Harran

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the location in Norway, see Harran, Norway.

Harran, also known as Carrhae, is an archeological site located in southeastern Turkey, 24 miles (39 kilometers) southeast of Şanlıurfa.

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).

1 Pre-Islamic Harran
2 Islamic Harran
3 Modern Harran
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Pre-Islamic Harran

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.

[edit] Islamic Harran

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 Gnostics 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.

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

[edit] Modern Harran

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.

The plain of Harran is now irrigated by the Southeastern Anatolia Project.

[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.