Editing Urfa (section)

====19th century====
[[File:Urfa_Regie_church_5489.jpg|thumb|Urfa Reji Church, the structure was built on the remains of a church from the 6th century in 1861.]]
In the Ottoman period, Urfa was a center of commerce because of its location at a crossroads with Diyarbakır, Antep, Mardin, and Raqqa.<ref name="Taş 2019">{{cite book |last1=Taş |first1=Yasin |title=Osmanlı döneminde Urfa'da sosyal hayat (mahkeme kayıtlarına göre 1850–1900) |date=2019 |publisher=Hiperlink Eğitim İletişim Yayıncılık |location=Istanbul |isbn=978-605-281-528-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzfLDwAAQBAJ |access-date=3 October 2022 |language=Turkish}}</ref>{{rp|292}} Many Jewish, Armenian, and Greek merchants were present in Urfa, especially from Aleppo.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}}

[[James Silk Buckingham]] visited Urfa in 1816 and ended up stuck there for a while because the roads were closed due to the ongoing [[Ottoman-Wahhabi War]].<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} Buckingham's account of early-1800s Urfa is one of the most informative of the late Ottoman period.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} By this time, the name "Urfa" had come to predominate, with only the city's Arab Christians still calling it "al-Ruha".<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} The standard of living in Urfa had evidently increased since the 1600s – the mud brick houses recorded by Evliya Çelebi had given way to finer masonry structures that Buckingham compared to the houses of Aleppo.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} The houses described by Buckingham had ''[[harem]]'' and ''[[selamlik]]'' quarters separated by a courtyard, with the ''selamlik''s boasting "opulently furnished reception rooms" on their upper floors.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} Buckingham described the city as being divided into [[janissary]] and sharif factions, also like Aleppo.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} Many of the city's bazaars were closed due to the war, but Buckingham noted that Urfa had a thriving [[cotton]] trade during peacetime and observed some of the city's cotton printers at work.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}} Coarser wool cloth and rugs were also manufactured in Urfa.<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|592}}

In the mid-1800s, Urfa benefitted from a general increase in commercial activity in the region.<ref name="Sinclair 1990"/>{{rp|8}} Most of the larger courtyard houses in the present-day old town probably date from this period.<ref name="Sinclair 1990"/>{{rp|8}} The large Armenian church on the western main street was built in 1842 and many mosques were probably also built around this time.<ref name="Sinclair 1990"/>{{rp|8}} According to Suraiya Faroqhi, though, the city's population "must have been at a low ebb for several decades in the mid-century".<ref name="Brill EoI"/>{{rp|593}}

[[File:Urfa_Kitchen_Museum_building_3309.jpg|thumb|left|Urfa Kitchen Museum Building]]
However, in the late 1800s, Urfa declined in importance as a commercial center.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} In particular, the opening of the [[Suez Canal]] in 1869 caused a major realignment of trade routes, shifting away from overland caravans and towards maritime commerce.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} As a result, the volume of commercial traffic coming through Urfa decreased markedly compared to previous periods and became increasingly local/regional in nature.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} The local economy shifted away from producing goods for export and toward meeting the basic needs of the local population.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} Workshops produced less in general during this period and their focus was more on cheap basic goods like local fabrics and household goods.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} Imports also declined because the locals were focusing more on consuming cheap basic goods rather than luxuries; they were living simpler, more frugal lives.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292}} Because people were using more local products, the cost of living also decreased and people had to work less to meet their expenses.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|292–3}} Contemporary court records document that there was extensive commercial contact between Muslims and non-Muslims; they bought and sold goods freely between each other and entered into commercial partnerships together, indicating that there was relatively high trust between both groups.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|293–4}}

The main centers of commercial activity in the Ottoman period were the bazaars, where both local and imported goods were bought and sold.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|309}} Generally, a bazaar would be named after its primary function and main goods sold there.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|309}} For example, the İsotçular Çarşısı was named because of the homemade chili peppers sold in this street.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|309}} Among the bazaars mentioned in late 19th-century records: Kadıoğlu, Köroğlu, Eski Arasa, Teymurcu, Sarayönü, Belediye, Beykapı, Akar, Sipâhî, Bedestan, Hânönü, Kafavhâne, and Hüseyniye.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|309}}

