CHAPTER VII
HARRAN: A DIGRESSION INTO THE LAND OF ABRAHAM
"And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go unto the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." And it happened that we, sojourning in this land, bethought ourselves of this journey of Abraham; we also, therefore, arose one morning and took two horses of the horses of Ur, and three Zaptiehs also upon horses, and we set our servants upon mules, and departed across the plain to visit this Harran, the city of Nahor; and there came with us a lady of the American Mission and her servant Jacobhan and a young Armenian friend; and they also were upon mules. And we all rode together across the plain of Mesopotamia, of which it is written: "When corn comes from Harran, then there is plenty; when no corn comes, then there is hunger." And, even as we rode, the villagers were gathering in barley, the clean white straw with its well-filled heads; and from time to time we came also upon a couple of sleek-skinned oxen drawing the wooden plough through the soil, making the furrows for the next year's seed; and the soil, where it was turned, was of a rich red colour, beside the yellow stubble which was yet unbroken. The villages stood at the space of one hour's ride apart, and by the side of every village, by the side of their bell-shaped huts, we saw great mounds of such a size that they covered as much ground as the villages themselves; and each of these mounds was of a rounded shape. And, looking across the plain as we rode, as far as we could see we saw also many such mounds far distant upon the horizon.
And we said to Hassan, "Wherefore these mounds?" And he answered and said, "Behold, Effendi, you see these villages at the space of one hour's ride apart, each with its cornfields and its unbroken stubble, its pasture and its flocks; so it was in the days when Abraham and Terah passed this way, even as you and I are now passing; but these villages that we see of the bell-shaped huts were not the villages that Terah and Abraham saw, for they are now buried under these same mounds."
Now Harran is eight hours across the plain from Ur; four hours we rode to Rasselhamur, a village by the side of a stream, where we ate and drank and rested awhile, and yet another four hours we rode from Rasselhamur to Harran.
Now consider the journey of Terah and Abraham. There were his women and his children, his camels, his man-servants and his maid-servants, his he asses and his she asses, his oxen and flocks of sheep; and they would cause him to delay on the road, for they cannot be over-driven: yet, even as the Arab tribes journey to-day, the caravan of Terah and Abraham would reach this Harran on the second day from the day they left Ur of the Chaldees; and the land of Canaan, the land towards which they journeyed, would still be far distant.
And we, marvelling, pondered on the words of the learned man who has said that the Harran of Terah and Abraham lies not here but at one day's journey from the city of Damascus.
But why should our souls be vexed over the words of learned men? for, whether it be that Terah stayed at this Harran, even the Harran we are approaching, or whether he journeyed on day by day over the plains to the city of Damascus, for us, as our noiseless steeds trod the soft earth, these silent plains yet echoed with the tinkling of his camel bells, the bleating of his innumerable herds, and the cries of his men-servants and his maid-servants.