Charran

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Heb. haran, i.e., "parched;" or probably from the Accadian charana, meaning "a road." A celebrated city of Western Asia, now Harran, where Abram remained, after he left Ur of the Chaldees, till his father Terah died (Gen 11:31f), when he continued his journey into the land of Canaan. It is called "Charran" in the LXX. and in Acts 7:2. It is called the "city of Nahor" (Gen 24:10), and Jacob resided here with Laban (Gen 30:43). It stood on the river Belik, an affluent of the Euphrates, about 70 miles above where it joins that river in Upper Mesopotamia or Padan-aram, and about 600 miles northwest of Ur in a direct line. It was on the caravan route between the east and west. It is afterwards mentioned among the towns taken by the king of Assyria (2Kg 19:12; Isa 37:12). It was known to the Greeks and Romans under the name Carrhae.

This entry includes text from Easton's Bible Dictionary, 1897.

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City to which Terah went from Ur of the Chaldees, and where Terah died (Gen 11:31, 32). It was situated in Aram-naharaim, generally translated "Mesopotamia" (Gen 24:10), and is definitely indicated as in Padan-aram (Gen 25:20; xxviii. 2, 5-7). As Nahor was the only son of Terah who settled at Haran, it was called "the city of Nahor" (comp. Gen 24:10, xxvii. 43). Haran was the birthplace of Rebekah, and it was thither that Eliezer went to meet her (Gen 24:10). Thither, also, Jacob fled from before his brother Esau; there he married his uncle Laban's daughters, and there he acquired his great wealth (Gen 28:10, xxix.-xxxi. passim). Haran occurs again in the Bible in connection with a much later period. It is mentioned as being taken by the Assyrian kings (2Kg 19:12), and as having had commercial intercourse with Tyre (Ezek 27:23). The statement of 2Kg 19:12 is confirmed by Assyrian inscriptions in which Haran is very frequently mentioned. The inscriptions also affirm that Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) was crowned at Haran, and that Nabunaid restored the temple of Sin at Haran (Schrader, "K. B." i. 39, ii. 52, et al.). The general opinion is that the Biblical Haran is identical with the Carrhæ, in Mesopotamia, famous for the defeat of Crassus by the Parthians and known to the Arabs as "Ḥarran," the abode of the Sabeans. Joseph Halévy, however, concluded that Haran must be sought for in Syria and not in Mesopotamia. Halévy, translating "Ḥaran" as "hollow place," is inclined to identify it with a place named "Spelunca" by Ptolemy, not far from Damascus. The Arabian geographers certainly identify the Ḥarran of the Sabeans with the Biblical Haran. Yaḳut ("Mu'jam al-Buldan") says that according to some the city was built by Haran, the brother of Abraham, and that it was then called (missing hebrew text) , but that according to others Haran was the first city built after the Flood. Haran (Carrhæ) is in the territory of Muḍar, a day's journey southeast of Edessa.

Bibliography:

Mez, Gesch. der Stadt Harran, 1892;
Joseph Halévy, Mélanges d'Epigraphie et d'Archéologie Sémitiques, pp. 72-85, Paris, 1874;
idem, in Rev. Sém. 1894, pp. 193-198;
Nöldeke, in Zeit. für Assyr. xi. 107-109.