Delicious!

A Unesco site and remote, "this bldg is remarkable for the originality of its plan, the organization of the hypostyle mosque hall with 4 rows of 4 piers (mutilated by restoration), the variety of the vaulting systems, and the carefully balanced proportions of the mosque and hospital areas. ... The 3 external portals and east window [each very different] are remarkable for the variety and boldness of their carved decoration" (Architecture of the Islamic world). The complex was founded in 1228 by Ahmad (Ahmet?) Shah, local emir and grandson of the founder of the Menguchekid dynasty, and his wife Malika Turan Malik, and was constructed 1228-29. The architect might have been Khurshah of Ahlat.

- This is the northern portal, in an "exuberant rococo Seljuq style...the sort of doorway which only a provincial emir, with more money than restraint, would ever dream of building" (LP), and the interior has "a complex vaulted ceiling comparable to those of European Gothic cathedrals but much more sophisticated." (Berlitz)

- The darussifa has a central pool with a spiraling channel at one side to create the sound effect of trickling water considered therapeutic for the hospital's patients resting in the surrounding eivans.

- All the guidebooks are effusive. Berlitz: It has a "well-deserved fame. ... Flamboyant, grossly overdone, ... there is nothing [else] quite like it. Historians of Islamic art and architecture are generally at a loss as to how to account for it." Bradt: "Many art historians regard [this complex] as the loveliest and most unusual of Seljuk bldg.s [which is saying something!, and] which, uncharacteristically, the Mongols spared when they took the town later in the 13th cent., although they dismantled the citadel [and evicted the Menguchekids]."

- The Turks hold it in such high esteem that this complex was the 1st of Turkey's Unesco sites to be designated together with the 'Historic Areas of Istanbul' in 1985. (!) Look carefully at what you see in this photo and try to imagine anything comparable from 13th-cent. Europe. (I'll scan some more shots of the other portals, the 'Darussifa Tac kapi', the 'Tekstil [textile] kapi' [the most intricate], and the Sah kapisi [they don't disappoint either!], and an interior, ceiling shot or 2.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QgYB0wb0Q

- "The town, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, was notorious in the middle ages as a centre of the Christian Paulician heresy" followed by a heretical Armenian sect which held to a dualistic cosmology similar to that of the Persian Manichaeans, and to "an iconoclastic christology." "Founded @ 660 in Armenia, the sect's adherents were persecuted by Byzantine Emperor Leo V, who was of Armenian descent. A 2nd persecution was ordered by Empress Theodora, regent for her son Michael III from 842 to 855, and the Paulicians were forced out of Armenia; they resettled at Divrigi ("Tephrike" then)", where they were given refuge by the Emir of Malatya to found their semi-independent state. "From there with the help of the Arabs they led a rebellion against the Byzantine Emperor; even distant Nicaea was under threat of attack. The rebellion became an all-out war which ended in 872 with the final defeat of the Paulicians. Those who surrendered were relocated to today's Bulgaria." www.romeartlover.it/Divrigi1.html

- According to Bradt, the Paulicians "were ancestors of the 12th and 13th cent. Cathars in the French Pyrenees" (of 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' fame). ??

- "In 872 Byzantine emperor Basil I laid siege to Tephrike, captured the citadel, and crushed the sect. Soon after the battle of Manzikert in 1071, the town was captured by the Turks. Divrigi and its surrounding territory were given to a Turkmen officer named Menguchek who established a minor independent state here, and Divrigi became the seat of the tiny Menguchekid (or Menguceh) emirate. [Its rulers took the Persian title of shah.] In 1228 the dynasty recognized the suzerainty of the Seljuqs [the Sultanate of Rûm]. ..." (Berlitz) Again, the Mongols extirpated the Menguchekids in the mid to late 13th cent. Divrigi wouldn't be incorporated into the Ottoman empire until 1516.

www.google.com/maps/place/Divri%C4%9Fi,+Sivas,+Turkey/@39...

- On arrival in Divriği (Dee-vree) in the late afternoon or evening, I headed for the mosque and darüşşifa, toured the complex at dusk with plans to see more of it the next morning, and explored the hilly neighborhood just east of it. I persuaded one homeowner to allow me to put up my tent in her front yard that night.

