Comments can be written but are only visible after I have checked them: these pages are not forums for political debate - nor to just let the world know you exist!

Yorum yazabilirsiniz ama yorumlarınızı ben kontrol ettikten sonra sitede görebilirsiniz. Bu sayfalar politik tartışmalar ya da dünyaya hayatta olduğunuzu duyurmak için hazırlanmış forumlar değil!

Elazığ is a fine city by itself, but the experience grows considerably if you take a short busride uphill to Harput, the "old city". It has a fortress of great antiquity, a number of fine mosques (one of them amongst the oldest in the country), a hamam-now-restaurant, and a number of graves of Islam saints. And some great views. The province governor is building a fine office too, it was not quite finished when I visited in September 2006. And then there is one of the best "museums" that recreate a house (of a rather wealthy family) as it was eighty years or so ago I have seen in the country.

Since I often get complaints that some city is "really" Swiss, or Buddhist (to name a few ironic variants on a recurrent theme) here are some of the peoples that reigned here: Urartians, Romans, Byzantines, Hamdanids, Seljuks, Armenians, Persians, Ortokids, Eretnids, Timurids, Akkoyunlu, Safawids, Ottomans.

At the time I published the pictures I wrote I would order them soon. Instead I returned in September 2007, took fresh pictures, and still have to sort them all.