HARRAN

Harran is located 50 km south of Şanlıurfa, almost on the Turkiye-Syrian border. Harran was known as “Carrhae” in the Roman period. It was always of strategically important for being located on the road that ran from Nineveh to Carchemish and was regarded such as by the Assyrian kings as well. During the Assyrian times the Moon God was considered as the most important figure. It is frequently mentioned in the Bible; Abraham’s family settled there when they left Ur of the Chaldeans. In Roman times, this was the scene of a disastrous defeat of the Roman governor Marcus Licinius Crassus by the Parthians in 53 BC and of t battles between the emperor Galerius and the Persian king Narses. The earliest settlement goes back to the 7th millennium on the site. The earliest historical records go back to Ebla tablets in the 3rd millennium BC,It is known that an early king of Harran married an Eblaite princess, Zugalum, who then became "queen of Harran". Her name appears in several number of documents. During the late 8th and 9th centuries, Harran was a center for translating works of astronomy, philosophy, natural sciences, as well as medicine from Greeks to Syriac by Assyrians, and thence to Arabia, bringing the knowledge of the classical world to civilization in the south. Before Baghdad became the known advancement center in the region, Harran was the original gem. Many important scholars of natural science, astronomy, and medicine were educated and originated in  Harran. 

Today, most visitors admire the beehive shaped local houses of this area made out from mud brick.