Damascus

 The oldest inhabited city of the world

The history of Damascus goes back to the earliest phase of post - nomadic economic development – the fourth millennium or before – making Damascus one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban centers in the world. Damascus was able to guard its traditions perhaps more than any other of the great cities of the Middle East.

The first historical records of Dimashqa (Damascus) are in the Mari tables (2500 BC), and a little later “Dimaski” in the Ebla archives. Amorite settlement began around the beginning of the second millennium Damascus came into the Egyptian sphere of influence and is mentioned in the Amarna archives (14 C BC). The city fell to the Assyrians in 732 BC. In 572, the Neo-Babylonian King, Nebuchandnezzar, conquered Syria but the dynasty was overwhelmed shortly in 539. it was then taken by the Persians when the Persian king, Cyrus, took the whole region in the course of the sweep towards the Aegean Alexandria’s great campaign brought Damascus under Greek control in 332 following the battle of Issus.

The Greeks rule brought town planning to Damascus (Damascus – Straight Street) but wrangling for control between Seleucids and Ptolemies weakened Greek authority, and the lake of effective administration by the 1^st century BC introduced a phase of uncertainty including a period of Nabatean domination. The Greeks rule was ended by the Roman conquest in 64 BC.

Roman rule lasted for 700 years. Damascus flourished under Roman rule. From 37 BC to AD 54, the Romans accepted continued Nabatean control of Damascus. It remained a city-state and kept its major trading role. Given the importance of the E route via Palmyra. The cult centre, originally a BC Aramean temple dedicated to the god Haded, was taken over the Romans through the concretizations of Hadad with Jupiter. From the 1^st century AD the temple compound was rebuilt to grandiose, imperial plan (Damascus – Umayyad Mosque). The town plan was improved further, and the city was walled and furnished with seven gates.

Damascus was associated with the earliest phase of the spread of Christianity and the mission of St. Paul. After the adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion in the 4^th century, the Temple of Jupiter-Hadad was adapted to the cathedral of St. John. In 635-6 the city surrendered twice to a Muslim army, the second time to Khalid Bin Al-Walid after a 6months siege. It was made the capital of the Umayyad Empire under the 5^th Caliph, Al-Moawiya, in 661. The Umayyad Empire survived only 90 years but it provided Damascus with the most lasting and impressive monuments to its fame, the great Mosque of the Umayyads, built by the Caliph Al-Walid after 706 on the site of the cathedral of St. John. The Abbasids, successors to the Umayyads, based their rule in Baghdad and deliberately neglected Damascus. The fall in populations and status continued under the turbulent days (10 – 12C) of the competing Tulunid, Ikshibib, Fatimid, Hamdanid and Seljuq dynasties, which struggled, for control of Syria from their power in Cairo and Aleppo. There are virtually no remains in Damascus of these centuries of disruption.

The Muslim resistance to the Crusades began the reversal of this decline. It brought a concentration on Damascus as a bastion of the Muslim forces. Damascus was twice attacked by Crusades force (1129, 1140). Under the Zengids, Nur Al-Din took the city more by charm than by arms in 154. During his reign, but particularly under his successor Saladin (1176 – 93), Damascus again became a political centre of note and its economy recovered much of its vigor. Contemporary European travelers noted that the city was considerably larger than either Paris or Florence. It attracted leading theological and philosophical figures, as well as poets.

Several Mongol invasions (1260, 1299, 1400 under Timor) did much to raze the fabric of the city. Gradually, however, the Mameluke dynasties based in Cairo, restored prosperity to the city after 160 and put a final end to the Crusades presence in Syria. The early phase of Mameluke rule was a golden age for Damascus, particularly during the rule of Baibars (1260 – 77). Some of the most resplendent monuments of Islamic Damascus date from these decades when the city was the second capital of the Mameluke Empire.

 In 1516, the Ottoman Turks conquered Syria and incorporated it into their empire. At first relativity enlightened and progressive, Ottoman control varied in its effects with the capacities of its Governors. Much of the importance of the city for the Ottoman lay in its position as the last of the major populations centers where travelers could provision themselves before the hajj towards Mecca.

The 19^th century was a more troubled period. With local resentment against the Ottomans rising and the city readily supported the cause of Muhammad Ali who had led a revolt against Istanbul from Cairo. Direct Ottoman rule was resorted in 1840 but, in the face of rise of Arab nationalism in the late 19^th century, continued Turkish rule had little to offer except stagnation in economic terms.

Al-Hamidiah Covered Bazar

The evidence of the history of the city can still be traced in its topography and hence the residual broad divisions into quarters still housing significant minority population: Christians in the E quarter: Jews south of the central part of Straight Street: Shiites to the north east of the Umayyad Mosque.

