TOWN
مدينةبيها المريض يطيب ياعفك جنة ... قرنفل العاقول والسبخة حنة
TOWNمدينة
بيها المريض يطيب ياعفك جنة ... قرنفل
العاقول والسبخة حنة
|
تعريف
About Afak |
تاريخ History |
البوم صور album |
مبدعون
Creators |
شعر شعبي Poetry |
مقالات ودراسات Studies |
رياضة Sport |
تقارير reports |
|
|
لمحة تاريخية إعداد: د. حميد الهاشمي يقدر عمر المدينة الحالية باسمها المعروف الآن بحوالي 300 سنة. وقد اخذت التسمية عن اول من بنى بيتا فيها واستوطنها وهو (محمد العفاك) الذي قدم هاربا من اقاربه في جنوب العراق (تحديدا الناصرية) حيث قتل احدهم بطريق الخطأ. وحادثة القتل مرتبطة بميزات هذا الشخص واسمه الذي اكتسبه وفقا لها كما اورد ذلك الحاج صلال الموح احد رجال ثورة العشرين وعضو مجلس الاعيان العراقي في العهد الملكي واحد ابرز رجالات المنطقة وقتها. (راجع مذكرات الحاج صلال الموح، الذي صدر عن سلسلة رجالات ثورة العشرين العراقية في بغداد في ثمانينات القرن الماضي). وقد سمي العفاك لان لديه قابلية فائقة في المصارعة، حيث يقوم بحركة خاطفة يلوي فيها ذراع خصمه فيطرحه ارضا وبمهارة. ونتيجة لاحد هذه النزالات التي كانت تجرى ولو على سبيل المزاح طرح خصمه واحد ابناء اخواله ارضا فتوفي هذا في الحال، وقد هرب وكان وقتها شابا يافعا، لجا الى اعمامه في المنطقة قرب بلدة الديوانية ثم أمن له مكانا في منطقة الهور التي سميت باسمه ايضا (هور عفك)، حيث بنى اولا كوخا في الهور واصبح بيتا ثم قرية صغيرة، سميت اولا العفاك او (العفاج) وحرفت لاحقا الى (عفج ) او عفك، التي استتوطنتها قبائل عديدة لعل ابرزها سلالة واقرباء هذا الشخص وهم ينحدرون من قبيلة شمر العربية الكبيرة. ثم توسعت المنطقة لتصبح بلدة ومدينة مركز ناحية فقضاء. وقد كانت الى وقت قريب محاطة من بعض جوانبها بالهور او المسطحات المائية. وهو ما جعلها ايضا منفى وملاذا لبعض الشخصيات المعارضة في ازمنة العهود السابقة للدولة العثمانية والاحتلال البريطاني والعهد الملكي والعهود اللاحقة او الهاربين بدواعي قبلية او اجتماعية متعددة. ووفقا لهذا تضم المدينة في كنفها نسيجا اجتماعيا متنوعا من بيوتات متعددة الانتماءات العربية كما ان هناك بعض الاسر الكردية التي سكنت المنطقة منذ فترة طويلة واندمجت مع اهلها. التسمية اتسعت لتشمل (جزيرة عفك) وهي المنطقة شبه الصحراوية التي تمتد من شرق المدينة بحوالي من 20-50 كم) باتجاه الحي وهور الدلمج وحدود محافظة ذي قار. وهي منطقة يصعب السفر فيها وتتطلب اياما عدة في السنين الماضية حتى تم شق طريق معبد في بداية ثمانينات القرن العشرين يصل الفرات الاوسط بجنوب شرق العراق. وقد كانت لهذا الطريق ضرورة استراتيجية خلال الحرب العراقية الايرانية. وقد خدم هذا الطريق زوار العتبات الدينية الاسلامية الشيعية في النجف وكربلاء والكوفة الذي يقدمون من ضواحي الكوت الجنوبية والعمارة وتوابع الناصرية الشمالية والغربية. كان لابناء عفك دور كبير في قيادة التمرد على الحكومة المركزية في ولاية بغداد ايام العهد العثماني وكذا ايام الاستعمار البريطاني، وقد ورد ذكر كثيرا في كتاب (ستيفن همسلي لونغريك: اربعة قرون من تاريخ العراق الحديث، ترجمه جعفرخياط)، كما ذكر ايضا في اعمال (الدكتور علي الوردي: لمحات اجتماعية من تاريخ العراق الحديث). وقد واصل ابناء المدينة هذا النفس في محاربة نظام صدام حسين الديكتاتوري الشمولي من خلال المظاهرة الجريئة التي سبقت الانتفاضة وذلك في ليلة 28 شباط فبراير، ويوم سقوط المدينة بيد المعارضة في 8 آذار - مارس 1991.
