The city of Haran (modern Harran), mentioned in Genesis chapters 11-12 and 27-29, was the home of Abram (later Abraham) and his kinsmen before Abram left for Canaan. The district is near the border with Syria, 24 mi. (44 km.) southeast of Edessa (modern Sanliurfa). At its height Haran was a major city of Paddan Aram that controlled the point where the road from Damascus joins the highway between Nineveh and Carchemish. This crossroads location gave Haran strategic value from an early date.

In 2 Kings 19:12 and the parallel passage in Isaiah 37:12, Haran is among the cities the Assyrians destroyed on their way to the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib (701 BCE). This corresponds to Assyrian records, which record the sacking of Haran in 763 BCE and its later reconstruction under Sargon II. After the battle of Carchemish (605 BCE), in which the Babylonians defeated the combined forces of the Egyptians and Assyrians, the latter selected Haran as their capital instead of Nineveh, which had already falled to the Babylonians three years earlier.

In later history, Haran, then known as Carrhae, was the site of a Roman defeat at the hands of the Parthians (53 BCE) . The Roman general Crassus was killed, 20,000 of his troops were killed, and another 10,000 taken prisoner. What was more humiliating for Rome was the loss of the legion's standards. It was only 20 BCE that Augustus was able to negotiate with the Parthians for the return of the captured standards. All of Rome celebrated their retrieval as if some great military victory had happened.

Today Harran has a population of 9,866 (in 2008). Excavations there have found the remains of a Muslim university (8th to 9th centuries CE) that some say is the oldest Muslim university in the world. The wall surrounding the ancient city had over 100 towers, of which only one has survived to the present. No remains uncovered so far, however, go back to the time of the biblical patriarchs.