The Umayyad Mosque

As the Muslim population of Damascus grew, the Caliph Al-Walid (r 705 – 15) recognized the need for a congregational assembly area capable of accommodating the entire community. The obvious place was the Greco-Roman temple compound occupied by the Christian church. The work was commissioned in 708 and construction finished in 714-15. The Caliph used local Syrian craftsmen to execute much of the glorious mosaic work, which survives only in part. The prayer hall was based on the mosque built by the Prophet in Medina. The mosque has survived the intervening 1200 years with surprising integrity in spit successive invasions, Mongol sackings and the ravages of earthquakes and fire.

Maaloula

Maaloula is some 50 kilometers from Damascus. The first part of the route, a steep climb all the way, is by motorway, then, on top of the limestone plateau, it follows a narrow road at the foot of a line of cliffs at an altitude of more than 1,600 meters. The light is blinding, the landscape is bare, there is not a single tree. There are only a few crawling vines here and there to relieve the stony ochre landscape, brilliant in the relentless sunshine. Suddenly a narrow fissure appears and widens soon into a deep valley. There are large patches of green again; fig trees sprout from the slopes; there are gardens surrounded by apricots; slender poplar trees appear - an oasis after the rigor of a desert crossing. Around the last bend in the road Maaloula appears.

To call it a honeycomb is really too hackneyed. Perhaps as many as a couple of hundred little cubes of masonry, all close together, seem to cling to the cliff - piled against it up to the point where it becomes a sheer wall. They are plastered in yellow, blue and sometimes mauve, making a bright contrast with the ochre of the rock, fissured in great dark stripes. Tiny windows and openings and little balconies on rickety wooden beams give some contrasting shadow to what seems like a vast.

At the foot of this town the road divides. The left-hand branch leads up a steep ravine and emerges on a plateau planted with vines and fruit trees. A low, blue-domed building houses a small community of monks who work are peasants and in their vineyards, and have a particular devotion to Saint Sergius: Mar Sarkis. A low doorway - defensive as well as being a sign humility - leads to the monastery and the Byzantine church, which are of little interest apart from the impressive view they afford of the country below.

The right-hand branch of the road at the foot of the town leads up the slope; a stream gushes down a cleft at our feet and ahead there is good close view of the jumbled pile of houses. The imposing building to the right, at the foot of the cliffs, is another convert, dedicated this time to Saint Thecla, Mar Takla, a native of Asia Minor. Deeply moved by Saint Paul’s epistles, Mar Takla converted to Christianity. Disowned by her father, she went into exile and found asylum in Syria where she lived a mountain cavern in the Qalamoun mountain. She devoted her life to prayer and to others, which won her the respect, admiration and gratitude of the region’s rural inhabitants. When she died, the cavern became a holy place. Today it is open to tourists. A series of steps and terraces leads to the various levels of the building and to a modern domed church of no artistic interest; from there we can reach a grotto where the water dripping from the roof is said to possess miraculous powers.

The community has another feature that will interest the visitor. Both men and women in Maaloula understand Arabic, the national language taught in all the schools, but continue to speak among themselves in the old Syrian dialect known to philologists as "Western Aramaic", an extremely ancient language current in the Middle east during the first millenium before Christ. Two books of the Bible, Daniel and Esdras, were written in Western Aramaic. It was also the language of Christ. The Lord’s Prayer, the prayer of Christians all over the world, was first spoken in Aramaic; the monks of Mar Sarkis have made a recording of it in this language for visitors.

Seidnaya

To  begin with there is the same plateau landscape like that around Maaloula. The road follows, at some distance, the rocky mountains of the Qalamoun range. Gradually the spares cornlands give way to vineyards and olive groves. Halboun, near Seidnaya, has been famous since ancient times for the quality of its wines (they are even given a favorable mention in the Bible).

The town of Seidnaya is spread out over a hillside. While lacking the exceptional appeal of Maaloula it is however a fine prospect - though somewhat spoiled by a rash of concrete sheds and other erections… The squareish houses, with high airy arcaded fronts, rise like giant steps up the rocky hill, which is crowned by an imposing building rather like a fortress, despite its colonnade galleries and the little blue domes indicating the presence of a Byzantine church.

Seidnaya has indeed grown up around an important convent which has been famous throughout the Christian East, ever since its foundation in 547. Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin (Seydnâtâ, Seydâ Nâyâ, means "Our Lady, Notre Dame" in Syriac), it contains one of the four paintings of the Virgin attributed to Saint Luke the Evangelist. This is called in Syriac, Chahoura or Chagoura (Vhahira in Arabic): the Illustrious, the Celebrated, the Most Famous, the Best Known.

