Road station

Harae

Arak

Harae is a copying slip: the name should read Harac, and the true form, Aracha, is carved on a milestone found nearby, which counts from Palmyra to Aracha. The geographer Ptolemy's Adacha is miswritten in much the same way. This was the first stop on the road across the Syrian steppe from Palmyra to Sura on the Euphrates, a village with a military post, and the Arab geographers knew it as Arak. About a century ago it was still a hamlet of some twenty houses beside ancient ruins.

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