- It was a steep scramble up to the medieval castle atop a hill above the town to the east. "The [town's] fortifications were built in various periods. Associated with the Paulicians, they were rebuilt by the Menguceks who erected a fine bastion atop the hill embellished with corbels and [2 very eroded] statues of lions" protruding above the entrance (which I thought were horses). The castle was a fixer-upper, with holes in the walls (incl. one through most of the mihrab in the castle's mosque), but with wonderful views out towards and over the dry, brown mtn.s surrounding the town. The castle was surmounted by a large metal frame with the profile of Ataturk (but a better likeness of Alfred Hitchcock) made out in light-bulbs to be lit after dark. (I don't recall seeing it lit up). Tourism in Divrigi is a sure thing, and so the castle and its fortifications are being restored (or rebuilt).

- The mosque in the castle is said to have been built in 1180, and is one of the oldest mosques in its original state in Anatolia.

- The Menguchekids built several kumbets in town too (round or octagonal mausoleums in cut stone with pointy roofs), incl. the Arapli (late 14th cent.) and the Sitte Melik (built for Seyfeddin Şahinşah bin Süleyman).

- The town has its fair share of multi-story 1/2-timbered Ottoman houses with projecting upper floors.

- The next morning I was a bit awestruck by an apparently inaccessible, semi-intact ruin of a castle at a height across or in the midst of a river-bottom canyon (that of the Çaltı Suyu stream, a tributary to the Euphrates) that I could see to the east of the yard of my hostess's house or nearby, and which I've learned was the Kesdoğan Kalesi (1,214 m.s). (I was sorely tempted, but exploring it would've involved a steep, deep descent to the bottom of the canyon and a steeper climb up the other side and the same in reverse, of course.) I'll upload an impressive photo. Photos of it and taken within it in google maps, and some videos that I've just seen online, have robbed it of some of its mystique and feng shui, but the views it offers of the canyon are awesome. Today there's a high, glass-floored terrace from which it can be viewed from the eastern edge of town, 'the highest glass terrace in Anatolia'. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5eFwuMR-40

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA-QpFWc1sc

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=43sGYORCZxc

- There's not much written about it online. According to whoever posted this www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7zui4V4_MA it's thought to have been built as a surveillance post of Divriği Castle. Variations of a popular legend involve a dashing Turkish suitor (a prince or a shepherd) based in one or the other castle, and a comely Armenian maid in the other, a rope stretched across the canyon /b/ the castles, the Turkish youth or both together attempting to cross via the rope which is then cut and the lovers plummet and "surrender their souls", or the Turk falls followed by the Armenian maiden who jumps after him in Shakespearian fashion. The waters of the Çaltı Suyu then take their bodies to the Euphrates.

- While I took in the Ulu cami/darussifa complex as well as I could the morning after I arrived, I don't recall the other mosques in town, many with distinctive wooden minarets (the Hatipoğlu, Ahmet Paşa, Gökçe, Süleyman Ağa, Güllübağ, Kültür, Tozkaldiran, etc.), nor the Paşa Cami (1799). According to Bradt, these wooden minarets are seen nowhere else in Anatolia.

- From Divrigi I hitched up the Sivas Divrigi Yolu to the twisty Divrigi Ilic Yolu (I think) and north and east to the D877. The Bahtiyar Venk Ermeni Kilisesi, an abandoned Armenian monastery, is @ 1 click west of that route @ 10-15 km.s north of Divrigi (a miss). NE up the winding D877 I passed the ancient Armenian town of İliç and a series of villages inhabited either by Turks or by Kurds of the Şadiyan, Koçgiri and Hormek tribes to the town of Refahiye and the T-junction with the E80. Then 70 clicks (1 hr.) SE to Erzincan (any Kurds in villages along that leg belong to the Kurmeş tribe).

