Ur of the Chaldees

The ruins of Ur, Iraq, the current scholarly consensus for the city of Ur Kaśdim
Abraham's pool heritage site near Urfa, Turkey, an alternative candidate city for Ur Kaśdīm

Ur Kasdim (Hebrew: אוּר כַּשְׂדִּים, romanized: ʾŪr Kaśdīm), commonly translated as Ur of the Chaldees, is a city mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the birthplace of Abraham, the patriarch of the Israelites and the Ishmaelites. In 1862, Henry Rawlinson identified Ur Kaśdim with Tell el-Muqayyar (Ur) near Nasiriyah in the Baghdad Eyalet of Ottoman Iraq. In 1927, Leonard Woolley excavated the site and identified it as a Sumerian archaeological site where the Chaldeans were to settle around the 9th century BC. Recent archaeology work has continued to focus on the location in Nasiriyah, where the ancient Ziggurat of Ur is located.

Other sites traditionally thought to be Abraham's birthplace are in the vicinity of the city of Edessa (now Urfa in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey).

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