There are still some fifty sisters living in the convent; they belong to the Orthodox rite and come under the Patriarch of Antioch who has his headquarters in Damascus.

Tourists are admitted to the chapel containing the painting of the Virgin attributed to Saint Luke. A forgotten verse from the Book of Exodus (Chap. 3, v.5), over the entrance, recalls a commandment lost to the Catholic Church but still current in Islam: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground". The walls of a tiny, low-ceiling room, lit only by candles, are covered with very old icons. Unfortunately only the silver frames surrounding the paintings can be seen - the paint itself is so dirty that it is impossible to make out the pictures. The painting by Saint Luke is half-hidden in a kind of tabernacle. The main pilgrimage to Seidnaya takes places on the 8^th of September. Visitors can buy lace and embroidery made here by the Community.

Palmyra

A superior place were art and history comes together

Palmyra is one of the great sites of the ancient world. The remain of this Oasis city, midway between the Mediterranean seaboard and the thin cultivate zone of the Euphrates, seem suspended in time in this harsh desert environment. A visit to Palmyra is an experience, which alone makes the trip to Syria worthwhile.

Palmyra owes its origins to the extensive oasis to the south of the ruins. The dates, olive and pomegranate orchards are watered by underground spring emerging from the mountains that enclose it to the north and south. It is mentioned in the archives of the period from Mari (18^th century BC). The Semitic name Tadmor is mentioned in Assyrian archives.

The Seleucids seem to have ignored it and the early Romans found it an elusive prize. It was probably fully integrated into the Province of Syria by the reign of Nero (54-68).  The coalition of Arab interest between Homs and Palmyra was formed to secure a new short cut across the desert. It was an instant success. Much of the trade between the Mediterranean and the East flowed through Palmyra.

In the second half of the 3^rd century, however, the rulers of Palmyra began to reassert their independence. Partly this reflected the breakdown of central control throughout the Empire following successive power struggles in Rome. A Palmyrene leader, Septimius Odenathus, rose to prominence as the local strong man by seeking and exploring Rome’s favor. He was apparently put in charge of Rome’s legions in the area when appointed Consul and governor of Syria Phoenice (256/7) by the Emperor Valerian (Emperor 253 –60), at a time of intense Sasanian pressure.

In 267/8 Odenathus was murdered and his wife Zenobia, was determined to realize on her husband’s inheritance and to by-pass the constructions on Palmyra’s commercial interest resulting from Sasanian control of the Tigris/Euphrates mouth. She asserted Palmyene power westwards, taking Bosra and venturing as far as Egypt in 269/70. It seems for a time she entertained ambitions of sharing the Roman world with the new Emperor, Aurelian (270/5). She with the title of Augusta would reign in the East leaving the Western Mediterranean provinces to him.

At the height of its prosperity in the 2^nd century, Palmyra was a center rivaling Antioch, at least in economic importance. It was particularly favored by Hadrian during his tour of the Eastern provinces in AD 129, being declared by him a free city and renamed Palmyra Hadriana. In 194 AD the city was transferred to the new province of Syria Phoenice. By 212 AD under Caracalla, the city was declared a Roman colony.

The response was in 272 when Aurelian recovered Anatolia and Antioch defeating a large Palmyrene force out side Emesa (Homs). He went to attack Palmyra; Queen Zenobia attempted to flee eastwards but was captured and taken to Rome with gold chains and exotic jewellery. Aurelian allowed his troops to massacre the Palmyrene people indiscriminately and sack much of the city. Even Bell Temple was pillaged, its treasures confiscated.

Roman control now became tighter, Palmyra becoming even less a trading center and more a strategic asset securing Rome’s eastern frontiers. The city was expanded under Diocletain (284 – 305) and walled against the Sasanian threat. In the Byzantine period, several churches were constructed and the walls further strengthened under Justinian (527 – 65). It a taken by Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, one of the military leaders under the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, in 634 but later played only a minor role in the Islamic period.

Aleppo

A poem in a stone, gray by day and gold by night

Settled for at least eight millennia, its recorded history first comes to light in the archives of Mari and of the Hittites in the early to mid second millennium BC. The Amorite kingdom of Yamkhad, central pf Aleppo, controlled many of the cities and towns in Northern Syria at the beginning of Syria but at the 1800 BC it was subject to pressures from the east from Mitanni and, eventually, the overall supremacy of the Hittites.

The Assyrians became the next foreign power to exert their domination in the area (8 – 4C BC), followed by the Neo-Babylonians then the Persians (539 – 333), whose supremacy lasted until Alexander’s great campaign cleared the way for the Seleucid Greeks to establish their claim of the area. 

