Harran
Harran, also known as
Carrhae, is an archeological site located in southeastern
Turkey, 24 miles (39 kilometers) southeast of
Şanlıurfa.
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Traditional mud brick "beehive" houses in the village of Harran, Turkey, photographed by Andy Carvin in September 1999. |
Harran was the centre of a considerable commerce, trading with
Tyre (
Ezekiel 27:23), and one of its specialities was the odoriferous gum derived from the
stobrum tree (
Pliny, N.H. xii. 40).
In its prime, it controlled the point where the road from
Damascus joins the highway between
Nineveh and
Carchemish. This location gave Harran strategic value from an early date. It is frequently mentioned in
Assyrian inscriptions as early as the time of
Tiglath-Pileser I, about
1100 BC, under the name Harranu, or "Road" (
Akkadian harrānu, 'road, path, journey'). After the
Shupiluliuma-
Shattiwazza treaty, Harran was burned by a
Hittite army under
Piyashshili in the course of the conquest of
Hanilgalbat.
Harran ("Haran") is also mentioned in the
Hebrew Bible as the place where
Terah halted after leaving
Ur with his family, after
Abraham made
Ur's king
Nimrod angry: a town on the stream Jullab, some nine hours' journey from
Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa in Turkey). The Yahwistic writer (
Genesis 27:43) makes it the home of
Laban and connects it with
Isaac and
Jacob. But we cannot thus put Harran in
Aram-Naharaim; the home of the Labanites is rather to be looked for in the very similar word
Hauran.
During the reign of King
Hezekiah, the city rebelled from the
Assyrians, who reconquered the city (
2 Kings 19:12;
Isaiah, 37:12), and deprived it of many privileges that king
Sargon II later restored.
During the fall of the
Assyrian Empire, Harran became the stronghold of its last king,
Ashur-uballit II, being besieged and conquered by
Nabopolassar of Babylon at
609 BC. Harran became part of
Median Empire after the fall of Assyria, and subsequently passed to the Persian
Achaemenid dynasty. The city remained Persian until in 331 BC when the soldiers of the
Macedonian conqueror
Alexander the Great entered the city.
After the death of Alexander on 11 June 323 BC, the city was contested by his successors:
Perdiccas,
Antigonus Monophthalmus, and
Eumenes visited the city, but eventually it became part of the realm of
Seleucus I Nicator, the
Seleucid empire, and capital of a province called Osrhoene (the Greek rendering of the old name Urhai). For a century-and-a-half, the town flourished, and it became independent when the
Parthian dynasty of Persia occupied
Babylonia. The Parthian and Seleucid kings were both happy with a buffer state, and the dynasty of the
Arabian Abgarides, technically a vassal of the Parthian "
king of kings", was to rule Osrhoene for centuries.
This was the location of the
Battle of Carrhae, where
Crassus in his eastern expedition was attacked and captured by the Parthian general
Surena in
53 BC.
Centuries later, the emperor
Caracalla was murdered here at the instigation of
Macrinus (
217). The emperor
Galerius was defeated by the Parthian successors, the
Sassanid dynasty of Persia, nearby in
296 AD. The city remained under Persian control, until the fall of Sassanids by
Arabs in
651 AD.
Harran was the chief home of the moon-god
Sin, whose temple was rebuilt by several kings, among them
Assur-bani-pal and
Nabonidus, and
Herodian (iv. 13, 7) mentions the town as possessing in his day a temple of the moon.
Since the beginning of the Islamic period Harran is located in the historical region now called Diyar Mudar (lands of the Mudar tribe), the western part of northern Mesopotamia (Jazira). It was together with ar-Ruha' (Edessa, present day Urfa) and
ar-Raqqah one of the main cities in the region.The people of Harran retained their ancient pagan faith during the Christian Byzantine and Early Islamic period, although a bishop resided in the city. Despite this fact, during the reign of the
Umayyad caliph
Marwan II Harran became the seat of the caliphal government of the Islamic empire stretching from Spain to Central Asia.
It was allegedly the
Abbasid caliph
al-Ma'mun passing through Harran on his way to a campaign against Byzantium who forced the Harranians to convert to either one of the 'religions of the book', meaning Judaism, Christianity or Islam. The Harranian identified themselves with the Sabians in order to fall under the protection of Islam. The
Sabians were mentioned in the
Quran. It was a group of Christians belonging to the
Mandaeans and living in southern Iraq, but extinct at the time of al-Ma'mun. The Harranian Sabians and the ones mentioned in the Quran have nothing in common except for the name. During the late 8th and 9th century Harran was one of important centres for translations of works of astronomy, philosophy, natural sciences and medicine from Greek to Arabic, bringing the knowledge of the classical world to the emerging Arabic speaking civilization. Many important scholars of natural science, astronomy and medicine originate from Harran.
Baghdad, the intellectually flourishing capital of the Abbasid empire, became the second centre of the Sabians.
In 1032 or 1033 the temple of the Sabians was destroyed and the urban community extinguished by an urprising of rural starving 'Alid-Shiite population with impoverished urban muslim militias. In 1059-60 the temple was rebuilt into a fortified residence of the
Numayrids, an Arab tribe assuming power in the Diyar Mudar (western
Jazira) during the 11th century. The
Zangid ruler
Nur al-Din Mahmud transformed the residence into a strong fortress.
During the
Crusades, on
May 7,
1104 a decisive battle was fought in the Balikh vally, commonly known as the
Battle of Harran. However, according to
Matthew of Edessa the actual location of the battle lies two days away from Harran.
Albert of Aachen and
Fulcher of Chartres locate the battle ground in the plain opposite to the city of
ar-Raqqah. During the battle,
Baldwin of Bourcq, count of Edessa, was captured by Seljuq troops. After his release Baldwin became king of Jerusalem. At the end of 12th century Harran served together with ar-Raqqah as residence of Ayyubid princes. The Ayyubid ruler of the Jazira,
al-'Adil Abu Bakr, again strengthened the fortifications of the castle. In the 1260s the city was completely destroyed and abandoned during the Mongol wars. The father of the famous Hanbalite scholar
Ibn Taymiyah was a refugee from Harran, settling in Damascus. The
13th century Arab historian
Abulfeda describes the city in ruins.
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Ruins of the Ulu Cami (congregational mosque) at Harran. It was one of the main Ayyubid buildings of the city, build in the so called "classical revival" style |
Harran is famous for its traditional 'beehive' adobe houses, constructed entirely without wood. The design of these is thought to have been unchanged for at least 3,000 years, and some were still in use as dwellings until the
1980s. However, those remaining are strictly tourist exhibits, while most of Harran's population lives in a new village about 2 kilometres away from the main site of visitor interest.
* Chwolsohn, Daniil Abramovic,
Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2 vols. St. Petersburg, 1856. [Still a valuable reference and collection of sources]
* Green, Tamara,
The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran. Leiden, 1992.
* Heidemann, Stefan,
Die Renaissance der Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien: Städtische Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedingungen in ar-Raqqa und Harran von der beduinischen Vorherrschaft bis zu den Seldschuken (Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 40). Leiden, 2002 .
* Rice, David Storm, "Medieval Harran. Studies on Its Topography and Monuments I",
Anatolian Studies 2, 1952, pp. 36-84.
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Pictures of the city*
More pictures*
Harran Guide and Photo Album
