance from the foothills to the plain. It is in addition an important point of transit along the northern and safer route from Mosul to Aleppo, being now on the railway. At this point the land routes west wards divide, one going south to Aleppo, another west to Adana. It is the centre of a wheat district but is not concerned in any industry. The population is uncertain ; it probably numbers about 40,00o and includes Kurds, Turks and Armenians.
The town itself is of considerable interest. It is surrounded by a wall, with square towers at intervals. On the western part of the town lies the old citadel, with two great Corinthian columns, known as the "throne of Nimrod." Between the citadel and the town are the springs, from which it probably derived its name of Callirhoe. The water from these springs forms two ponds, on the edge of the larger of which is the great Mosque of Abraham. The largest mosque however is in the middle of the town, probably on the site of the once famous Christian church. The Kara Kuyun (ncipios) runs in a moat round the town, and this and the other streams serve to irrigate the gardens, vineyards and mulberry orchards. In addition to its stormy history in earlier times Edessa towards the end of the last century incurred an unfor 'The counts were: Baldwin I. (Io98) , Baldwin, II. (Imo), Joscelin I. (II19), Joscelin II. (1131-47)• tunate reputation as the seat of Armenian massacres.