- Erzincan (Air-zin-jahn) is a modern city with an ancient history which, according to the LP and all the guidebooks, has been robbed of any and all notable historic monuments by devastating earthquakes. Damage wrought by the quake of Dec. 27, 1939, 7.8 on the Richter scale, was "so extensive that the old site of the city was entirely abandoned, and a new town was founded a little further to the north." (Wikipedia) 32,700 perished in that quake (Bradt). (Local folklore attributed the earthquake to a curse laid by the local Armenian victims of the genocide.) But 'Eski Erzurum', a few clicks north of town, looks to be an interesting ghost town with a photogenic, crumbling hamam or 2. The destruction of Erzincan was particularly tragic for "in the late 19th cent. it was considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in Asia, with over 79 mosques." (Bradt)

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjihCXVgFVM

- Erzincan and the surrounding region are of utmost importance to the early history of Armenian Christianity. According to Bradt, it was the capital of Armenia in the 3rd and 4th cent. before Erzurum and was known as Erez. The region was known in the early 1st mill. A.D. as Acilisene, "the site of the Peace of Acilisene in 387 by which Armenia was divided into 2 vassal states, the smaller dependent on the Byzantine Empire and the larger dependent on Persia. ... A text of Agathangelos reports that during the first year of his reign, King Trdat [Tiridates III] of Armenia travelled to Erez to offer a sacrifice at a famous temple to the goddess Anahit. He ordered Gregory the Illuminator, secretly a Christian, to make an offering at its altar. Gregory refused, was taken captive and was tortured, commencing a series of events which would end with Trdat's conversion to Christianity @ 14 yr.s later. Following that conversion and during the Christianisation of Armenia, the temple at Erez was destroyed and its property and lands were given to Gregory. It later became known for its extensive monasteries." Acilisene became a bishopric no later than 553. It became a Metropolitan See with 21 suffragans no later than the 11th cent., "the time of the greatest splendour of Acilisene, which ended with the defeat of the Byzantines by the Seljuks at Manzikert in 1071." Marco Polo visited Erzincan following its absorption into the Mengüçoğlu under the Seljuks and wrote that the "people of the country are Armenians" and that Erzincan was the "noblest of cities" which contained the See of an Archbishop. (Wikipedia)

- As to those "extensive monasteries", there's a string of 5 not far south of the E80 according to the great site in the next link, all in ruins, 3 of which are amongst the most important to Armenian history anywhere. I write about 4 of them and about a 5th closer to Erzurum below, none of which I toured.: www.collectif2015.org/en/Projects.aspx .

- With 20/20 hindsight, I would turn NE from the D877 at the fork with the Kemah Kuruçay Yolu above İliç (and just above the Kuruçay branch of the Euphrates) and follow that twisty, remote road east to Kemah, home to the ruined Holy Archangel monastery, and the town's citadel, formerly of Ani-Gamakh, which housed the pantheon of the kings of ancient Armenia. "In ancient times, the town was the cult center of the Armenian [and Persian] goddess Anahit (Ani). It may be what the Hittites referred to as Kummaha. The necropolis of Armenia's Arsacid Dynasty was located in Kemah, including the tomb of Tiridates III who was instrumental in the conversion of the Armenian people to Christianity." Wow.

- Kemah is infamous for the Kemah massacre of 1915. /B/ June 10 and 14, 25,000 Armenians were thrown from steep cliffs down into the Karasu gorge and into the Euphrates.

