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Standing on a bluff above the Mesopotamian flats about 56 miles (90km) south of Diyarbakir is the town of
Mardin, arguably the most Arab town -even more Arab than Antakya or Siirt- in Turkey. The vista afforded from the town's citadel is nearly magical: below, the view stretches across the vastness of the Syrian plain, pancake flat but for the occasional tell of artificial hill desingnating the site of some ancient and forgotten city in the Fertile Crecent.
The area east of Mardin, especially Midyat, is the center of the 40,000 remaining Suriyanis, or Jacobite Christians who continue to speak a sort of proto-Arabic known to scholars as Syriac, erroneously assumed to be the language of Christ.