Suruç

Suruç (ˈsuɾutʃ; Pirsûs; ܣܪܘܓ Sruḡ) is a rural district and city of Şanlıurfa Province of Turkey, on a plain near the Syrian border southwest of the city of Urfa. Suruç is situated in a fertile district that is well-suited to growing fruits and grapevines. It is centrally located between the Euphrates on the west and Urfa and Harran on the east; it is about a day's journey from both cities (using pre-industrial transportation). This traffic brought it some degree of commercial prosperity as well. This was also helped by its historical status as a post station between Raqqa and Sumaysat. The town itself was primarily agricultural, and Ibn Jubayr in the 12th century described seeing orchards and irrigation channels within the area of the town itself. In antiquity the Sumerians built a settlement in the area. The city was a centre of silk-making. They were succeeded by a number of other Mesopotamian civilisations. Constantine the Great, Roman emperor who reigned from 306 to 337, brought the town under the control of the city of Edessa. One of the most famous residents of the district is its 6th-century Syriac bishop and poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh. The Catholic Church hold the bishopric as a titular see of that church, though they had little presence in the area, while the Syriac church holds a separate Bishopric in the town. Tell-Batnan was visited Emperor Julian on his march from Antioch to the Euphrates in 363. The town surrendered in 639 to Iyad ibn Ghanm during the Muslim conquest of the Levant. In the 900s it came under the Hamdanid dynasty. Later, it was captured by the Byzantines during a period when they were relatively strong in the region. In the late 1090s, a civil war between the Seljuk princes of Damascus and Aleppo enabled the early Artuqid prince Sökmen to establish a principality based at Suruç. This only lasted briefly, though — in 1101, the crusader Baldwin I of Jerusalem captured Suruç. For almost half a century, Suruç then formed part of the crusader County of Edessa.