الاماكن الأثرية: تعد مدينة نفر التي يقدر عمرها بحوالي خمسة آلاف سنة، أهم المواقع الاثرية التي تضمها المنطقة، وهي تبعد بمسافة 6 كم شمال شرق المدينة. وتقع على المجرى القديم لنهر الفرات والذي كان يسمى انليل وهو اسم إله الهواء والطريف ان اهل المناطق الريفية المجاورة للموقع الاثري يسمونه نهر النيل وهي تحريف لانليل بالتاكيد. وقد كانت نفر المدينة المقدسة، العاصمة الدينية للدولة السومرية والحضارات التي قاربتها زمنيا. وتشتهر نفر او نيبور (Nippur) بزقورتها الشهيرة التي تعلو تل ترابي يغطي المدينة القديمة ويمكن مشاهدتها من مسافة حوالي 20 كم بالعين المجردة.
وهذا مقال باللغة الانكليزية يعرف بها وبالبعثات الاثارية التي عملت بها:
THE HOLY CITY OF NIPPURIn the desert a hundred miles south of Baghdad, Iraq, lies a great mound of man-made debris sixty feet high and almost a mile across. This is Nippur, for thousands of years the religious center of Mesopotamia, where Enlil, the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, created mankind. Although never a capital city, Nippur had great political importance because royal rule over Mesopotamia was not considered legitimate without recognition in its temples. Thus, Nippur was the focus of pilgrimage and building programs by dozens of kings including Hammurabi of Babylon and Ashurbanipal of Assyria. Despite the history of wars between various parts of Mesopotamia, the religious nature of Nippur prevented it from suffering most of the destructions that befell sites like Ur, Nineveh, and Babylon. The site thus preserves an unparalleled archaeological record spanning more than 6000 years. Settled around 5000 B.C., Nippur played an important role in the development of the world's earliest civilization. The city, with its many temples, government buildings, and important family businesses, was probably more literate than other towns, and the scribes have left thousands of Sumerian and Akkadian documents written on clay tablets. Included among this extraordinary body of texts are the oldest versions of literary works, such as the Gilgamesh Epic and the Creation Story, as well as administrative, legal, medical and business records, and school texts. Objects can often tell us things that were not written down. Elaborately designed items made of precious metals, stones, exotic woods, and shell allow us to reconstruct the development of ancient Mesopotamian art, as well as the far-flung trading connections that brought the materials to Babylonia. Egyptian, Persian, Indus Valley, and Greek artifacts also found their way to Nippur. Even after Babylonian civilization was absorbed into larger empires, such as Alexander the Great's, Nippur flourished. In its final phase, prior to its abandonment around A.D. 800, Nippur was a typical Muslim city, with minority communities of Jews and Christians. At the time of its abandonment, the city was the seat of a Christian bishop, so it was still a religious center, long after Enlil had been forgotten. HISTORY OF EXCAVATIONSAmericans have been doing research on Nippur for a hundred years. In 1888 the University of Pennsylvania sponsored the first American expedition ever to work in Mesopotamia. On the staff in that first season was Dr. Robert F. Harper, who a few years later founded Assyriological studies at the University of Chicago. The expedition worked at Nippur until 1900, finding more than 30,000 cuneiform tablets and hundreds of other objects. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago began digging at Nippur in 1948; this is the longest-running Oriental Institute excavation in the Near East. Limited funds for the early seasons forced the field director at the time, Richard C. Haines, to carry out each season as if it were the last. Therefore, effort was concentrated on the religious quarter to which Nippur owes its historical importance. The layer-by-layer excavation of three temple areas and private houses resulted in the finding of thousands more tablets. Just as important was the establishment of two archaeological sequences that remained the standard for Mesopotamia until recent work at Nippur showed that they needed changes and additions. THE CURRENT PROGRAMThe 1972 season saw a new approach to Nippur. The new field director, McGuire Gibson, committed the expedition to a long-term program of excavation in the whole city. Emphasis was shifted to the West Mound, a predominantly residential and administrative quarter of the city which had not been investigated since 1900. Shifting from the religious area was designed to give