Harran, known as Carrhae, is a rural town and district of the Sanliurfa Province in southeastern Turkey, approximately 40 kilometres southeast of Urfa and 20 kilometers from the border crossing with Syria at Akcakale.
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Harran was founded at some point between the 25th and 20th centuries BC as a merchant colony by Sumerian traders from Ur.
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Harran came under Assyrian rule under Adad-nirari I and became a provincial capital often second in importance only to the Assyrian capital of Assur itself.
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In 53 BC Harran was the site of the Battle of Carrhae, one of the worst military defeats in Roman history.
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Harran was captured by the Rashidun Caliphate in 640 and remained an important city in the Islamic period.
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Harran was a Turkish district until 1946, after when it was downgraded to a sub-district of the Akcakale district.
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Name Harran is recorded for the city from the earliest documents mentioning it and has remained in continuous use and largely unchanged since ancient times.
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Harran is situated at an important geographical crossroad, both between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and at the border between the ancient Mesopotamian and Anatolian cultures.
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Harran was from early on associated with the Mesopotamian moon-god Nanna and soon became regarded as a sacred city of the moon.
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Religious authorities of Harran, speaking on behalf of Sin, were considered suitable guarantors and signatories in political treaties.
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Harran grew into a major Mesopotamian cultural, commercial and religious center.
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Harran was later incorporated into the Mitanni kingdom in the 16th century BC.
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Under Assyria, Harran grew into a fortified provincial capital second in importance only to the capital of Assur itself.
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Since Harran was the sacred city of the moon-god, many Mesopotamian kings travelled there to receive the blessing and confirmation of their rule from the city's religious officials and in turn renovated and expanded Harran and its temples.
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Harran is therefore typically regarded as the short-lived final capital of ancient Assyria.
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Under the Seleucids, Harran largely functioned as a military colony and from the time of the Macedonian conquest onwards, many Greeks settled in Harran.
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Under the centuries of Hellenic control, Harran gradually underwent some Hellenization of its culture.
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Harran frequently changed hands between the two empires but was in practice often more or less independent.
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Harran was still overwhelmingly pagan in the 4th century, to the degree that the bishop appointed to Harran in 361 refused to reside in the city and instead lived in Edessa.
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Harran was the only city in the Roman Empire to declare citywide mourning after Julian's death.
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Pagans of Harran became an issue in the increasingly Christianised late Roman Empire.
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At the Second Council of Ephesus, the Bishop of Harran, Stephen, was accused of accepting bribes from pagans to let them practice their rituals in peace.
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Maurice's persecution of the pagans of Harran had little effect on the strength of the pagan community and Harran remained a largely pagan city.
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Harran did not continue to function as a capital under the succeeding Abbasid Caliphate, though the city enjoyed some special privileges.
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Harran University underwent its golden age in the 8th century, particularly under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.
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Unable to claim that they were, the people of Harran instead claimed that they were "Sabians", a mysterious religious group protected according to the Quran but who no one at the time knew who they were.
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Toleration of the pagans at Harran appears to have been renewed in the late 10th century.
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Harran was an important city to the various local Muslim rulers as a counterweight to the nearby crusader states.
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Harran was captured by Khwarazmians in 1237, driven from their homeland following the fall of the Khwarazmian Empire, but the castle was retained and fortified by the Ayyubid ruler As-Salih Ayyub though he soon had to give it up to broker a deal with the Khwarazmians for military aid against Badr al-Din Lu'lu' of Mosul.
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Harran was later regained from the Khwarazmians by the Ayyubids in 1240 by An-Nasir Yusuf of Aleppo.
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Harran was captured by the Mongol Empire under Hulagu Khan in 1259 or 1260 through the peaceful surrender of its governor.
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Under the Mongols, Harran continued to flourish for a few years as a major urban center.
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Mongol control of Harran was immediately contested by the Sultanate of Rum and the Mamluk Sultanate.
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Harran was regained from the Mongols by the Mamluk Sultanate later in the 1270s.
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The demolished Harran University was repaired under the Ottoman sultan Selim I though it again declined in importance after his reign.
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The Ottomans continued to use the castle, and built a new smaller mosque in the southern part of the city, but Harran gradually declined over the course of Ottoman rule and was eventually entirely abandoned as a permanent settlement.
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Harran has over the last five hundred years mainly been used as a temporary settlement by local nomadic societies.
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The water at Harran had perhaps been contaminated from seeping saltpeter from its ancient ruins.
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Since the middle of the 20th century, Harran has retransitioned into a permanently inhabited settlement due to local advancements in irrigation and agriculture.
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Harran received its own plan for future development in 1992.
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Harran Castle is a large brick fortress of unknown date, though ancient Greek inscriptions found at one of its gates suggest that it was founded at some point during Byzantine rule.
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Harran was the site of the oldest mosque built in Anatolia, known as the Grand Mosque or Paradise Mosque.
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Old town of Harran is still largely surrounded by Harran's ancient city walls.
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Since wood is rare in the region around Harran owing to its climate, locals have traditionally built houses from materials they could easily gather such as stone, brick and mud.
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One of the oldest extant buildings in Harran is a beehive complex that today serves as the Harran Culture House, a local museum and restaurant.
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Since prohibitions relating to conservation of historical monuments has hindered locals from gathering building materials from the ancient ruins since the 1950s, newer houses constructed in Harran are mostly concrete structures with no architectural relation to the beehive houses.
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Harran is situated 360 metres above sea level, which is the lowest point in the surrounding lowland region.
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Harran has close social, cultural, commercial and urban relations with Urfa, the capital of the Sanliurfa Province.
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Ancient ruins at Harran function like an open-air museum and the town is a popular local tourist attraction, often visited as a day trip from Urfa.
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Harran was established as a district in 1987 and divided into three neighbourhoods.
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Harran first participated in the Turkish local elections in 1989, though there were no mayoral candidates at that time.
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Since 31 March 2019, the Mayor of Harran is Mahmut Ozyavuz of the MHP, who won in the local elections of March 2019 with 54.
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Harran first garnered attention in 1850 when it was visited by some members of Francis Rawdon Chesney's Euphrates Expedition.
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Harran was visited by the missionary George Percy Badger in 1852 and by Eduard Sachau in 1879, who sketched some of the ruins.
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Excavations at Harran have thus continued to be very limited, partly due to its remote and at times politically tumultuous location and partly due to the difficulty for foreign archaeologists to work in Turkey.
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