Harram, or Harran was the name of a man, and a place, related to Abraham. Haran, the man, was the son of Terah, brother of Abraham and Nahor, and father of Lot. Haran, the place, was a city in northwestern Mesopotamia (today Iraq) just east of the Euphrates River. It is now in SE Asian Turkey, 24 mi (39 km) SE of Sanlurfa. It is the place Abraham lived after leaving his birthplace, Ur Of The Chaldees (today, southern Iraq), prior to entering what was to become the land of Israel (Abraham's grandson Jacob was renamed Israel, by God).
The Greek form of the name is Charan or Charran. The name means "crossroads" - ( A k k a d i a n h a ra n u , r o a d , p a t h , j o u r n e y .)
In Roman times it was Carrhae. It was an important center on the trade route from Nineveh to Carchemish and the seat of the Assyrian moon god.
The Babylonians defeated the Assyrian army at Haran in 609 B.C.
Frequently mentioned in the Bible, Haran was the home of Abraham's family after the migration from Ur. Abraham's father, Tereh, took his family and left Ur to go to Canaan - however he settled in Haran along the way. After Tereh died, God called Abraham to go to Canaan. Abraham, his wife, Sarah, and lot went south to Canaan, while Abraham's brother Nahor stayed in Haran. When Isaac was at the age to marry, Abraham sent his servant to Haran where he arranged for Nahor's granddaughter, Rebekah, to be Isaac's wife. During the next generation, it was Jacob, Isaac's son, who fled to Haran from his brother Esau after stealing the birthright, and worked for Laban (son of Nahor, Abraham's brother) to marry Rachel and Leah.
Sin, Moon God
Haran 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 mentions the town as possessing in his day a temple of the moon. In the middle ages it is mentioned as having been the seat of a particular pagan sect, that of the Haranite Sabians, into the period of the Crusades, although it also possessed a bishop over a Christian community. In 1104 it was the site of a battle between the Crusaders and the Seljuk Turks. This city retained its importance down to the period of the Arab ascendancy; but the 13th century Arab historian Abulfeda describes it as having fallen into decay before his time. In the late nineteenth century, it was in ruins.
This group of Pagans carried on the ancestral traditions, which go back to the days of the Sumerian Empire. It is these Pagans of Harran who managed to acquire, preserve and transmit the Hermetica.
Harran is famous for its traditional 'beehive' mud 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.
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