Aleppo fell to the Arab armies resistance in 637. It played a secondary role to Damascus under the Umayyads and Baghdad under the Abbasids. It became the center of autonomous power in the 10^th century under the dynasty of the Hamdanids (944 – 1003), particularly under Saif Al-Dawla (r 944 – 67). However his style taunted the Byzantines into reasserting their power in the area through an invasion of Northern Syria in 962 by General Nicephorus Phocas, who methodically sacked Aleppo. After a period of renewed local rule under the Bedouin Mirdasids (1023 – 79), Aleppo was conquered by the Seljuq Turks in 1070.

Following their capture of Antioch in 1098, the Crusaders took much of the surroundings of Aleppo, strangling the city by cutting off its access to the coast. It was the city’s religious leader, Ibn Al-Khashab, who rallied the Muslims and invited in Seljuq forces form Almosul (Northern Iraq). Zengi, a Mosul Turk, possessed a sense of mission and dedication which most of his predecessors in recent decades had lacked. He built up Aleppo as a center of resistance to the Crusaders. This period of Zengi rule (1128 – 70) continued under his son, Nur Al-Din, with measures to restore the city’s crumbling facilities after years of neglect.

The Ayyubid period (1176 – 1260) saw the role in Aleppo of one of its most illustrious governors, Al-Zaher Ghazi (r 1193 – 1215), a son of Saladin. Ghazi ‘s work in the major re-fortification of the citadel is still evident. The work and ruling of Zengi made Aleppo one of three premier cities of the Islamic works whose new international trading role was recognized by series of treaties with Venice (1207 – 54).

Northern Syria, including Aleppo, devastated by the Mongol invasion of 1260, which gave the impetus to the Egypt-based Mameluke’s to seize control of Syria. The Mameluke period lasted from 1260 to 1516. Given Aleppo’s exposures to the northern threats, it was many decades (marked by earthquakes, plagues and further Mongol raids) before confidence in the city was restored. Subsequent economic recovery in the 15^th century owed much to the diversion through Aleppo of the silk caravans tat since the Mongol invasion had preferred the more northerly route via factories on the Black Sea or Cilicia. Thus began the era of the great Khans or warehouses. The spices and fabrics, the gems and precious metals of the trade from the east were traded and re-loaded for the trip across the mountains to the Mediterranean, while Europe manufacturers were traded in the opposite direction.

 From 1516 Turkish Ottoman forces took control of Syria. Aleppo was the seat of a Turkish governor (Wali). Though it was often subject to the anarchy that beset other Ottoman centers in times of weak government, commercially it thrived. During the first Ottoman century, the earlier Venetian presence was complemented by French (1535), English (1580), and Dutch (1612) factories and consulates established under “capitulation” threats with the Ottomans. Aleppo became the principle entrepot of the Levant, now unified in one power, a role that brought the construction of the great suqs, which still grace, the city.

 The late Ottoman period, an era of tentative reform and Westernization, saw some new constructions of quarters such as Al-Aziziye ad the linking of Aleppo to Damascus by rail a fart of he Hijaz project (1906) and to Istanbul (1912). Ottoman rule lasted until Allied forces occupied Syria at the end of First World War. The political separation of Turkey and Syria has brought a severing of much of Aleppo’s natural economic hinterland to the north.

The small hill on which the citadel of Aleppo is located is a natural feature utilized as fare back as the Amorite federation under Yamkhad before the Hittite conquest in the 16^th century BC. The earliest remains unearthed, however, relate to the religious, not military, use – two lions carved out of basalt, part of a Neo-Hittite temple of the 10^th century BC.

The first citadel was probably constructed on this site by the Seleucids (333 – 64 BC), separate from the ancient town to the west. Under the Greeks, the local cult of the god Hadad, which had been nurtured here since the time of the Amorites, was taken over and equated with the Greek god, Zeus.  It became the impregnable base for Muslim power in Northern Syria. Towards the end of the 12^th century, after Saladin’ successes against the Crusaders and when the Ayyubid had established their control of Syria, it was made the focal point of the new city established by Al-Malik Al-Zaher Ghazi (r1193-1215). After the Mongol invasion the citadel was restored in 1292, only to be razed again by the final wave led by Timor in 1400.

Crack Des Chevaliers

“Grace, wisdom and beauty you may enjoy, but beware pride which alone can tarnish all the rest”

These are the words that are craved in Latin inscription at the corner of the loggia. The Crack is one of the greatest buildings of all times. It is a supreme example of Crusader castle building, showing the full flowering of the Hospitallers’ style, which went far beyond the solid adaptation of Byzantine models that had previously influenced the castle of the first half of the 12^th century. No matter how many times you visit the great fortress, it never presents the same face. 

