THE KRAK DES CHEVALIERS
“As the Parthenon is to Greek temples and Chartres to Gothic cathedrals, so is the Krak des Chevaliers to medieval castles, the supreme example, one of the great buildings of all time”.
Military architecture is not a subject which I find particularly inspiring, or even attractive, but the Krak des Chevaliers or Qalaat al-Husn as it is known in Arabic, described by T.E. Lawrence as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world”, is one of the “must sees” of Syria, so we took the road northwards with the idea of finding a room at a hotel in Homs which could serve as our base for exploring that area over a couple of days. However, when we reaached the hotel, it turned out to be full and, although there was a possibility that one room might be free later, there was no guarantee of when that information would become available, so we opted to head straight for the Krak and play it by ear.
Leaving Homs, we took the Tartous road towards the coast turning inland about forty kilometres before Tartous. The road we took makes a detour through a number of mainly Christian villages before ascending towards the fortress, which perches atop the Jabal Kalakh. The site of the fortress was important as a strategic position long before the Crusaders wrote their unfortunate pages of history, because it lies near a gap in the hills, known as the Homs Gap, separating Syria from Lebanon which was the natural link between Homs and the sea as well as a natural passage for the winds, and so it was important to the Egyptians during their struggle against the Hittites for domination of Syria.
The Crusaders, who were responsible for the building which now stands there, arrived in 1099. When the eastern forces almost reached the gates of Constantinople, Europe, barely emerging from the obscurity of the Middle Ages, reacted to what they regarded as a threat and, urged on by the preaching of Pope Urban II, the Crusades began. The expressed aims - to recover the true cross and liberate the Christian holy places from the ”infidel” - were of the noblest but the real underlying spur was more probably that of material conquest. The Franks, as they were known, did not remain united for long, and after they took Antioch with the most brutal of massacres, paying not the slightest respect for the large Greek Orthodox population, they split up, Baldwin of Boulogne heading east to set up the independent principality of Edessa in eastern Turkey while Behemond was made Prince of Antioch and Raymond Count of Toulouse set out for Jerusalem. The brutality and bloodshed they caused makes nauseating reading, though I suppose it is only to be expected from men from a barbaric, uncultured society where the principle of dog eat dog reigned supreme. From the point of view of the Arabs whom they invaded, who were a highly refined and cultured people at that time, the Crusaders were nothing but barbarians and savages, (It is worth reading Amin Maalouf’s book which recounts the story of the Crusades from the Arab standpoint) and, as Christian pilgrims had always had unfettered access to the Holy Places, the pretext of a holy war was never credible to them. Perhaps the most unfortunate effect of the Crusaders’ actions was on the religion which they purported to defend. When they arrived in the Levant, the Crusaders made no distinction between the Moslem and Christian inhabitants. To them they were all the same, and the Christian communities were slaughtered with just as much savagery as the Moslem ones. This led many Christians to convert to Islam purely as a measure of self-defence because, by so doing, at least they could count on protection from the Islamic communities rather than remaining out on a limb where they were regarded as enemies by both sides. However, as they remained in the area for over two hundred years, it is reasonable to suppose that they must have had at least sporadic support from some of the Moslem princes. Most of the Crusader fortresses are built all along the coastal fringe of the Levant rarely venturing far inland.
The krak is a formidable fortress, blunt at the southern end and more or less horseshoe shaped the rest of the way around. The southern end was the most vulnerable, and there they built a ditch outside the walls and, inside, a reservoir which was fed from the hills by means of a pipeline and a small aqueduct. The outer line of defence has thirteen towers. The ramp leading from the outside through the outer walls to the second line of defence has shafts in the roof which, apart from providing ventilation, were also used to pour boiling oil down on anyone who might manage to breach the outer wall. The inner wall is protected on the south side by a steep glacis which, from the far side, is very imposing and must have served to discourage any would-be invaders.
Within the second line of defence is the main courtyard and it was here that the soldiers lived their lives when no battles were in progress. There is a great hall where they would have eaten and next door a multi-purpose room with a kitchen in the centre. The latrines are also still to be seen and it is plain that the refinement of the Roman world was sadly lacking here: no fine baths, no comfort, just keep your clothes on till they stink and, when they get so filthy that they can stand up by themselves, then maybe throw them away and get new ones. Outside the great hall there is a loggia or colonnaded arcade with Gothic arches. Across the courtyard is the chapel which is from an earlier period and Romanesque in style. During the Mameluke occupation the chapel was converted to a mosque so the qibla indicates the orientation towards Mecca.
