Viranşehir

Viranşehir is a market town serving a cotton-growing area of Şanlıurfa Province, in southeastern Turkey, 93 km east of Şanlıurfa city and 53 km north-west of the Syrian border at Ceylanpınar. In Late Antiquity, it was known as Constantina or Constantia by the Romans and Byzantines, and Tella by the local Assyrian/Syriac population, but is today inhabited predominantly by ethnic Kurds and Arabs.HistoryThe name Viranşehir, derives from Kurdish Wêranşar (وێرانشار) meaning the ruined city and it has indeed been destroyed repeatedly in the course of history.The city may be the site of Antiochia in Mesopotamia.According to the Byzantine historian John Malalas, the city was built by the Roman Emperor Constantine I on the site of former Maximianopolis, which had been destroyed by a Persian attack and an earthquake. During the next two centuries, it was an important location in the Roman/Byzantine Near East, playing a crucial role in the Roman–Persian Wars of the 6th century as the seat of the dux Mesopotamiae (363–540). It was also a bishopric, suffragan of Edessa. Jacob Baradaeus was born near the city and was a monk in a nearby monastery. The city was captured by the Arabs in 639.