Guide
Balıklıgöl is not a single lake but an area: two pools, Halilürrahman and Aynzeliha, and the religious and historic buildings around them, in the Eyyübiye district south-west of the centre of Şanlıurfa. What holds them together is Abraham, taken by the three Abrahamic religions as a common ancestor, and the places here are held sacred because of him.
When people say Balıklıgöl they usually mean the Halilürrahman pool, and the legend attached to it goes like this: Abraham resisted the tyranny of Nimrod, who ordered a great fire built and Abraham thrown into it; at the moment he was to fall, the fire turned to water and the logs to fish. The dark marks on the backs of the carp are, in the story, the traces of that fire. People treat the fish with respect and hold that anyone who eats them will die or meet disaster.
The pool is three to five metres deep, 150 metres long and 30 wide, enclosed in a long rectangular basin, and over time a complex grew up around it: the Halilürrahman mosque and medrese, the Rızvaniye mosque and medrese, and a burial ground. The spot where Abraham is believed to have fallen is marked as a separate station inside the Halilürrahman mosque.
The Aynzeliha pool lies just south of it, in front of Urfa Castle, smaller at about 50 metres by 30. The stories differ on how it came to be. In one, Nimrod's adopted daughter Zeliha, who loved Abraham and believed in him, could not bear what was happening and threw herself into the fire, and the place where she fell became a pool. In another, the pool is made of her tears.
