Şanlıurfa sounds a bit like shan-lur-urf-ah. Göbeklitepe is about 7 miles from city of Şanlıurfa, but as they drew nearer, Ayşe suggested they first go a little farther beyond to get a sense of the region. She pointed, “That’s Harran, said to be the site of one of the first ever universities in known history. C’mon, let’s go through Aleppo Gate!”

So, they did.

During the late 8th and 9th centuries Harran was a centre for translating works of astronomy, philosophy, natural sciences, and medicine from Greek to Syriac by Assyrians, and then to Arabic, bringing the knowledge of the classical world to the emerging Arabic-speaking civilization in the south.

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