Birejik

Birecik; ku, Bêrecûk is a town and district of Şanlıurfa Province of Turkey, on the Euphrates.

Built on a limestone cliff 400 ft. high on the left/east bank of the Euphrates, "at the upper part of a reach of that river, which runs nearly north-south, and just below a sharp bend in the stream, where it follows that course after coming from a long reach flowing more from the west".William Smith, ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'' (1854)
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Etymology

The historical name of the town, ''al-Bīra'' in Arabic and ''Bīreh'' in Syriac, derives from the Aramaic ''Bīrthā'', meaning fortress. It later evolved to ''Birecik'' with the addition of the Turkish diminutive suffix, ''cik''. It is called ''Belejik'' amongst the local population.

Archaeology

Birecik Dam Cemetery is an Early Bronze Age cemetery near Birecik. It was used extensively for about 500 years at the beginning of the third millennium BC. More than 300 graves were excavated here in 1997 and 1998. The site was discovered during the building of the Birecik Dam as part of the GAP project.

The cemetery was used between 3100-2600 BC.Sertok, K. and Ergeç, R. 1999. A New Early Bronze Age Cemetery: Excavation near the Birecik Dam, Southeastern Turkey. Preliminary Report (1997-98) ''Anatolica'' 25: 87-107

History

Ancient city

The 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' identified Birecik with ancient Apamea or its suburb Seleucia and described it as opposite Zeugma, with which it was connected by a bridge of boats. At the same time, it added that "the place seems to have had a pre-Seleucid existence as Birtha, a name which revived under Roman rule". Later discoveries have shown that the identification with Apamea and its Zeugma (the word ''zeugma'' meant ''junction'' and referred to a junction of roads at a point where a pontoon bridge crossed a river) is false: Bali, some 17 kilometres upstream is now seen as the site of Zeugma, and there may have been no bridge of boats at Birtha/Birecik until the crossings at Zeugma and at Tell-Ahmar (further down) lost popularity.Christina Phelps Grant, ''The Syrian Desert''
(Routledge 2013 ), p. 165, footnote These, rather than the crossing at Birecik/Birtha may therefore be what the 1911 publication said "was used from time immemorial in the passage from North Syria to Haran (Charrae), Edessa and North Mesopotamia, and was second in importance only to that at Thapsacus, by which crossed the route to Babylon and South Mesopotamia."

The placing of Apamea-Zeugma further upstream and the identification of Birecik with Roman Birtha was already stated in the ''American Journal of Archaeology'' in 1917; and William Smith's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'' (1854) clearly identified Birtha with Birecik, although at another point it seems to confuse it with " the Zeugma of Commagene", the province on the right/west bank of the river.

The name "Birtha" is found in no ancient Greek or Roman writer, although ''Bithra'' (Greek: ) (probably meant for "Birtha") appears in the account by Zosimus of the invasion of Mesopotamia by Roman Emperor Julian in AD 363.

The Greeks at one stage called what is now Birecik by the name Macedonopolis (anglicized also as Makedonoupolis). The city represented by bishops at the First Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon is called by this name in Latin and Greek records, but Birtha in Syriac texts. A 6 AD inscription in Syriac found at Birecik contains an epitaph of Zarbian, "commander of Birtha".

Timur Leng destroyed the town in the 14th century.

Ottoman Birecik

Birecik became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1516. It already had a dock at the time that was collecting tolls; the income from the tolls rose dramatically after Suleiman the Magnificent's campaign to conquer Baghdad in 1534 (see table).

Meanwhile, by 1547 the Ottomans had chosen to make Birecik the site of a major imperial shipyard – the empire's first in Mesopotamia. Birecik's geography made it uniquely well-suited to play such a role: by the time it reaches Birecik, the Euphrates has already descended from the Taurus foothills, and the rest of its course consists of gentle slopes and wide valleys. In contrast, the Tigris has a steeper gradient at the same latitude, hindering navigation by larger ships. Towns on the upper Tigris like Diyarbakır or Cizre would have therefore been less suitable for a large naval base compared to Birecik. At the same time, Birecik has a wetter climate than settlements further downstream because it's closer to the Mediterranean coast in Syria, and the mountain regions nearby are able to support large mixed-growth forests to supply timber for shipbuilding. The city of Basra, despite having the advantage of being much further downstream and closer to the Persian Gulf, has a drier climate and therefore lacked a consistent supply of wood. The Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira noted this problem when he visited Basra in 1604: since importing timber was costly, locally-built ships were small and expensive. Although Basra did also become an Ottoman shipyard later on, Birecik had none of these disadvantages and remained the primary Ottoman shipyard in Mesopotamia.

The first reference to the Ottoman shipyard at Birecik is in June 1547, when an Arab merchant from Basra named Hajji Fayat reported to the Portuguese governor in Hormuz about it. Hajji Fayat specifically referred to the abundance of timber as one of the reasons why the "large and well-populated" town of Birecik was such an advantageous shipbuilding location. Around that time, the Birecik shipyard employed 45 tax-exempt workers. The first documented order for ship construction at Birecik dates from July 1552, when the Ottoman Imperial Council commissioned 300 new ships to be built.

In 1559, the Ottomans decided to deploy five new galliots at Basra to counter the presence of Portuguese ships near Ottoman ports, which was causing a decline in customs revenue. From October 1559 until February 1560, the Imperial Council wanted to build the ships at Birecik, but ultimately the vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pasha decided to send the materials to Basra instead and assemble the galliots there. The governor in Basra received the materials that summer. Later, as part of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reconquer Baghdad in 1629, the Ottoman vizier Hüsrev Pasha ordered 100 new ships to be built at Birecik.

Modern history

Birecik was the scene of an unusually cruel massacre and persecution of Armenians in 1895.

Birecik Dam and hydroelectric power plant, part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, is situated within the district. The Roman city of Zeugma is now drowned in the reservoir behind the dam. Zeugma's famous mosaics, including the 'river god', have been taken to Gaziantep Museum, but some rescued remains of Zeugma are exhibited in Birecik. With its rich architectural heritage, Birecik is a member of the Norwich-based European Association of Historic Towns and Regions ( EAHTR)

Demographics

In mid-19th century, Swiss traveler Alexander Schläfli recorded that Birejik had 5500-6000 people with 50-60 Armenian families and the rest being Turks. He further mentioned that Birejik was an ethnic and linguistic border, because to the east lived Kurdish tribes, to the west Turks-Turkmens, and to the south Arab tribes. In his travels, Julius Heinrich Petermann

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