Vernacular Domed Beehive houses of Harran

The Legendary Harran Plain... The lands where it is believed to be the first place where Adam and Eve set foot, where the plow was first used, and the ox harnessed to the plough for the first time... The hometown of the sacred temple of the mysterious lunar goddess Sin and the city where Abraham, the ancestor of monotheistic religions according to the Torah, lived for many years... Even touching the soil here is actually a return to your essence...

Harran, home to findings belonging back to the year 7,000 BCE with a written history of almost 4,300 years, is located at the crossroads of the main trade routes connecting Mesopotamia to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean to Persian lands. Harran, which means “the land where the roads meet”, has a rich cultural accumulation due to this characteristic.

One of the three great schools of philosophy in the world is “Harran School”. Many world-famous scholars in the fields of religion, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and philosophy have been trained at Harran University, which has been known since the ancient times.

Harran is also very important in terms of the history of Islamic philosophy. Thābit ibn Qurra, one of the greatest mathematicians and physicians of his age, Al-Battani (called as Albategnius or Albatanius by Europeans), who correctly calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon at that time,

 Jabir ibn Hayyan who, unlike Greek philosophers, argued that the smallest divisible part of substances can be broken down by a great energy and destroy a city such as Baghdat, therefore accepted as the explorer of atoms, are among the world-famous Islamic scholars trained in schools in Harran. Works and translations of the scholars who grew up in Harran made significant contributions to the formation of European civilization. The science of algebra spread from Harran to the world.

However, the first thing that comes to mind when we say Harran today is its iconic, conic-shaped houses. These houses were built 150-200 years ago with bricks collected from the ruins in Harran. Houses with rose oil, straw, terracotta and egg whites used in their mortar, which have the ability to keep cool in summer and warm in winters thanks to their architectural structure and materials, gradually narrow from the bottom to the top.

The Vernacular Domed Beehive houses of Harran were registered as archaeological and urban site in 1979. After this date, the use of materials in the ancient site was prohibited and therefore the construction of new conic-shaped houses ended.

Feel the coolness inside these houses on a hot day, wear local clothes and touch the history of the city during your visit in Harran.