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HARAN

(Heb. ḥārān; Akk. ḫarrānu)

(PLACE)

(also HARRAN)

A cosmopolitan northern Mesopotamian city. Excavations at modern Altinbaşak, 38 km. (24 mi.) SE of Urfa, Turkey, reveal that the site was occupied no later than Early Bronze Age III. A location on the major east-west caravan route at the top of the Fertile Crescent explains both its name and its pivotal strategic, political, and economic role in the ancient Near East. Predominantly Aramean by the beginning of the Iron Age, the Haranian hinterland remained so throughout the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods. Following the death of Alexander the Great, the city became a significant bridge between the intellectual traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and the Hellenistic world. Although Haran would retain its mystique for hermetic scholarship and its ancient astral cults for almost 1000 years, the economic fortunes of the city declined as the caravan routes shifted toward Palmyra and other emporia, a decline exacerbated by the fact that the region suffered the fate of a border territory actively disputed by the Parthians and succeeding Persian rulers, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, and Mongols.

Although the cult of the moon-god Sîn of Haran is first alluded to in a treaty from the time of Zimri-lim of Mari, its origins probably lie in the Sumerian diaspora of the 3rd millennium b.c.e., as the Haranian pantheon echoes that of the southern Babylonian city of Ur. Prestige of the cult peaked under the vigorous sponsorship of the Neo-Assyrian emperors and the enigmatic Nabonidus, the last Neo-Babylonian ruler. The symbol of the Haranian moon-god cult, a tasseled lunar crescent mounted atop a pole, comprises the central visual element in eight Neo-Assyrian royal stelae and literally hundreds of cylinder and stamp seals recovered in Western Asia and Cyprus. The Roman emperors Caracalla and Julian sacrificed to the moon-god of Haran. Syriac Christian authors polemicized against the pagan practices of the Haranians. The moon-god and other members of the ancient Semitic pantheon apparently continued to be worshipped at Haran during the Islamic occupation until the city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1271.

OT Haran was the first residence of Abram after his departure with his family from Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 11:31), the place where his father Terah died (v. 32), and the site of Abram’s departure for Canaan with Lot (12:4-5). Isaac’s wife Rebekah was obtained among his kinsmen in Haran (Gen. 24). Out of fear of retribution from Esau, Jacob was sent to live with his uncle Laban in Haran (Gen. 27:43; 28:10), where he acquired two wives and considerable wealth (chs. 29-31). In 2 Kgs. 19:12 = Isa. 37:12, a passage from the so-called letter of Sennacherib to Hezekiah, the Assyrian king boasts that his ancestors destroyed Haran, and its gods were unable to save it. Delivery of such a speech makes better sense during the Neo-Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, since Haran and its temple were destroyed by a Medo-Babylonian coalition in 609, whereas there is no substantive evidence for Neo-Assyrian aggression against the city.

Bibliography. T. M. Green, The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 114 (Leiden, 1992); S. W. Holloway, “Harran: Cultic Geography in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Its Implications for Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to Hezekiah’ in 2 Kings,” in The Pitcher Is Broken, ed. Holloway and L. K. Handy. JSOTSup 190 (Sheffield, 1995), 276-314; J. N. Postgate, “³arrān,” Reallexikon der Assyriologie 4 (Berlin, 1972-75): 122b-25a.

Steven W. Holloway

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HARAN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)