- Then to turn east from Kemah and continue east along the Erzincan Kemah Yolu to the Şehitler Anıtı bridge, then north 300-400 m.s to the first fork (3 roads meet there at a 3-way junction or 2 neighboring forks < 30 m.s apart), taking the left and then the right twisty road north to a 2nd fork, and then the road on the left, the Doğan Köyü Yolu, north to the remote village of Doğan, home to Kurds of the Aslanan tribe, and a couple of clicks further to the former T'ortan or T'ordan (often referred to in sites on-line as Tordan and Dortan), a ghost-town and home to the very important 'Tomb of the 9 Saints of T‘ortan' in the monastery of Holy Trdat (at 1600 m.s) which I've just read "was privatized in [the] name of 16 Muslim residents of the village" in 2017. horizonweekly.ca/fr/armenian-monastery-in-turkey-is-priva... (Here it is.: www.google.com/maps/place/Tortan+Armenian+Church/@39.6563... ) "Traditions attest to a church having been built at T‘ortan as early as the 4th cent., or again in the 7th, after the translation of (only some) of the remains of St. Gregory [Krikor] from the funeral martyrium of the Holy Illuminator. [See below.] This, his 2nd tomb, attracted the relics of other members of his family, his successors at the head of the Church, or of those directly associated with his ministry and the 4th-cent. conversion of the Kingdom of Armenia to Christianity," and, at least according to legend, those of the first Christian king of Armenia and his queen. (!) The saints entombed or whose reliquaries were found in the church include the catholicoses of the Armenian church who were descendants of St. Gregory: his son Vrt‘anès, his grandson Houssig, and Krikoris (Bishop of Aghvank); Gregory's disciple, the chorbishop Daniel (Taniel) the Assyrian; Khat, the bishop who worked closely with Nersès the Great, himself Houssig’s grandson; King Tiridatès (Drtad) III the Great (he who converted Armenia to Christianity, and who's also said to be interred at Kemah); his wife Queen Ashkhén; his sister Khosrovitoughd (or Khosrovitukhd); and finally Karnig, the monk who discovered the relics of the Illuminator on Mount Sebouh" or so it's said. It was an early Armenian Westminster abbey in the making. The sanctuary at T'ortan was a monastery in the 15th cent. and the tomb was a pilgrimage site, of course, and the final stop on the Erznga (Erzincan) pilgrimage to Mt. Sebouh. "Confiscated after the Great War, the sanctuary was [partially] destroyed. ... Only the [impressive] lower church can still be seen" but with its dome intact, 7th - 10th cent., and containing the 8 patriarchal and royal tombs. "All that remains of the tombs of the saints is the cenotaph of Gregory the Illuminator", according to one site, or the "4-cornered cathedra atop the tomb of Vrt‘anès in the inner sanctum, its 4 columns supporting a miter-shaped dome", according to this.: www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-erzurum/... "It was smashed in 2012." ?!! www.collectif2015.org/en/100Monuments/Le-Tombeau-des-Neuf... The cenotaph or cathedra above the tomb of the most celebrated Armenian these past 1650 or so years, or of his son, had survived since @ the 7th cent. and was destroyed only @ 10 years ago? (That said, I don't get why it's so ugly in this photo.: collectif2015.blob.core.windows.net/web/Projects/1024_420... Where's the sophisticated masonry and stone-carving you'd expect from those devout Armenians? [Update: I showed that photo to an Armenian friend who said that there would've been a decorative, carved stone cladding or panels with khachkars, etc. that had covered it and which have been pried off, to paraphrase. Its great antiquity could be a factor too.])

- St. Gregory's relics were dispersed, some taken to the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Pakavan where he had baptized King Drtad (Tiridates III) and the Armenian people in the Aradzani river. Those were later taken and laid beneath the columns of the Holy Zvartnots church, a ruin today near Yerevan. His skull is in the church of St. Gregory the Armenian in Naples today, and other bits of him are at Etchmiadzin (incl. the greatest relic of the Armenian Apostolic church, his right hand encased in gold), Jerusalem and Antillas. armenianchurchsydney.org.au/discovery-of-the-relics-of-st... And, again, some of his relics were buried at T'ortan. Are the tombs of Armenia's earliest Christian patriarchs and of its first Christian king and queen still to be found in this ruined church? They've been well-pillaged. (Very!: www.agos.com.tr/en/article/18402/no-measure-for-protectin... "... Village residents stated that treasure hunters came to the monastery with pick-axes last week [in 2017] and threatened them with death after they warned the hunters.") But who knows what bits might remain? This might've been the holiest site in ancient Christian Armenia for a time. If I was a proud Armenian, religious or otherwise, I'd inquire into buying that property. Could the Armenian church purchase it? Or did the 16 locals who bought the monastery 6 yr.s ago do so with some appreciation of the symbolic and heritage value of the site (after their encounter with the death-threatening treasure-hunters), and in anticipation of driving a hard bargain? I hope not, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that's so. But it's in such a remote spot and not of much use to those locals, so they should be looking or waiting to sell. (One young blogger who visited the site in 2019, 2 yr.s after the purchase, had no idea anyone owned it, described T'ortan as a ghost town, and wrote that it should be "protected soon as it certainly risks collapse." kenancruzcilli.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/tracing-armenian-... ) In any case, at the VERY least it's one of the few most precious bldg.s and sites to the early history of the Armenian church anywhere, and anyone who rescues it, if it needs rescuing, would be a hero. (I write this in 2023. I've written much just now about a place I haven't toured, but I'm intrigued that it's in the state it's in, being what it is and having been what it was.)

