Haran was an ancient city of Upper Mesopotamia, situated on the banks of the Balikh River, at a crossroads of trade routes between Babylon and the Mediterranean.
It was there that Terah, Abram’s father, settled after leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, and there he died.
From Haran, Abram set out at seventy five years of age, obeying God’s call to journey toward the land that would be shown to him.
Decades later, Abram’s grandson Jacob fled to Haran to escape his brother Esau’s anger, and there he met Rachel by a well.
In the house of his uncle Laban, in Haran, Jacob worked for twenty years, married Leah and Rachel, and saw the birth of most of the sons who would give rise to the twelve tribes of Israel.
Haran thus appears as the place of two great departures in the history of the covenant: Abram’s departure toward the promise, and Jacob’s return, now with a family of his own, to the land of his fathers.
Centuries later, prophets such as Isaiah and Ezekiel still mentioned Haran as a prosperous and well known city, a sign of its lasting importance in the ancient world.