a more balanced view of the city. Nippur was sacred, but that was only one aspect of a thriving urban complex. Several seasons were spent in excavating bakers' houses, a palace, and a sequence of temples on the West Mound. More recently, the expedition has concentrated on the low, flat area at the southern corner of the site, where excavations had never been made. Houses, large public buildings, and city walls dating to different periods have been uncovered there. Among the results of these investigations has been the verification of information given in a unique plan of the city on a clay tablet from about 1250 B.C. Currently, the team is carrying out investigations in a number of locations, including the city wall at the eastern side of the ziggurat and a small Islamic mound outside the city defenses. In the course of the current program, the site has yielded thousands of artifacts, including bronzes, jewelry, cylinder seals, and tablets. There is, of course, much pottery, and new approaches to the study of this valuable class of artifacts have allowed the team not only to correct errors in sequences but also to suggest functions for specific areas and even rooms of buildings. In its work, the expedition is treating Nippur as a laboratory in which to answer a variety of questions about ancient life. It combines information from the artifacts and written sources with natural specimens. Samples of bones, seeds, pollen, and soil are being studied as part of a program to reconstruct the ancient environment and its relationship to the city's population. In 1972, the Nippur Expedition was the first to include a soil specialist on its staff and to carry out flotation techniques for seed retrieval in the excavation of a Mesopotamian historical site. The expedition has also pioneered in the use of computers for mapping, drafting, and data recording in Iraq. Advanced students have been assigned areas to excavate and have used the materials for doctoral dissertations. Sometimes their work has involved the restudying of older dig records in light of new excavations and valuable insights have resulted. In this way, the expedition not only brings more of Nippur to light, but also trains a new generation of Mesopotamian archaeologists. http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/NIP/Nippur.html#HolyCity وهذه مادة اخرى تعرف بالمدينة المقدسة نفر: Nippur At The Center Of The World
Nippur was a substantial city for its time, although small by American standards of urban and suburban sprawl. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries B.C., cities were not easy-to-enter open sites on flat ground. They were set on natural and artificial hills and were surrounded by massive walls for protection. The larger geographical setting can be viewed at the Map of Sumer and Akkad. Prof. Peters, who began modern excavations at Nippur provides a brief description of Nippur's Location and Layout. The life-giving Euphrates River came towards Nippur from the north and ran along the west side of the city. In addition, a large canal separated from the river on the north and flowed from northwest to southeast right through the middle of the city. The river was crucial to the city's existence not just because of its transportation value, but also because it was the main source of water for agricultural endeavors. Rainfall was inadequate for dry farming. An extensive irrigation system was necessary for the survival of Nippur. The Dimensions of NippurThe site of Nippur measures about a mile in length and about a half mile in width. You can get an idea of the layout of ancient Nippur from the Relief Map drawn up by the early archaeological team that began excavations at the site of Nippur. The city walls enclosed an area of about 135 hectares (almost 334 acres). About one fourth of the area within the city walls was devoted to impressive public buildings that attracted visitors from all over Sumer and Akkad. Outside the walls farmers cultivated the irrigated fields of grain and orchards. Pastoralists tended their flocks and herds. Consider some comparisons on the dimensions of Nippur. Cuneiform writing courses (actually only learning to read is taught; the quality of the clay is not so good here) are still being taught at the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University on the East Coast of the United States (more specifically Baltimore, Maryland). This university community only encompasses 140 acres, less