Turkey-Şanlıurfa-Harran (Beautiful) Part 8

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Harran Şanlıurfa
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 now ethnic Arabs and live by long-established traditions. It is believed that these Arabs were settled here during the 18th century by the Ottoman Empire. The women of the village are tattooed and dressed in traditional Bedouin clothes. The Assyrians who once occupied the area for thousands of years have moved to other areas, although there are some Assyrian villages in the general area.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.
The city was the chief home of the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, under the Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians/Chaldeans and even into Roman times.
According to an early Arabic work known as Kitab al-Magall or the Book of Rolls (part of Clementine literature), Harran was one of the cities built by Nimrod, when Peleg was 50 years old. The Syriac Cave of Treasures (c. 350) contains a similar account of Nimrod's building Harran and the other cities, but places the event when Reu was 50 years old. The Cave of Treasures adds an ancient legend that not long thereafter, Tammuz was pursued to Harran by his wife's lover, B'elshemin, and that he (Tammuz) met his fate there when the city was then burnt.
The pagan residents of Harran also maintained the tradition well into the 10th century AD, of being the site of Tammuz' death, and would conduct elaborate mourning rituals for him each year, in the month bearing his name.
However, the Islamic historian Al-Masudi in his Meadows of Gold (c. 950), as well as the Christian historian Bar Hebraeus (13th century), both recounted a legend that Harran had been built by Cainan (the father of Abraham's ancestor Shelah in some accounts), and had been named for another son of Cainan called Harran.
Sin's temple was rebuilt by several kings, among them the Assyrian Assur-bani-pal (7th century BCE) and the Neo-Babylonian Nabonidus (6th century BCE). Herodian (iv. 13, 7) mentions the town as possessing in his day a temple of the moon.
Harran was a centre of Assyrian Christianity from early on, and was 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 ancient Mesopotamian/Assyrian gods such as Sin and Ashur were still worshipped for a time. In addition the Mandean religion, a form of Gnosticism, was born in Harran.
Premedieval Harran has been closely associated with the biblical place Haran (Hebrew: חָרָן, transliterated: Charan). Very little is known about the premedieval levels of Harran[16] and even less for the patriarchal times. (Lloyd and Brice)[17] Scholars have yet to see what physical evidence will link this village of Harran to the biblical site where Abram and his family encamped as mentioned in
Biblical Haran was where Terah, his son Abram (Abraham), his grandson Lot, and Abram's wife Sarai settled while in route to Canaan, coming from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:26--32). The region of this Haran is referred to variously as Paddan Aram and Aram Naharaim. Genesis 27:43 makes Haran the home of Laban and connects it with Isaac and Jacob: it was the home of Isaac's wife Rebekah, and their son Jacob spent twenty years in Haran working for his uncle Laban (cf. Genesis 31:38&41). The place-name should not be confused with the name of Haran (Hebrew: הָרָן), Abraham's brother and Lot's father - the two names are spelled differently in the original Hebrew. Islamic tradition does link Harran to Aran, the brother of Abraham.
Prior to Sennacherib's reign (704--681 BCE), Harran rebelled from the Assyrians, who reconquered the city (see 2 Kings 19:12 and Isaiah 37:12) and deprived it of many privileges -- which King Sargon II later restored.Wikipedia