Rufus Reade Tours

Batman to Trabzon
8 - 22 Septmber 2012

South-east Turkey has some claims to being the 'cradle of civilization'. Much of this tour lies 'between the two rivers' - Mesopotamia, the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. We begin in Diyarbakir whose dark basalt walls sit above the River Tigris. One of our first visits is to the village of Hasankeyf on the Tigris River. Hasankeyf is scheduled to be flooded by the building of the Ilisu Dam. It is an area which is astonishingly rich in archaeological remains. Not far away there are a number of remarkable Christian monasteries which have survived despite a general emigration of the Syriac Christians. They were the subject of William Dalrymple's book From the Holy Mountain. Our journey will take us to Mardin, which is close to the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, and then we'll drive to Urfa, revered by Muslims as the birthplace of Abraham. The Bible records Abraham as living in Harran, a village outside Urfa, which we'll visit. Much of this was a desert area, the irrigation of which was the rationale behind the building of the huge dam complex known at the GAP project. This has included the damming of the Euphrates in 14 places. The discoveries at Zeugma have been very rich, and their rescue hastened by the planned flooding of the area. We'll visit the special museum in Gaziantep to see the finds, which include wonderful mosaics. We'll head north to see the amazing sculpted heads on top of the mountain Nemrut Dagi. Our next goal is the 13th century Selçuk mosque and the adjoining Medical Centre at Divrigi: little visited and yet considered one of the most important Selçuk buildings in Turkey. Our destination is Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast. Just south of the city is the monastery of Sumela which was built into a cliff. The monastery claimed to have an original icon of the Virgin by St Luke. In Trabzon we'll see the lovely Haghia Sofia lovingly restored by a team from Edinburgh University led by David Talbot-Rice. We'll fly to Istanbul where we'll spend two nights and enjoy a full day before our flight to London. The tour is led by Rufus Reade who has been visiting Turkey for 40 years.

Click here to see the itinerary.

Click here to see the cost of this holiday.

The photograph on this page shows the so-called 'New Mosque' close the waters of the Bosphorus and the Galata Bridge in Istanbul.