May
27
/ 2022
Dusty winds blow around the desolate ruins on the arid plain of Harran, and the mirage of the heat conjures up images of what was once the site of a medieval hub of science. Har means ‘fire’ in Arabic, perhaps referring to the parched land, but it was not always so. Around 6200 BC on the banks of the Balikh River in north-western Mesopotamia (now south-east Turkey) a major tributary of the Euphrates River, an agricultural settlement developed, which later evolved into Harran. Early Arabic texts, known as Kitab al-Magall or the Book of Rolls, as well as the Syriac Cave of Treasures both state that Nimrod, descendant of Noah’s son Ham, had built the towns of Harran and Raha
