Harran
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Harran, also known as Carrhae, is a district of Şanlıurfa Province in the southeast of Turkey, near the border with Syria, 24 miles (44 kilometres) southeast of the city of Şanlıurfa, at the end of a long straight road across the roasting hot plain of Harran.
Harran is an archaeological site of great value as the ancient city 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).
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[edit] Ancient Harran
The legends surrounding Harran go back to the beginning of man; it is said that Adam and Eve set foot here when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
Historical Harran is very, very ancient too. This was a centre of Mesopotamian culture which in its prime 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.
[edit] Harran in scriptures
According to the book of Genesis, the prophet Abraham passed through Haran, which some scholars identify as the locale of the modern Harran. The Hebrew Bible also identifies Haran as the place where Terah halted after leaving Ur with his family. Genesis 27:43 makes Harran the home of Laban and connects it with Isaac and Jacob.
Islamic tradition links Harran to Aran, the brother of Abraham.
Harran was the chief home of the Mesopotamian 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.
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, which king Sargon II later restored.
[edit] Medes, Persians, Greeks and Romans
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 the Sassanids to Arabs in 651 AD.
[edit] Christianity and Sabianism
Harran was a centre of Christianity from early on, the first place where purpose-built churches were constructed openly. However although a bishop resided in the city, many people of Harran retained their ancient pagan faith during the Christian period and thus the Sabian culture was born here in Harran.
[edit] Islamic Harran
At the beginning of the Islamic period Harran was located in the land of the Mudar tribe (Diyar Mudar), the western part of northern Mesopotamia (Jazira). Along with ar-Ruha' (Edessa, present day Urfa) and ar-Raqqah it was one of the main cities in the region. 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 people of Harran identified themselves with the Sabians in order to fall under the protection of Islam. Sabians were mentioned in the Quran but those were a group of Gnostic Mandaeans 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.
[edit] Islam's first university
During the late 8th and 9th century Harran was a centre for translating 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. Baghdad came to this work later than Harran. Many important scholars of natural science, astronomy and medicine originate from Harran, including possibly the alchemist Geber. [1]
[edit] The end of the Sabians
In 1032 or 1033 the temple of the Sabians was destroyed and the urban community extinguished by an uprising of the 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.
[edit] The Crusades
During the Crusades, on May 7, 1104 a decisive battle was fought in the Balikh valley, 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.
[edit] Modern Harran
Harran is famous for its traditional 'beehive' adobe houses, constructed entirely without wood. The design of these makes them cool inside (essential in this part of the world) and is thought to have been unchanged for at least 3,000 years. Some were still in use as dwellings until the 1980s. However, those remaining today are strictly tourist exhibits, while most of Harran's population lives in a newly built small village about 2 kilometres away from the main site.
At the historical site the ruins of the city walls and fortifications are still in place, with one city gate standing, along with some other structures. Excavations of a nearby 4th century BC burial mound continue under archaeologist Dr Nurettin Yardımcı.
The new village is poor and life is hard in the hot weather on this plain. The people here are ethnic Arabs and live by long-established traditions. It is believed that these ethnic Arabs were settled here during the 18th century by the Ottoman empire. Typically families consist of 10-15 children, who will gather round visitors to sell brochures about the site or bunches of herbs (or to beg for small gifts like hair-bands or lipstick). They will also trail you round the site acting as 'guides'. The women of the village are tattooed and dressed in traditional Bedouin cloths.
By the late 1980s the large plain of Harran had fallen into disuse as the streams of Cüllab and Deysan, its original water-supply had dried up. But the plain is irrigated by the recent Southeastern Anatolia Project and is becoming green again. Cotton and rice can now be grown.
[edit] Politics
For many years the area was represented in parliament by Necmettin Cevheri born to a large Urfa clan and like the similar (but disgraced) Sedat Bucak an established figure of Suleyman Demirel's DYP. Since the DYP collapsed at the end of the 90s the Cevheri family are supporting the conservative Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi now in government.
[edit] References
- 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.
[edit] External links
 Harran in Şanlıurfa Province (in the Southeastern Anatolia region) of Turkey |
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| Urban districts | Şanlıurfa |    |
| Rural districts | Akçakale - Birecik - Bozova - Ceylanpınar - Halfeti - Harran - Hilvan - Siverek - Suruç - Viranşehir | |
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Regions
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| Aegean | ||
| Black Sea | ||
| Central Anatolia | ||
| East Anatolia | ||
| Marmara | ||
| Mediterranean Sea | ||
| Southeastern Anatolia | ||