- youtu.be/tzkyhAs3JbY

- youtu.be/VuYdhJU64_s?si=TRISZlluSFaQTQrC

- Further NE, about twice the distance from the Şehitler Anıtı bridge to Koruyolu I'd look for the ruins of 'the Monastery of the Holy Illuminator' at 2600 m.s. (I can't find it on Google maps.) "The monastery was built around an earlier martyrium likely erected in the 5th or 6th cent. over the first tomb of the Illuminator after his remains had been 'discovered' nearby. [He withdrew to Mt. Sebouh late in his ministry.] A religious complex grew around the martyrium over the centuries, and today there are ruins to be seen of the martyrium itself within or joined to a basilica with 3 naves, the 'Holy All-Saviour' church, a fountain or spring named Pareham, "famous for its abundant, delicious water, and which, according to legend, had sprung from the ground as a result of a miracle attributed to St. Gregory", a series of monastic caves dug into a steep rock face in 'the Grotto of Mane' named for a virgin who led a life of asceticism there and where St. Gregory and St. Hripsime would malinger, and 3 hermitages. "The monastery was heavily damaged during the Hamidian massacres." (Google maps? Hello?)

- Another Armenian complex and another miss @ 10 or so clicks somewhere SE of 'the Grotto of Mane' is 'Avak Vank', 'the Great Abbey', renowned for its large monastic community and for one of the foremost Armenian monastic universities and scriptoria, which still stands in the form of 3 ruined, contiguous churches at 2,000 m.s. (Again, there's no trace of it on Google maps.) According to legend, it was "founded by St. Thaddeus the Apostle, who initially named it for the Holy Virgin. Only later was it renamed after the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew." (see the link below). See this wonderful ancient document with what might be something of a map but certainly an image of 'Mt. Sebouh' from the middle ages when this region 30-35 km.s west and SW of Erzincan (as the crow flies) was at the end of one of the world's great pilgrimage routes and the greatest Armenian, almost entirely forgotten today.: collectif2015.blob.core.windows.net/web/Projects/1024_0e4...

- So many Armenians know their stuff. Here's yet another website (they're easy to find), quoted above, with info. re "the 9 monasteries functioning in Erzindjan on the eve of the Genocide, as well as the 3 famed holy sites in the western foothills and on the western flanks of Mount Sebouh (Mount Khohanam or Manya)" or Kara Dağ-Köhnem, ['Mount Kehnam' or 'Konem' on google maps?])", discussed above.: www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-erzurum/...

- armenianchurch.ge/en/kalendar-prazdnikov/description-2/july

- In a current and ongoing phenomenon, many Turks in eastern Turkey are coming out as ethnically Armenian or as having an Armenian parent or grandparents, having learned that their parents or grandparents took pains to hide or disguise their identity in 1915 and following to survive. www.youtube.com/watch?v=43uE1bUM_JI www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBA8Jv8N3Xc I write about crypto-Jews in New Mexico here, who were in a predicament that was at least analogous.: www.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/4288804332/in/photolis... These are crypto-Armenians.

- I don't recall Erzincan, and just passed through (I think) along the E80, travelling SE, north, and NE to Tercan. Tragically I passed within @ 500 m.s south of Altıntepe Höyük, the ruins of a fortified Urartian settlement, 9th-7th cent. B.C., on a small hill above the Euphrates only @ 12 clicks from Erzincan, but missed it. It includes "a temple, a great hall, warehouse, city walls, various rooms, and 3 subterranean chamber tombs." The ruins of a superimposed Byzantine church on-site with 3 naves includes mosaic floors with figures of plants and animals unique to the region. (Wikipedia) www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtXOkesHPY8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLZB7NI2aIU

- I continued along the E80 to Tercan alongside the western branch of the Euphrates near villages inhabited by Kurds of the Bamasur, Kurêşan, Lolan, Balaban, Sisan, Demenan, Rutan, Çarekan, Şadiyan, Maskan, Botikan, Şikaki and Alan tribes, according to Google maps. Turks and Laz inhabit Büklümdere (pop. 127) 1 click east of the road. (Laz are indigenous to the South Caucasus, incl. Georgia and the Eastern Black Sea coast in Turkey. Of the 103,900 in Turkey only @ 20,000 speak Laz, an endangered language. [Wikipedia]).