On the southern side is the keep which was the refuge in case of a last stand. The keep consists of three towers which would have provided the senior ranks with some comfort and a third tower was probably the apartments of the lord of the castle. This room is remarkably light in feel and stands in strong contrast to the massiveness of the military architecture of the rest of the defensive structure. The building is not an inspiring one but it is imposing and extremely impressive as a model of effective defensive construction.
There were quite a few visitors and many of them were young Syrians out on group excursions. Simon became the centre of attention and had to pose every five steps to have his photograph taken with clusters of young people all around. He grew quite blasé about it all and sat down and stayed until the click sounded before getting up again.
Once we had visited the krak, we had intended to drive back down and visit the Monastery of St. George below but, quite simply, we forgot all about it and took another road into the hills on the assumption that it had to come out on to the main road at some point. The road wound down the mountainside where the vegetation is identical to Andalucía and the spring flowers were in full bloom. When the road turned into a quagmire, we were on the point of turning around to retrace our steps when we happened upon a small pick-up truck, so we asked the driver whether we would get to Tartous if we continued along the road. He immediately left what he was doing and told us to follow him. He drove ahead of us, through potholes and mud, to a junction where he told us to take the left fork and after two kilometres we would come to the Tartous autostrade. They must have been two kilometres of the long variety because it seemed an age before we reached the main road, and we had to ask several times because other tracks, each looking just as likely as the other, branched off in several places and it was none too clear which was the right road.
Heading towards Tartous, we missed the turn-off, mainly because the signpost is positioned AFTER the turn-off point. It would seem to be a common mistake, because the central reservation was punctuated with tracks indicating where vehicles had crossed over, so we took their example and did the same. Our second plan of action was to see if there was a hotel in Tartous where we could stay, as we were looking forward to walking along the beach and seeing the sea once again, and I had visions in my mind of what this Phoenician town would look like.
Tartous and the small island of Arwad less than a kilometre offshore were twin cities. Arwad was the more important of the two and probably the most ancient too: it is mentioned in Genesis as well as in Egyptian documents as one of a number of Canaanite settlements on the coast in the early second millennium. The people of Arwad did not emulate their contemporaries at Tyre, just down the coast in modern Lebanon, but surrendered to Alexander the Great. Consequently, they prospered tremendously. Arwad’s importance was due to its trading activities but, as an island, the security it could offer was a valuable asset until the Romans came. As they controlled the whole of the Mediterranean, the security of the island was no longer such a plus point so the Romans favoured Tartous. The Crusaders also took Tartous and Arwad which passed from one side to another like ping-pong balls until finally Tartous was lost. They hung on for another thirteen years on Arwad but never again managed to gain a foothold on the mainland. During the Crusader period Tartous was a centre of pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary and, when they finally had to flee, they took the image with them to Arwad which was the site of the Crusaders’ last stand in the Near East.
However, Tartous turned out to be a major disappointment. The corniche or promenade has virtually been built over the beach which is now reduced to about two metres wide and serves as the place for dumping rubbish and building debris. The buildings are falling down and everything about the town is dirty and crumbling. We did not bother to investigate the centre of the old town. The natural setting is magnificent and it is a pity that such a valuable resource is being so completely squandered. On the other hand, in the context of an Islamic society where most people are covered from head to foot all the time, beaches may not be seen as a resource at all. Only the children and young boys were bathing in the water. So, although there was a hotel on the beach-front, we decided that we did not want to stay in the town and set about finding a place to have something to eat before turning around and heading back to Damascus.
On the far end of town Robert saw a place with parking bays under the building, so we went in there. The outside was festooned with flags and banners so we assumed that it must be some kind of restaurant for members of the ruling Baath (Revolution) party. As we were by the sea, we ordered some red bream which came massacred from the frying pan and proved highly indigestible. The bill, when it came, was equally indigestible and bore no relation, it seemed to us, to the quality or quantity of food we had consumed, particularly compared to other places we had eaten in. Maybe fish is a luxury item. It might be if they knew how to prepare it!
Another experience awaited me in the restaurant. For the first time since I went to Lourdes with the school when I was twelve, I found myself in a toilet in a public place with only a hole in the floor and, in this case, it did not even have the two foot-rests provided in France. A short length of hosepipe attached to a tap was the flushing mechanism. Nothing if not an experience.
Tartous, which had seemed so seductive, was a major disappointment.
April 10th 1998
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Friday, September 23, 2005
EMTHISAL
EMTHISAL
Emthisal is a Palestinian Syrian. Her parents are from Haifa and they were forced to join what is known by Palestinians as the “migration” when Palestine was divided by the powers in 1948 to form the state of Israel. Emthisal was born in Damascus but she still considers herself a Palestinian, although she recognizes that she loves Damascus where she was brought up and where all her friends are and could probably never live anywhere else. Robert had met Emthisal during one of his visits to companies and thought she was quite an unusual character for this kind of society so, as he wanted me to meet her, we arranged to meet for lunch.
