II millennium B.C.). A treaty of the fourteenth century B.C. between the king of Mitanni and the king of the Hittites shows that H. then belonged to the Kingdom of Mitanni. But later (thirteenth–eleventh centuries B.C.) it came under the rule of the Assyrian Empire, in which it enjoyed certain privileges. Just as the narratives of Genesi, so too the Assyrian documents of this period reveal the presence of numerous Aramaean tribes that grazed their flocks around the city. During the subsequent period of Aramaean rule (eleventh–ninth centuries B.C.), the sanctuary of Sin increasingly extended its influence over the whole of Syria, so that, when “the fortress H.” once again fell under the force of Assyrian expansion (ninth–seventh centuries B.C.; cf. Is. 37, 12), it became the residence of an Assyrian governor, and Assyrian emperors did not disdain to be crowned in the temple of Sin or to consult its oracle. The importance that the Assyrians attached to this city is shown by the fact that, after the destruction of Nineveh (612 B.C.), the last Assyrian king chose H. as his capital and sought to re-establish his kingdom from there; but in 610 H. and its temple were destroyed by the Medes. Only the last Babylonian king, Nabonid, a native of H. and probably a former priest of Sin, rebuilt the city and temple in 555, which seem thereafter to have existed for a long time. Trade was not harmed by these political vicissitudes, since Ex. 27, 23 describes a lively traffic between H. and the Phoenician cities.
The crushing defeat that the Roman consul Crassus suffered at the hands of the Parthians near H. in 53 B.C. made the city sadly famous among the Romans for many centuries. Nor was its reputation improved when, in 217, the emperor Caracalla, after visiting the temple of H., was assassinated not far from the city. In the Christian era, H. remained an essentially pagan city, in which Christianity scarcely managed to maintain itself. The city, which had survived the conquests of the Persians, the Seleucids, the Romans, and the Parthians, continued to exist even after the Arab conquest. Today, however, it is merely a small village, which still preserves the ancient name in the form Harrân.