The town is not a large one, but its bazaar is very busy, and its Government House always thronged with people. There is a square with a few trees, and the place is sprinkled with bits of old buildings, some adapted to modern use, and others built into new walls. Under the hills one is shown the Pool of Abraham, who is supposed to have performed various feats here. The water-supply is plentiful, the scenery around beautiful in its ruggedness and the fantastic nature of its hills, and I was told that there are very pretty gardens in the immediate vicinity. It is one of those places one sees so often in Asiatic Turkey, where life could be peaceful among beautiful surroundings and prosperity assured, were it not for the Turks and their misrule. Urfa, or Edessa as the Romans called it, stood in Assyrian times upon the borders of Greater Assyria, and “the lands of Nairi,” the highlands immediately to the north, which are now known as the western end of Kurdistan, and its name does not appear as a city till the time of the Roman invasion, when we hear of it as the capital of the country of Osrhœne, whose kings were always called Abgarus, according to the Roman mutilation of the Semitic name. The people were Arabs; and Edessa, while capital, marked the most northerly point of the kingdom. At the same time the kingdom was on the northern marches of Mesopotamia, and always being in a position of a frontier state between Roman and Parthian, Arab and mountaineer--either Armenian or Kurd, though it is not known if the Kurds had spread so far west--was subjected to the fury of all its neighbours in wars, and played traitor to each on many occasions. After the break-up of the Empire of Alexander, about the third century B.C., Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the Seleucid princes, and as they weakened, the northern portion of their kingdom fell before the advancing Romans. It was with Pompey (65 B.C.) that the king of Edessa, Abgarus, king of the people of Osrhœne, made a treaty, and accepted actual if not formal vassalage. Ten years later, Crassus, as already mentioned, made his expedition against the rising power of Parthia, and was deceived and deserted by Abgarus after being lured into a position of danger. Thereupon Edessa became allied to Parthia, and incidentally saved itself from the destruction consequent upon conquest. A century later, and we see the Parthian Empire torn over a question of succession: Meherdates, a Parthian prince, at the suggestion of Rome, proceeds to win his kingdom by the sword from Godarz. _En route_ he passes by Edessa, and now the Abgarus, with a ready facility for duplicity, after feasting him, sets him upon a road he knows will end in disaster. His theory was fully borne out by the defeat of the pretender at Erbil.