"Lo! here is wisdom indeed," exclaimed the anchorite in amazement. "If the women of Urfa are so wise, how wise must the men be! Of a surety I will make my abode here, and gather wisdom at the fountain head."
So Rabban Ephrem settled down at Urfa, probably in one of the rock-cut cells in the hill fronting the castle. But as he was misguided enough to exclude all the women from his monastery, we fear it is only too probable that he did not get as much wisdom as he hoped.
But the real patron saint of Urfa is no other than the Patriarch Abraham; for the Moslems all believe implicitly that Urfa is Ur of the Chaldees.[15] They have here Abraham's cradle, and his tomb (which they never allow Christians to look upon); and they have the Pool of Abraham also, which is the principal sight in all their town.
Abraham's Pool is a great stone tank which is fed by a never-failing spring. Along one side rise the domes and minarets of Abraham's Mosque (which is also inviolable by Christians) and the steps by which pious Moslems descend into the Pool to bathe. In the pool live Abraham's carp. The water is positively thick with them. No one is permitted to catch them so long as they remain in their Sanctuary; but they venture at their own proper peril into the stream which flows out from one end. It is considered a pious act to feed them; and the great fat gluttons follow us as we walk along the margin, with their heads bobbing out of the water, begging for handfuls of boiled maize. When we throw them _largesse_ there is such a rush for it that many of them got hoisted bodily out of their element on their fellows' backs; and it must be regretfully added that they often gorge themselves so immoderately that they float away gasping, belly uppermost, as though they were in an apoplectic fit.
Abraham's interest in the pool is explained by a delicious legend. He had refused to worship fire when ordered to do so by Nimrod; and the mighty conqueror was so exasperated that he hurled him with his own hands from the summit of the citadel rock into a burning fiery furnace which he had kindled for his reception at the bottom. The Patriarch dropped unhurt, though it was a long cast even for Nimrod; and the fountain sprang up at the touch of his feet and extinguished the fiery furnace.