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Urfa Research Paper

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Urfa is in southeastern Anatolia, about thirty miles north of the Syrian border. Tens of thousands of people come here every year to visit a cave where Abraham may have been born and a fishpond marking the site of the pyre where he was almost burned up by Nimrod, except that God transformed the fire into water and the coals into fish. According to another local legend, God sent a swarm of mosquitos to torment Nimrod, and a mosquito flew up Nimrod’s nose and started chewing on his brain. Nimrod ordered his men to beat his head with wooden mallets, shouting, “Vur ha, vur ha!” (“Hit me, hit me!”), and that’s how his city came to be called Urfa. Urfa also has a Greek name, Edessa, under which it is enshrined in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the

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