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The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World)

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One might be tempted to ask, why study the long lost city of Harran? Certainly the greatness of many ancient cities has vanished as completely as that of Harran, cities richer, more powerful and more famous; but the fascination of Harran is not in its political or economic history, but rather, in what it has come to represent in the history of ideas, for the religious and intellectual history of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Harran offers the opportunity to examine the development of diverse symbolic universes, the various and competing conceptual machineries constructed for their maintenance, and the simultaneous persistence and transformation of traditions. The city of Harran compels the attention of both the intellectual historian and the sociologist of religion for two reasons: first, although we know very little about the intellectual traditions of Harran prior to the Muslim conquest, the city suddenly emerges as a likely candidate in the difficult search for the points of transmission of the multi-form legacy of the late antique Greek world into Islam; secondly, in an investigation of ideological and religious continuity in the face of changing social structures, the city will provide an extraordinary case study.