Harran Kültür Evi — Attraction in Harran

An incredible site that is sadly spoiled by the avarice of the local guides. This is a very ancient site, important throughout history until it was mostly destroyed by the Mongols. Abraham and his family are said to have lived here. It was the site of a major temple of the moon god Sin in Assyrian and Babylonian times. A star worshipping sect called the Sabeans were present here before and after the Islamic conquest. It was the site of the first university in the Islamic world and a key factor in the Islamic Golden Age. After the site was destroyed, another unrelated tribe moved here and built some beehive houses, but the beehive houses are not ancient, nor particularly connected to the rest of the history of the site. The site contains the ruins of a mosque and the old university. There is also a castle. All of the ruins can be viewed from a distance, but are all currently fenced off for renovation. There are some beehive houses that can be entered, but there is a fee for this. The local guides will be quite pushy about wanting to guide you around the site and they don’t really know the history that well. However, they will demand large sums of money for five minutes walking and inaccurate factoids, so be warned about this. Don’t get a tour guide unless you absolutely are sure they know what they are...

Harran is full of historical places and scammers. We were driving to the castle into the town and suddenly a car driving madly beside us and was trying to stop us. Generally people in Sanliurfa and region around are driving car crazily. We stopped and it was a guy, his name was Mahmud, introducing himself that I am the just tour leader in this region and I can show you the prophet Abraham's house. No doubt that I rejected him and complaint him about how he was driving dangerously. we went for a walk around castle and beside the castle we met an old house owner was an calm young guy, Muhammad, who explained about his house nicely and friendly. after we saw a sign "Cultural House of Harran" and we went there. This is the house that it came in most pictures in google map. A woman appeared and asked us 10 TL per body for entrance. we paid. when we arrived we met Mahmud in the house. the house is their family house and they were all pushing us in every step to buy sth from them. Jewel, Dress, ... . they didnt let us to have a moment for ourself in their place and when we wanted to go out Mahmud asked that you should pay 50 TL per body for visiting here. We told that we paid to your sister. generally I wanted to say to be careful there about scammers. every where you stop there, some bodies are coming to...

BE CAREFUL IF YOU’RE A FOREIGNER. Once you approach the house, people will come up to you and pretend to be friendly and offer you an explanation of the house, tea, or whatever they can to make an excuse to ask money from you. Some guy will tell you if you don’t have a guide, local people will harass you, and also you have to pay entrance fees for everything in the village, which is not true. I have never seen almost an entire place to be so scammy with foreign tourists. One guy tried to convince me to pay for his tour for 100-120 EUR, and another one told me to pay tips after giving me 1 minute of explanations of the house I didn’t even ask for. And because I knew his intention, I even refused his offer and tried to leave but he kept speaking anyway. Also, if you refuse their offer to guide, they will suddenly be unfriendly and ask you to pay an entrance fee. I payed an entrance fee of 50 Lira, but I was really disgusted by their behavior so I left within a few minute. The owner of the hotel I stayed told me I wasn’t the only one who experienced this. Obviously they target foreign tourists, especially American and Europeans. They have no hospitality or any good intention to be nice with foreign tourists, but want as much money...