- Yet another remarkable, ruined Armenian monastery, St. David of Abrenk (Aprank), on the Üçpınar Köyü Yolu < 10 clicks south of the hwy was another miss. Said to have have been founded by St. Gregory as a martyrium in the 4th cent., a subsequent monastery on site was named for St. David "of Dwin", a Persian saint martyred in 693. Rich in medieval history, it was renovated in 1849-'53 when a new church was "dedicated to the Holy Precursor". A highlight is the cemetery with exceptional khachkars (tall rectangular Armenian 'cross-stones' or stele) bearing the dates 1171, 11715, 1194 and 1277, 2 of which are @ 5 m.s tall, the tallest anywhere. (!) commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aprank,_Big_Armenian_Khac... As with the other sites discussed above, entropy and disintegration has accelerated with vandalism. www.collectif2015.org/en/100Monuments/Le-Monastere-de-Sai...

- Bagayarich aka Pekeriç, near Cadırkaya today 10-15 km.s north of the E80, was the ancient cult centre of the god Mihr (Mithras) and was home to one of the 8 primary pagan shrines of pre-Christian Armenia. It's located at the base of a conical hill which had been the site of the town's fortress. "In ancient times, Bagayarich was on the primary road traversing northern Armenia that linked Sebastaea (Sivas) in the Roman empire with Ecbatana (Hamadan) in Media." (Wikipedia) Yet another steep, stepped tunnel descends into the mountain from an entrance 1/2-way up the hill. T.A. Sinclair writes in his "Architectural and Archaeological Survey" of Eastern Turkey, Vol. II (1989) that "it's not known how far [down] one can go [?], but the tunnel's purpose seems to have been not to give access to the water-table, but to allow the god to come out of the ground." ?!! (It could predate the Mithraic temple. Wasn't Mithras a fire god?) Two rock-cut chambers @ 2.5 m.s long and 3 m.s wide above the tunnel entrance might be tombs of the Urartian period or more recent. The tunnel is seen at the 4:26 min. pt. in this video.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xil0KgUAJRc

- I knew none of the above information re these interesting sites and sights en route from Divrigi to Tercan and their history when I took this trip. (Get a better guidebook! I've written more in this photo description than in any other in this stream [so far] as to sights that I hadn't toured.)

- I did take some time to tour one sight en route to Erzurum that day (one!) as it was in the LP, the mausoleum of the legendary Mama Hatun (Saltuk or Saltuqid, built /b/ 1192 and 1202, arch. Ebu'n-Nema bin Mufaadalü'l-Ahvel, 'Mufaadal the Cross-eyed' from Ahlat) in the town of Tercan (Tur-jahn). "Unique in Anatolian architecture", the 8-lobed tomb with its conical roof is encircled by a high, thick wall with a portal decorated with bands of Kufic script (with a verse from the Ilhas sura) and muqarnas vaulting. The interior circular wall is pierced by 12 eivans in which lesser notables or family members could be entombed and which contain some cenotaphs. (LP and Wikipedia) Stairs lead to a walkway atop and @ the wall from which I had good views and took a photo I'll scan of the tomb's roof with a mountainous backdrop. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2l2tpSEzDk

- The tomb stands handy to a caravanserai built by Mama Hatun (which I toured but don't recall). "Topped by a forest of chimneys, unusual aspects include its long entry hall lined with eivans which lead to a much larger eivan across a courtyard from the entrance, and the conical caps on its bastions." (LP) It was renovated and redesigned significantly in the early Ottoman period, with the removal of porticoes, etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercan#/media/File:Tercan_area_on_h...