than half the size of ancient Nippur. The university, however, is only a small part of the sprawling city of Baltimore, which covers over 50,000 acres (over 22,000 hectares). The city of Nippur was extensively populated during the late third millennium B.C. when political affairs and economic life were centralized throughout the region under the authority of the city of Ur, a site down river a distance of a week or more. During these boom days under the patronage of the kings of Ur who gave considerable attention to Nippur as a religious center, the population may perhaps have reached forty thousand or so residents. This considerable population lacked the benefits and comforts of our electricity-based technology. Later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries B.C., however, the population had contracted in size somewhat. The extreme south-southwestern part of the west side of the city was left vacant. The Heritage of NippurNippur already had a long tradition forty centuries ago. The site had been settled and continuously inhabited since about the forty-sixth century B.C., that is, sixty-six centuries before the present. Large temple establishments carried on the traditions and piety of Nippur. The religious quarter on the eastern side of the city was designated dur-an-ki, Sumerian for "the bond of heaven and earth." This area was home to the worship of several major deities revered by the Sumerians and Akkadians. The head of the divine realm was Enlil. As the bestower of kingship, his recognition was crucial for any aspiring monarch. Beside his temple and kitchen stood a huge stepped tower with a shrine on the top stage. Such a tower was called a ziggurat. Other examples of this architecture, dedicated to other deities, are known to us from other Mesopotamian cities such as Ur and Babylon. Not far from the Enlil temple and ziggurat was the great temple devoted to the worship of the goddess Inanna. A temple for the great god Ninurta was also nearby, although we cannot yet pin down its exact location. On the west side of the city was a temple for the worship of the healing goddess Gula. Numerous administrators and priestly functionaries were kept busy caring for divine worship services and all the offerings of animals, bread and cake, and oil as well as votive objects of permanent value. The Political Allegiances of NippurThe ancient residents of Nippur were well acquainted with political instability and fragmentation in their cultural sphere. Political unity and centralized economy could be imposed across the region for several decades, but eventually centralized power eroded. Various power centers would compete for recognition by other more or less independent cities. Recognition was shown to these centers by using the official commemorative names they issued for each year of their king's reign. An era-type of dating system, such as our B.C./A.D. scheme, was not in use in the region before the fourth century B.C. adoption of the Seleucid era. In the early second millennium B.C., Nippur gave its recognition in this way successively (more or less) to the power centers of Isin, Larsa, and Babylon. Nippur itself was never a royal capital. A Cooking Establishment at NippurDuring the early second millennium B.C., a food preparation establishment was located in the southeastern section of Nippur on the western side of the city. In residential/commercial buildings bakers kept busy preparing grain with their grinding stones and baking bread in their ovens. They kept cuneiform records on clay tablets of their production and delivery of bread. The bakers did not only serve bread; they also served meat from cattle, sheep, goat, pig, fowl, fish, and turtle. Their customers apparently included various religious establishments in the city as well as the large construction crews working on the city walls. More on NippurCheck out these other pages of information at this site.
Please visit my related sites on ancient Nippur at the Fortune City version of Dubsar, the Cuneiform Scribe and at the Nippur Quay, a wonderful Bronze Age Business District. Professional Business Communications in the Present
Record your thoughts for Erasmus Compositor. See what others have said to Erasmus Compositor. This page was edited on 15
April 2001. Email is welcomed by
Erasmus Compositor. ©
1997-2001 Erasmus Compositor, P.O. Box 25958, Baltimore, MD 21224.
|
| للاتصل بالموقع | مواقع صديقة | ||||
صورة
جوية لمدينة نفر الاثرية