The site lies on a hill, a position that had long been an important defensive site before the Crusades developed it. The Emir of Homs constructed the first fortress on this site in 1031 that installed a colony of Kurds.  

The crusades arrived in February 1099 when Raymond Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse, resumed his journey south to Jerusalem after the Bloody taken in Maarat Al-Numan. The Emir of Homs reoccupied this site when the Crusades passed on. It was not until 1110 that Tancred, Regent of Antioch, retook it.

The Crusader castle survived two major Muslim challenges in the late 12^th century. Nur Al-Din was beaten beneath the castle in 1163 by a strong coalition of Christian forces from Tripoli and Antioch. In 1188, moving up the coast after his great victory over the kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin, Saladin by-passed the castle after a one-day trial siege.

During the 13^th century, the crusades presence away from the coast thinned out and the garrison at the Crack dwindled further with the lake of new recruits from Europe. In 1276, the Mameluke under Sultan Baibars began a concerted effort to assert Muslim supremacy in Syria. Baibars invested the Crack in 1271 punching o hole in its outer wall bottling up the Hospitallers in the inner defenses. The Hospitallers surrendered and were given safe conduct to Tripoli.

The Mameluke themselves used the castle as a base for a time, making certain improvements to the structure. Considerable work has been done since 1946 to continue the work of restoring and safeguarding the fabric of he building.

Hama

Hama enjoyed a reputation as one of the more charming of the Syrian towns, more successful than most in making of its environment a pleasant and picturesque setting through the use of the Orontes River as the city’s lungs and cooling device.

Constant settlement has effaced much of the remains of previous occupation and virtually nothing survives of Hama during the Bronze and Iron Ages, or during the Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine and early Arab Empires.

The city was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 and, like the rest of Syria, came under Assyrian and Persian Rule. The Ayyubid period was particularly prosperous and saw the construction of the first of the existing Nawaier (water wheels), reconditioned and supplemented in the Mameluke and Ottoman periods.

Apamea

From Apamea, nestled on the E side of the Orontes Plain before the green starts to fade towards the desert to the east, you look out on a stunning sight. The early Seleucids chose well in selecting this spot. It is one of the four cities founded by Seleucus I Nicator at the beginning of the 3^rd century BC, the name Apamea was adopted to commemorate his Persian wife. It became one of the main four Seleucid state in Syria. In 64 BC, Apamea was taken by the Romans under Pompey and its citadel was razed. Under the Roman rule it was latter developed as a military base. The theatre, bath, temples and villa were constructed during the town’s period of peak prosperity, the boom years of the 2^nd century AD. The first stage of ambitious reconstruction properly came as a result of imperial patronage, when Trajan ordered the rebuilding of the city after a severe earthquake in 115. the colonnaded main street was completed in its present form during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 –80) and served as n axis with each side markets lined with stalls and shaded arcades.

 Apamea remained a center of considerable importance into the Byzantine period when it became a base for adherents of Monophisitism. It was mad the capital of Syria Secunda province in the early 5^th century and was the seat of bishop. The Persians sacked and burnt the city in 573 during the troubled century, which also saw a succession of major earthquakes. The Persians again held it from 612 to 628 and the Byzantine “liberation” came just in time to see its fall to the Arab decade later. It fell with out resistance, the local populations – largely converted to Monophisitism by the mid 6^th century – already resentful of Byzantine heavy –handed imposition of orthodoxy.

 The town was under Crusader control from 1106 until 1149 when it was retaken by Nur Al-Din. In 1157, a major earthquake destroyed the town. The settlement within the citadel, however, survived and the 16^th century mosque and caravanserai indicate the role it played as a staging post on the pilgrimage from Istanbul to Mecca. 

Bosra

Latin BOSTRA, Greek BOSORRA, OR BOSORA, modern (Arabic) Busra Ash-sham, ruined Syrian city, 67 miles (108 km) south of Damascus. First a Nabataean city, it was conquered by the Roman emperor Trajan, made the capital of the Roman province of Arabia, and served as a key Roman fortress east of the Jordan River.

The city eventually achieved the title metropolis under the Roman emperor Philip, a native of the city. It became the see of a bishop early in the 4th century but fell to the Muslims in 634/635.

The Crusaders captured it in the 12th century but failed to hold it, and in the same century earthquakes, together with Turkish misrule, hastened its decline. The monumental remains of temples, theatres, triumphal arches, aqueducts, reservoirs, churches, mosques, and a 13th-century citadel stretch over the modern site.