- Melike Mama Hatun was a queen of the Saltuqids (whose capital was at Erzurum) for @ 9 yr.s from 1191 to 1200. She built mosques, a medrese, several mekteps (elementary schools), shadirvans (fountains), caravanserais, and many hammams. In Tercan alone she built a caravanserai, a mosque, a bridge, and a hammam (which I don't recall). Nasireddin Muhammed of the Saltuks, prince of Erzurum, and Mama Hatun, 'daughter of the Saltuks', played an important role in the invasion of the Ahlat region by Amir Takiyuddin Omer, nephew to Selahaddin Eyyubi (Saladin). The Saltuks disappeared with the arrival of the Selcuks in 1204 (S. Kemal Yetkin). But Mama Hatun was "such a formidable ruler that she earned a lasting place in Turkish folklore, and to this day, women from the area surrounding Tercan take their daughters to visit her tomb." www.pinkjinn.com/2023/03/22/womens-history-month-6-awe-in...

- In the middle ages and early Ottoman period, 2 roads converged at Tercan, the first from Erzincan to Erzurum (the E80 today) and the 2nd from the upper Kelkit basin via the Pekeriç plain.

- From Tercan I continued hitching east along the E80 to Erzurum (see the next photo), passing by some villages of Kurds belonging to the Aşûran, Lolan and Şadiyan tribes. One more Armenian miss en route was the Church of St. Menas (1790, replacing an earlier church), technically a basilica with 3 naves, only @ 100 m.s south of the hwy. in the village of Gez or Guez. Privately owned, it's been 'relatively spared' and is in better shape than the other abandoned churches and monasteries I missed en route. www.collectif2015.org/en/100Monuments/L-Eglise-Saint-Mena...

It's amazing how experienced cooks can whip up these delicious and simple meals quickly and with few ingredients.

delicious

chinese food

Chicken Breast wrapped in Bacon and baked. The one piece served two and was served with boiled New Potatoes, Runner Beans, Carrots and butter roast potatoes.

Taken 28th February 2012

Delicious!

delicious

#Sushi

My first slice from Artichoke.

Delicious.

Photo by Joe Bourguignon

Delicious

george street diner

delicious

Delicious vegetarian food in Bali

Love to my wonderful Flickr Friends and Visitors!

I wish for your celebrations,

however you choose them,

to be a long and lovely series

of **Delicious Moments**

*******Mele Kalikimaka!*******

:::::::::::: YOU ARE FUN! ::::::::::::

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Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.

~John Archibald Wheeler

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Fujiz Gojzi Coffee Muffin

GustSika

Delicious.

Deliciousness!!!

delicious

voilà "waffles" today for our delicious sunday. as always if you'd like to have the recipe

go here

Finally a new "Tante-Käthe-Selfie" ;-)

我喜歡吃蘆筍～營養好吃～

Delicious almond shortbread cookies that I made for my friend, Wendy, who is currently living in Maine. These are my favorite cookies, I think they will soon be hers too.

Cookie Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

¾ cup white sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

⅛ teaspoon salt

1 cup sliced almonds

Icing Ingredients

2 cups confectioner's sugar

1 tablespoon butter, softened

1½ teaspoons almond extract

2½ tablespoons half-and-half

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and almond extract until smooth. Combine the flour and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended. Cover and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours or overnight.

2. Preheat the oven to 300ºF (150ºC). Roll dough into teaspoon sized balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using your index finger, flatten out dough balls by lightly pressing down on them from the center, outward, in a circular motion.

3. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm. While cookies are baking, mix all icing ingredients together with a stand mixer in a medium bowl and set aside. Remove cookies from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

4. Once cooled, apply a thin layer of icing to each cookie and add chopped almonds on top.

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Steve and I celebrate Christmas and spend five exciting days in Hong Kong -- amazing food, packed subways and streets, and tiny, tiny rooms everywhere. This may be one of our favorite cities, for its eclectic mix of different cultures and languages, squeezed next to each other with nary an inch to spare. If only it wasn't more expensive than NYC!

Follow our trip at www.circumnavacation.com!

Tierpark Berlin

Florida

Mistress Zeneca's parties can turn kinky and sexy at any moment.

Photo by Joe Bourguignon