Harran

Harran appears in Genesis as the place where Abraham's family settled after leaving Ur, and it has been inhabited more or less ever since. It sits on a flat plain that runs south into Syria, and the heat here has shaped everything about how people build.

The beehive houses are the reason most visitors come: domed cones of mud brick, packed together in clusters, their shape drawing hot air upward and keeping the interiors bearable without electricity. A few are still lived in; others are kept as demonstrations.

Harran was also a centre of astronomy and learning. The Sabians who lived here preserved Hellenistic science into the Islamic period, and the ruins of what many describe as one of the earliest Islamic universities stand beside the shattered tower of the Grand Mosque.