She is indeed quite an independent-minded character. Her hopes and aspirations would not be out of place in Europe but, in the context of Islamic society, she is bound to meet opposition at every turn. Her first major step outside the mould was when she met an Algerian medical student at university and decided to marry him countervening the social practice of allowing her parents to choose her marriage partner. After the marriage, when her husband completed his studies, she went to live in Algeria where she spent four years. Unfortunately, the marriage was not a happy one and she was frequently beaten by her husband. She asked for a divorce which her husband refused to give her. In Islamic law, when the husband wants to divorce his wife, he simple goes to the court and tells the judge that he wants the marriage dissolved. He then presents the divorce document to his wife who must then abandon the home. When the partner who wishes the divorce is the wife, things are not so simple, because the husband must agree to grant her a divorce. Things are further complicated if there are children involved, because, being a patrilinear society, the children belong to the father’s family, so, if the wife wishes to have the custody of the children, it is extremely difficult to disentangle herself from the marriage. In Emthisal’s case, after years of wrangling, she finally managed to secure her husband’s agreement and left Algeria with her son leaving behind all her gold and jewellery as a kind of “payment”. This is a clear example of the role that gold and jewellery play in the life of Arab women. All savings are invested in gold and jewellery which one day may help her buy her way out of a marriage or another situation or, if divorced by her husband, her store of gold and jewellery is her insurance policy for the future and survival.
With a seven year-old son to support, a job is of vital importance, because Emthisal’s family disowned her when she decided to marry against their wishes and, as a result, make no effort to help her out. As she is a well-qualified and dynamic person, finding a job was not an impossibility, but her position as a divorced woman with a child to support without any back-up from her own family places her at a distinct disadvantage and makes her extremely vulnerable to abuse. As another girl told us, a divorced woman is fair game for any man and they consider it their right to knock them down like coconuts at a coconut shy.
When Robert met her, she was the executive secretary of a foremost businessman. This would seem to be an ideal position. However, the truth of the matter soon emerged. Although her title was impressive and her employee a man of social standing, the salary was fairly meagre (US$300 per month) although better than the average. The salary level was not the major obstacle. Soon after she was given the job, it was made clear to her that being a “personal” secretary meant just that - personal - and that to keep her job would require granting favours which had nothing to do with her secretarial skills. Under pressure, she had given in once but felt so vilified and reduced to what she termed “animal status” that she vowed never to give in again, come what may. The day we met, she was again under great pressure to serve and felt that she could not. On the balance was her dignity as a human being on the one hand and the need to provide for her son on the other. She was outraged, questioning why it was that such demands should be made of someone, and she was comparing the difference in attitudes of her former Canadian bosses whose only concern was that her job performance should be satisfactory.
However, Emthisal’s predicament is no exception. In fact there are many women in similar situations and she wanted to bring this form of abuse out into the open. She spoke to a like-minded female journalist and another male journalist. The woman was prepared to publish an article on the subject, but the male colleague advised them both against it on the basis that it is a simple matter to have people disposed of and that many have been for much less.
What solutions might be found? She told us of a Palestinian childhood friend now resident in Canada who had offered to marry her and take her to Canada, but that was a pipe-dream because, although that offer would provide a solution for her, it was no solution for her son, as it would prove impossible to get his father’s permission to have the child adopted by her new husband. So, though she hung on to this dream, she realized that it was really only a chimera because she could never abandon her son who was all she now had in the world and the crux around whom all her struggle and efforts revolved.
After lunch, Emthisal was anxious that we should go to her home to have a glass of juice - “It is Eid after all” - so we went back with her. She lives in what she called a “middling” area. When I saw it, I realized just how well cared for our area is, despite its many drawbacks. Blocks of flats eleven floors high with eight apartments on each floor means that eighty-eight families live in each block. Each apartment has a small sitting-room, a tiny kitchen, one bedroom and a bathroom. Emthisal’s is by far the smallest family in the area where most families have four or five or more children. The entrance and stairways are littered with rubbish and spilt soft drinks and papers and dust and leaves ....
Emthisal’s apartment is threadbare. There are two sofas facing each other with a table between. To the right of the door is a tattered cabinet with a small television on top. There is also a small bookcase. The whole place lacked any feeling of homeliness. A cage with two budgies hung outside the window on the tiny terrace. The little boy, who had stayed with a neighbour while we were out, came home and he turned out to be a bright child. At first he was a bit shy, particularly as he is not used to being in male company very much. However, he had got a plastic bow and arrow as his Eid gift, so Robert started an arrow-shooting competition which soon brought him out of his shell.
