The town of Harran is mentioned in the Old Testament and was inhabited by Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, etc. Crassus was defeated here by the Parthians, and its school was one of the oldest in the world. It is situated a few kilometres from the Syrian border and you may catch a glimpse of this country if you stand on the old walls of the fortress. The large greyish spot on the Turkish side of the border is a refugee camp, explained a local guy. Thousands of people live there and it is not entirely safe, on one hand because people bring their animosities over to Turkey (a blast killed several people a few months ago), on the other hand typhoid fever is frequent among them. I didn't want my son to see too much misery and I also wanted to avoid getting ill, so we gave up the idea of visiting it. Harran is famous for its peculiar architecture but the old, beehive shaped houses built of mud brick started to disappear and give way to "modern", concrete buildings. Beehives are used as stables but hardly anyone lives in them nowadays. Some locals realised that traditional constructions are much more appealing to visitors than concrete, and in the last few years they started to preserve, renovate and extend the existing beehives. These houses are quite cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and surprisingly spacious inside. We had a drink at a small coffee shop, the owners (and elderly Arab guy and his wife) were very nice. The lady seemed distressed and we found out that she was in pain because of a broken arm and showed us her X-ray results. Harran is not a very touristic place but the fortress is being renovated, archeologist excavate the surroundings of the old university, more and more beehives are turned into hotels and teahouses, and I am sure that this little town will become a lot more touristic in a few years.
Ancient inscriptions used for decoration
The beehive from inside
A teahouse
Ancient carved stone inserted into a new wall
A normal person would have finished the journey here. Guidebooks say little about the ancient settlements around Harran so we ventured more or less into the nowhere. We took a dusty desert road running parallel with the border. A new road in construction runs next to it but neither of them are good. Traffic is scarce (about one vehicle per hour) and they all stop to greet you. After hours of driving in the desert we came across a few ancient dwellings carved into the rock, and later on we saw a caravanseray which served the Silk Road once.
Most of these settlements are not on google map and
this was the best map we got
The lady with a broken arm
The landscape
The road
We found many such ancient cave dwellings
The caravanseray
The caravanseray
Traffic
The water of the Euphrates flows in carefully guarded canals.
Water is life here, in the strictest sense.
The last village we visited was Sogmatar. The houses are built of mud
brick and dried animal manure (shit-brick, if you like...) was piled up
next to the houses, they use it for cooking and perhaps heating too.
The black round "bricks" are for cooking and heating
A village where garden walls are built with the carved stones of ancient temples
A temple where the moon, sun and planets
were worshipped is used as a stable
Old and new
A shepherd
Apart from a shepherd we only saw children, they emerged from nowhere and were curious and shy at the same time. They said "hello" and blushed but accepted the candies, grapes and peaches we offered them.
The shade of a wagon protects them from the heat. A road sign on the left
We were driving parallel with the Syrian border for several hours and we were really close to a country at war. However, we haven't seen any border patrol, police or any other official. I wonder how strongly this area is controlled by Turkish authorities. I had the feeling that this arid, unfriendly landscape is a heaven for smugglers.
- to be continued -
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