The Greek church in Nizip

From Antep (known as Gaziantep, Antep the Hero, in its name born out of Turkish political mythology) we drive towards the Euphrates. We are heading to Zeugma, the military center of the ancient Roman limes, which was flooded in 2000 by the river dammed with the Birecik Dam. But before that, archaeologists paid by an American private foundation hurriedly excavated and lifted the unique floor mosaics of the officers’ villas. The Zeugma Museum in Antep, created for them, is today the largest mosaic museum in the world.

Our road leads through endless pistachio groves. Turkey is the third largest producer of pistachios after Iran and California. Antep pistachio is a name in Turkish gastronomy. It even has its own holiday, in October, after the harvest. A 2nd-century tombstone of the Zeugma Museum, on which the child Brutus Koskonios holds a bird, a soul symbol, and a large bunch of pistachios, is proof that pistachios were already loved by the inhabitants of ancient Zeugma.

The Greek inscription of the pedestal: “Brutus Koskonios, ahead of time! Good bye!”

In the town of Nizip, “the cradle of pistachio production”, a narrow path branches off towards Zeugma. As I am looking for the junction on the map, I notice a small sign near it. I put it on my Organic Maps along with hundreds of similar signs in the past months, as I was collecting the possible attractions from the literature. This sign indicates a rare sight in this area, a medieval Christian church. We take the short detour.

The Fevkani mahalle is one of the neighborhoods of the old town. The regular floor plan of the housing estates accompanying the entrance road to the city gives way to zigzag streets and two-story houses, with sporadic demolitions in the spirit of land speculation, typical of the Turkish countryside. After one turn, the triple apse of a Byzantine-style church opens up without any introduction in a small square. Not only is its huge size impressive, but also its mere presence here, on the far periphery of the Roman and later Byzantine empire. One would expect such a church in Thessaloniki;  it would be a rarity even in Istanbul. Here, at the edge of Mesopotamia, among the Kurdish houses and provincial mosques, it fills you with a sense of home and with the experience of touching your own historical roots.

The literature does not provide much information about the church. It is said to be from the 6th century, but its current form is obviously later, perhaps from the 11th-12th centuries. According to the AintabData monument register, it was converted into a mosque in the 1800s, and it was abandoned after the opening of the two city mosques in 1888 and 1904. It was later used by the municipality as a warehouse, and then it stood empty. In 2011, it was included among the 14 churches + 1 synagogue which the Turkish state restored with great publicity between 2003 and 2017. According to a 2018 report, it was badly vandalized by the children of the Syrian refugee camp on the outskirts of the city, and now it is empty once again.

According to local tradition, the church belonged to the Armenians. However, it is clearly Greek in form, so it must have been theirs originally. In the Byzantine era, Nizip was a large Greek city here, behind the limes, under the name of Nisibis (not identical to the even larger Nisibis, today’s Nusaybin, which was an important theological and philosophical center until the Persian invasion in 363). Only with the retreat of the Byzantine empire and the disappearance of the Greek population could the Armenians take it over. However, unlike hundreds of other Armenian churches, it did not become a mosque after the Armenian genocide, but a hundred years earlier. What happened to the Armenians of Nizip, why did they give up their church in the 19th century?

According to an English photo album from 1919 (from AintabData), the church was still outside the city at that time

An old man is raking in the small park next to the church. After a ceremonial Turkish welcome, I inquire about the key to the church. “No key”, he narrows his eyes. “We cannot go in?” “No. The church was recently put in order, and then hooligans vandalized it. So the municipality closed it. Where do you come from?” “Madjaristan…” Big smile, there is at least one country where they still love us. “Attila…” says the man, as everyone here does when hearing the name of our country. In the past, this meant our common mythical king, but since last year the situation is different. “…Szalai”, he continues, tracing with his finger the yellow stripes of Fenerbahçe on his blue T-shirt. Our Attila Szalai has been playing in the popular Fenerbahçe football team since last year, and he seems to doing it well enough to effectively improve our country’s image.

So at least we have a look at the church from the outside. A dignified, puritan building constructed of white block stones. The floor plan of the Greek cross written in a square is closed by a triple apse in the east. The prominent façades of its transept are divided by only two semi-circular windows, and the western façade by three gates and also two semi-circular windows. It may have inherited its unworthy aluminium door from its warehouse days.

We are already getting back into the car when a thin man arrives with a limp and gestures towards the church with a broad smile. “Can we go in?” I ask, to which he nods. Indeed I saw that, as we went around the church, the gardener was frantically on the phone. Not having the heart to turn us away, he took it upon himself to find the key man for Attila’s sons. So we enter the church, which, despite the poor restauration – mirror-smooth dome, the plaster already moldy and decaying – creates an impressive effect.

After the first impression, I am looking for something that is still reported in the literature: a large byzantine fresco with apostles and saints. Our guide shows us a small fragment of a fresco with the remains of folds of clothes in the sacristy, but the larger one is nowhere to be found. “The mosaic was taken to the museum”, he says to my question. “Which museum?” “To here, of Zeugma, ten kilometers away from here.” He points on the map to the museum on the banks of the Euphrates, where we are heading. But this, as we will see later, keeps the antique floor mosaics preserved in situ, nothing external was brought here. The fresco – because it was that, not a mosaic, as our guide fantasizes – which survived so many centuries of destruction, and was still here in 1987, was certainly removed during the restoration.

A detail of the fresco from John Sinclair’s Eastern Turkey: An architectural and archaeological survey, Volume 4 (1987)

The fresco fragment in the sacristy today

Our guide, Abdulkarim, invites us to tea, but Zeugma and today’s busy program on the Euphrates await us. He is sorry and invites us for the next time with a smile. I ask for his phone number, so that we can get in more easily with a next group. When leaving the church, I want to give him a banknote for his trouble, but he refuses it with a firm gesture. The gardener also waves to us in a friendly way, and then the two of them go to tea together. The lonely church slowly disappears behind us.