There was a huge increase in the number of hans recorded in the ''Aleppo [[Salname]]''s in the late 1800s: from just 7 in 1867 to 11 in 1888, 18 in 1889, and 32 in 1898.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|306}} According to Yasin Taş, this is because not only were new hans being built, but records were simply counting more types of commercial buildings as hans.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|306}} Muslim and non-Muslim travelers would both use the same hans regardless of religion.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|309}}

In the countryside surrounding Urfa, life went on largely unchanged.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314}} Most rural villagers were involved in agriculture, and farmlands were typically plowed using the same low-tech methods that had been used for thousands of years.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314}} Cows and oxen were kept as draft animals.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314}} Irrigated farmland around the Euphrates and some streams was more expensive than the waterless fields called "deştî land" which was not able to be irrigated.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314}} Irrigation channels were repaired jointly among the people who used the water.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314}} Sometimes there would be people living in the city (often non-Muslim) who would own farmland outside the city and deputize local villagers (often Muslim) to run the farm under the muzâraa contract.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|314–5}} In 1846, taxes could not be collected because of drought and locusts.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|315}} In 1861, 1863, and 1886, there were locusts; in 1870 there was a drought due to lack of rain.<ref name="Taş 2019"/>{{rp|315}}

Up until the mid-1890s, about 20,000 of the city's 60,000 residents were Armenians.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} In 1895, however, thousands of Armenians were killed in a series of massacres by both civilians and soldiers.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} First, in October, Turkish and Kurdish locals killed hundreds of Armenians over a two-day period.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} Then for two months the Armenian quarter was effectively subjected to a siege, with no food or water allowed in.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} The Turks claimed that the Armenians had a weapon cache, which they demanded in return for lifting the siege.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} In December, the siege ended when "a crowd of Turkish soldiers and civilians" entered the Armenian quarter and killed thousands of its inhabitants.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} About 3,000 survivors sought shelter in a nearby church – which is normally recognized as a place of refuge under Islamic law.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} However, soldiers burned the church to the ground, killing everyone inside.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} The troops went on to loot and burn the rest of the Armenian quarter.<ref name="Miller 1995"/>{{rp|620}} According to [[Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross|Lord Kinross]], some 8,000 Armenians were killed in total.<ref>{{cite book | first = Lord | last = Kinross | author-link = Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross | title = The Ottoman Centuries, The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire | publisher = [[Harper Perennial]] | year = 1977 | location = United States | isbn = 0-688-08093-6 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/ottomancenturies00kinr/page/560 560] | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/ottomancenturies00kinr/page/560 }}</ref>

There was a small but ancient [[Urfalim|Jewish community in Urfa]],<ref>{{cite journal|title=Edessa|journal=[[Jewish Encyclopedia]]|year=1906|url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5431-edessa}}</ref> with a population of about 1,000 by the 19th century.<ref>{{cite web|title=Interview with Harun Bozo|url=http://www.centropa.org/index.php?nID=30&x=bGFuZF9zZWxlY3Rvcj0xODc7IHNlYXJjaFR5cGU9QmlvRGV0YWlsOyBzZWFyY2hWYWx1ZT03MzM=|work=The Library of Rescued Memories|publisher=Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation}}</ref> Most of the Jews emigrated in 1896, fleeing the [[Hamidian massacres]], and settling mainly in [[Aleppo]], [[Tiberias]] and [[Jerusalem]]. There were three Christian communities: [[Syriac Orthodox Church|Syriac]], [[Armenian Orthodox Church|Armenian]], and [[Roman Catholic Church|Latin]]. The last [[Neo-Aramaic Languages|Neo-Aramaic Christians]] left in 1924 and went to Aleppo (where they settled in a place that was later called ''Hay al-Suryan'' "The [[Syriac Christians|Syriac]] Quarter").<ref>{{cite book
 | first = John |last=Joseph
 | author-link = John Joseph (academic)
 | title = Muslim-Christian Relations and Inter-Christian Rivalries in the Middle East: The Case of the Jacobites in an Age of Transition
 | url =https://archive.org/details/muslimchristianr0000jose
 | url-access = registration
 | year = 1983
 | publisher = [[State University of New York]] Press
 | location = United States
 | isbn = 0-87395-612-5
 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/muslimchristianr0000jose/page/150 150]
 }}</ref>