Harran

The great interest and importance attaching to the ruins of Harran, particularly in relation to the city's age-old association with the Mesopotamian moon-cult, has never been in doubt. The remarkable degree to which, during the past generation, they have escaped the attention of archaeologists has been due entirely to their geographical inaccessibility. So many references to Harran, either under its own name or in the classical guise of Carrhae, occur throughout the length of Mesopotamian, Roman and mediaeval Arab literature, that it has acquired a strong historical personality, almost without reference to its material remains. In fact, the few and brief investigations of the site so far accomplished by archaeological explorers, have failed to throw any light whatsoever on the outstandingly important matter of local topography in relation to the several religious shrines for which the city was famous during nearly three millennia. In the middle of the last century, it was successively visited by members of Chesney's Euphrates Expedition and the English missionary, G. P. Badger.