Search Results: Edessa

Edessa (modern Urfa), located today in south-east Turkey but once part of upper Mesopotamia on the frontier of the Syrian desert, was an important city throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. A city within the Seleucid Empire, then capital...

The ancient citadel of Edessa (Urfa) in south-east Turkey. The two columns date to the 3rd of 4th century CE and were dedicated to King Abgar VIII and his queen, whose statues once stood atop them.

The Crusader States (aka the Latin East or Outremer) were created after the First Crusade (1095-1102) in order to keep hold of the territorial gains made by Christian armies in the Middle East. The four small states were the Kingdom of Jerusalem...

The Second Crusade (1147-1149) was a military campaign organised by the Pope and European nobles to recapture the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia which had fallen in 1144 to the Muslim Seljuk Turks. Despite an army of 60,000 and the presence...

Orpheus playing his harp for the wild beasts, dates from about 194 CE and is the oldest of the Edessa/Urda mosaics. The artist's name is even engraved in the piece, "Bar Saged."

This African man leading a Zebra is a clear indication that Edessa (Sanliurfa) was connected to the massive trade routes that went through the middle east in the 3rd to 4th centuries CE.

In the center of this mosaic dating from CE 563 is a symbol representing the four apostles who wrote the four gospels found in the New Testament: Matthew is depicted as a lion; Mark is depicted as an ox; Luke is depicted as a man; and John...

The siege of Damascus in 1148 CE was the final act of the Second Crusade (1147-1149 CE). Lasting a mere four days from 24 to 28 July, the siege by a combined western European army was not successful, and the Crusade petered out with its leaders...

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by popes and Christian western powers to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control and then defend those gains. There were eight major official crusades between 1095...

The First Crusade (1095-1102) was a military campaign by western European forces to recapture the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. Conceived by Pope Urban II following an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I...