Nimrod the hunter (Adıyaman)

The first man on earth ever to claim a kingdom was Nimrod, according to the Bible. He was the great-grandson of Noah and his kingdom began, as Genesis 10 says, in Babel. Many nations celebrate his memory; the Turks have Mount Nimrod, Nemrut Dağ, beautifully situated in Nemrut National Park - we are on the way to there today.


The Bible calls him the first gibor, a mighty one, and also gibor zayid, a mighty hunter. In my imagination his wild strength consisted of the ability to reconcile within himself the two poles of prehistoric existence: to either settle down as a farmer or roam as a nomad. Nimrod settled and founded cities like Ninive but nevertheless kept on roaming, being a hunter. Combining the strength of both ways of life he could not be defeated. His name reminds of marad in Hebrew which means to rebel against someone. He certainly was a man to be afraid of.

The Quran makes him responsible for an attempted burning of Abraham (Sura 21), where God personally intervened and called the fire to be cold. Abraham came out of the fire without a single injury.

Nimrods father was a man named Cush, as Genesis 10 says. Cush again was Ham’s son, the second son of Noah, the son that is thought to be the father of all Africans. Cush’s name survived in the Cushitic languages that are spoken in Eastern Africa. Nimrod’s origin from there would put him closer to Ethiopia than to Babel in today’s Iraq and give him a black skin. Anyway – he is an interesting ancestor for many, even for the Hungarians who claim that he fathered the twin brothers Hunor (father of the Huns) and Magor (father of the Magyars).