Abraham’s cave in Șanliurfa is considered as the place where Abraham was born. His mother gave birth to him and hid him during ten years as King Nimrod had ordered to kill all newborn children when he heard about Abraham’s appearance (and yes this looks like another famous biblical story). Abraham’s cave is an impressive religious place ot visit.

Abraham’s cave is surrounded by a large parc with a pond and several mosques. However the cave itself is quite small. You enter it while bowing under a low doorpost, after passing a room with some 12th century religious objects, most probably belonging to the Selҫuk period, and then you find yourself in a kind of open space with carpets to sit on and pray. The core part of the cave is protected by glass: you can have a look in it but not enter it. 

As it had been raining for a while when I visited, an exceptional event in ever-dry Șanliurfa, the cave was full of water and the glass quite wet – this is why the picture is unclear. Most probably there are several measures to be taken on the background to prevent that the water rises too much, making visits impossible.

Oh and by the way, my comments are made from a female perspective only. Women enter through the left side where the guard is a woman in daytime and a man when it is getting dark (a fact I understood for practical reasons in a conservative city like Șanliurfa but not for religious reasons). As for the male side, you have to go there yourself to know what it is like…
Visitors to Abraham’s cave were few when I came in on a rainy December-day. The silence gave every possibility to let the holiness of the place sink in.

Abraham is worshipped here for introducing monotheism in the world 4000 years ago, when idolatry was the norm. Don’t confuse this with the respect Arabs pay him for being their ancestor: for Turcs he isn’t. This is about the holy introduction of one God, one book, one truth to mankind, about saving mankind from a loveless, ignorant and barbaric empty life.

A popular story they love here is about Abraham destroying a bunch of statues that symbolized idol gods. When people find out about the statues, they soon know where to search: this must be the work of that rebellious Abraham! They go and find him and bring him to the statues: ‘look what you’ve done’, they shout at him. But Abraham denies it: ‘I did not do that, that guy did’, pointing at one of the statues that is undamaged. The people protest, ‘what a fool you are, how could that statue do something, it can do nothing at all’, they snare at Abraham. Abraham shrugs his shoulders, because that is exactly what he had been telling them for a while already. ‘Well, if it can’t do anything, why do you worship it?’ Thus he made his point and introduced monotheism step by step, until it was there to stay. 

You may also like the blogs about Harran, a city where Abraham and his family spent quite some time: Harran: nothing to see?! and Harran: nonsense with traces of the real past