Florida Waterways
“Sacred Ponds”
By Kevin McCarthy
CAPTIONS:
Visitors walk around the pool.
The sacred pool has many protected carp.
Abraham’s sacred pool in Turkey
Map of Turkey
McCarthy’s book about Antioch
The pool is near a mosque.
The City of Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey, is about fifty miles east of the ancient Euphrates River, one of the two rivers (the other being the Tigris) said to flow out of the Garden of Eden. See the map of Turkey with a red arrow pointing to the city. One of the most famous personages associated with Sanliurfa, was the Prophet Abraham, who may have been born there, and who lived there for a time, before taking his family to the Land of Canaan in the Middle East.
When I visited the city in 2004, while studying Hittite sites in Turkey/Anatolia, I was intrigued at the story of Abraham’s Pool and its sacred fish. Legend has it that Abraham angered a local king, Nimrod, several thousand years ago, by objecting to the worship of idols, and also by courting the king’s daughter. In his anger, Nimrod sentenced Abraham to death by being burned alive on a large pyre. But when the holy Abraham was thrown into the fire, the flames turned into water, and the wooden logs became fish.
The result to this day, is that people may not swim in the sacred pool at the Halil-ur-Rahman Mosque, where the attempted killing of Abraham took place, and the fish in the pool may not be caught. The result is, that the fish, which are mostly carp, have increased in numbers. Tourists like me are encouraged to feed the fish with feed that one can buy there.
I know of a few other “sacred” ponds or pools, for example the Ganges River, a sacred river for Hindus in India and Pakistan. It is also possible that different Native American tribes in North-central Florida considered the Suwannee River sacred, which would not allow them to wage war near the river.
This is my 100th article for Coastal Angler Magazine. While the vast majority of the articles have been about the waterways of North Florida, I have occasionally written about other waterways that I think might interest the varied readership of this magazine. If anyone knows of other sacred waterways, please drop me a line at the address below.
Here’s a shout-out of praise to the CAM editors I have worked with for these 100 articles: Lynn and Cary Crutchfield. May the next 100 articles I do for the magazine continue to show how much I value the waterways of this great state.
Kevin McCarthy, the author of Antioch on the Orontes (2013 – (available at amazon.com), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.