Hasankeyf, Turkey, Tuesday May 6th

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We ate our picnic breakfast on the hotel balcony. Flocks of school children crossed the bridge to our side, with the inevitable late one eating his breakfast as he ran along.

The road to the castle passes tea shops and tourist shops – the tea shops being patronised at every hour and the tourist shops sadly lacking in any customers. They did have the most beautiful kilims (woven rugs) with intricate designs which are said to echo the very earliest rock paintings that have been found in eastern Turkey. An old man was weaving every time we walked by, but his rugs were probably cheap and practical, being simple stripes, and probably purchased by the locals.

The other main road of the town had two tailors shops with the walls lined with bolts of suit and shirt material. Sewing machines whiz as garments are whipped up, with most shirts being in shades of, or stripes of, mauve or blue. Here is a town that is virtually self-sufficient, with small industries serving the immediate community and families still growing and making most of their own food and other needs.

Ancient Hasankayf was a central city for the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians in Northern Mesopotamia. The castle is 200 metres up from the river and was built as a centre for the Assyrian Archbishopric by the Byzantines in 363 AD.

By 638 AD Hasankayf was ruled by Aturks, a branch of the Seljuklus Empire, and most churches were changed to mosques. It was the capital of the Arturks for 130 years. The Mongols invaded in 1259 and the inhabitants protected themselves from some of the brutality by fleeing to the castle and caves. More wars took place and eventually it became part of the Ottoman Empire. Consequently a hotch-potch of eras can be seen in the ruins and in the foundations below what remains today. Beneath the castle, the cliff is riddled with caves, which in ancient times were used as a hotel for travellers, accommodating 1000 people at a time. A large cavern is connected to the castle by a secret staircase of 200 steps; not secret now of course but handy in the days of so many threats.

We climbed up the regular access stairs of rounded slippery stones to a grand gateway where we purchased our tickets. For 2 lira ($A1.80) each we had purchased easily a day’s worth of exploration. The small palace sits out at the end of the point and it is a focal point when looking up from below. Equally, the view from here is spectacular. It is supposed to have pots in the roof for sound proofing and it does have hollow clay cylinders, which would also make for a lighter roof.

On the way to the palace we had entered many cave rooms, some leading to others, and one appearing to have a large capacity as a kitchen and storeroom. Walking back from the point along the crest of the hill, we investigated a whole city’s worth of houses, shops and churches that later became mosques. It is fun to look for evidence of previous incarnations, since every building has been something else, or incorporates the ruins of something else. Most ‘buildings’ are dug out entirely from the rock of the mountain, but others are partially dug out but have stone additions in front. The rooms were spacious compared to others we have seen in Cappadocia. Another feature we had not seen before was the moulded mantle over the fire place, guiding the smoke up the chimney. Low stone walls formed courtyards for each dwelling. It was clearly a very extensive city, with variations in class being expressed in position on the hill – wealthiest highest up and closest to the castle. Water channels and storage cisterns were still there and were originally part of a piped system that carried water across the valley and up to the top of the hill.

Part of the area was marked out as currently being excavated and it looked very dangerous indeed. We clambered around a free standing round building which turned out to be a tomb. Looking in the barred gate, Keith got a shock because he thought that the moving cloth on the bed was someone living there, about to get up. It was the breeze moving the green satin draped over a bed shaped tomb – unusual to be still maintained when the other tombs were just dug out holes and with wooden cradle-like tops.

A magnificent large mosque, the Ulu Mosque, was built in 1325. The mosque courtyard was still paved but its garden no longer exists. Steps lead down to a purification pool.

Beyond it a conglomerate of multi-storeyed buildings constituted the castle, although a fair bit of imagination was needed to recreate in your mind the enormous complex of residential and state rooms that it comprised. Some areas seemed fairly precarious, so we explored carefully. Another whole wing of village caves stretched beyond the castle. Since it was 2.30 pm and we had visited so many residences with no offers of tea from any of the now non-existent occupants, and since we had obeyed the many ‘No Picnicking’ signs, we called it quits and descended to 2008. Two young boys offered to sell us a pamphlet but we refused because we try not to collect things to carry. We eventually did buy it before we left Hasankeyf, but not in time to visit the secret stairway from the Tigris River to the castle that it told about.

We walked up a ravine at right angles to the castle hill, passing many caves now used as animal shelters and very rugged and tumbled down rock cliffs. We lunched, then continued until the ravine narrowed too much and had water in it.

By this time it was raining so we took a short cut over the hill to the current village and came upon the ruins of a very beautiful mosque, but we had to rush past. A woman called down to us from her garden, offering a plate of mulberries, which her daughter brought down to us. Another old woman, thinking that Keith was taking photos of a garden behind a fence, opened the gate and let us in to see the whole garden. He was really taking a cat photo, but we had no language to explain that, so we took a photo of a grape vine and we were all happy. We sought refuge from the rain in a tea house.

The sky cleared again, so we walked down to the river beneath the small palace. From the balcony of our room, we could see what looked like some form of aquaculture, but close up it turned out to be restaurants out over the river with tree branches for thatching. We crossed over on a plank bridge and climbed up onto a raised platform with cushions on it. Just as in Turkish homes, we took off our shoes. The cook worked in a little open kitchen, wearing plastic sandals because he was in water up to his shins. He said that he was used to it and it didn’t worry him.

On our way back to the mosque ruins, we met a young teacher working after school in a pharmacy. We enjoyed a cup of tea and a chat in the shop, but couldn’t take up his offer to show us the more unknown aspects of ancient and modern Hasankeyf because we were leaving early the next morning. He lamented the fact that he was not in a position to marry because of finances. He was meeting with five colleagues that evening to work on the school's new internet project - all very familiar territory to us as teachers. He walked us to the internet café where we were not charged for our time. The final outing in daylight was to a tomb across the river and a short distance down the main road. We crossed paddocks to reach it but the stone fence surrounding it was locked – however we could see the beautiful decorative work on it. On the way back we climbed a hill past the cemetery to another tomb, which was also locked.

We met our teacher friend as we walked up the hill to the restaurant of the previous evening, and he suggested we try out his friend’s new restaurant, which we did. It was so new that the salt and pepper shakers had not been unpacked. We had a simple meal of bread, salad and omelette with tea for 7 lira ($A6.00).

This stork has built its nest atop the minaret of the local mosque. Former dwellings dug into the cliff face on the other side of the river can be seen in the background.