Tag #123929 - Interview #78792 (Harun Bozo)

In summertime in Urfa, we mostly went to Balikligol [Lake of the Sacred Fish]. I learned how to swim in that lake. Balikligol was considered to be a sacred place and so swimming in the lake was later on forbidden. [Abraham, it is said, was born near there in a cave. After smashing King Nimrod's statues (in the name of anti-idolatry) he was thrown from the mountain into a fire. But the fire turned to water and the burning wood to fish, symbolized today by the idyllic Balikligol (pools of sacred carp) at the Rizvaniye Mosque.