The day after our meeting Emthisal resigned from her job and is now looking for something else.
April 9th 1998
Emthisal is a Palestinian Syrian. Her parents are from Haifa and they were forced to join what is known by Palestinians as the “migration” when Palestine was divided by the powers in 1948 to form the state of Israel. Emthisal was born in Damascus but she still considers herself a Palestinian, although she recognizes that she loves Damascus where she was brought up and where all her friends are and could probably never live anywhere else. Robert had met Emthisal during one of his visits to companies and thought she was quite an unusual character for this kind of society so, as he wanted me to meet her, we arranged to meet for lunch.
She is indeed quite an independent-minded character. Her hopes and aspirations would not be out of place in Europe but, in the context of Islamic society, she is bound to meet opposition at every turn. Her first major step outside the mould was when she met an Algerian medical student at university and decided to marry him countervening the social practice of allowing her parents to choose her marriage partner. After the marriage, when her husband completed his studies, she went to live in Algeria where she spent four years. Unfortunately, the marriage was not a happy one and she was frequently beaten by her husband. She asked for a divorce which her husband refused to give her. In Islamic law, when the husband wants to divorce his wife, he simple goes to the court and tells the judge that he wants the marriage dissolved. He then presents the divorce document to his wife who must then abandon the home. When the partner who wishes the divorce is the wife, things are not so simple, because the husband must agree to grant her a divorce. Things are further complicated if there are children involved, because, being a patrilinear society, the children belong to the father’s family, so, if the wife wishes to have the custody of the children, it is extremely difficult to disentangle herself from the marriage. In Emthisal’s case, after years of wrangling, she finally managed to secure her husband’s agreement and left Algeria with her son leaving behind all her gold and jewellery as a kind of “payment”. This is a clear example of the role that gold and jewellery play in the life of Arab women. All savings are invested in gold and jewellery which one day may help her buy her way out of a marriage or another situation or, if divorced by her husband, her store of gold and jewellery is her insurance policy for the future and survival.
With a seven year-old son to support, a job is of vital importance, because Emthisal’s family disowned her when she decided to marry against their wishes and, as a result, make no effort to help her out. As she is a well-qualified and dynamic person, finding a job was not an impossibility, but her position as a divorced woman with a child to support without any back-up from her own family places her at a distinct disadvantage and makes her extremely vulnerable to abuse. As another girl told us, a divorced woman is fair game for any man and they consider it their right to knock them down like coconuts at a coconut shy.
When Robert met her, she was the executive secretary of a foremost businessman. This would seem to be an ideal position. However, the truth of the matter soon emerged. Although her title was impressive and her employee a man of social standing, the salary was fairly meagre (US$300 per month) although better than the average. The salary level was not the major obstacle. Soon after she was given the job, it was made clear to her that being a “personal” secretary meant just that - personal - and that to keep her job would require granting favours which had nothing to do with her secretarial skills. Under pressure, she had given in once but felt so vilified and reduced to what she termed “animal status” that she vowed never to give in again, come what may. The day we met, she was again under great pressure to serve and felt that she could not. On the balance was her dignity as a human being on the one hand and the need to provide for her son on the other. She was outraged, questioning why it was that such demands should be made of someone, and she was comparing the difference in attitudes of her former Canadian bosses whose only concern was that her job performance should be satisfactory.
However, Emthisal’s predicament is no exception. In fact there are many women in similar situations and she wanted to bring this form of abuse out into the open. She spoke to a like-minded female journalist and another male journalist. The woman was prepared to publish an article on the subject, but the male colleague advised them both against it on the basis that it is a simple matter to have people disposed of and that many have been for much less.
What solutions might be found? She told us of a Palestinian childhood friend now resident in Canada who had offered to marry her and take her to Canada, but that was a pipe-dream because, although that offer would provide a solution for her, it was no solution for her son, as it would prove impossible to get his father’s permission to have the child adopted by her new husband. So, though she hung on to this dream, she realized that it was really only a chimera because she could never abandon her son who was all she now had in the world and the crux around whom all her struggle and efforts revolved.
After lunch, Emthisal was anxious that we should go to her home to have a glass of juice - “It is Eid after all” - so we went back with her. She lives in what she called a “middling” area. When I saw it, I realized just how well cared for our area is, despite its many drawbacks. Blocks of flats eleven floors high with eight apartments on each floor means that eighty-eight families live in each block. Each apartment has a small sitting-room, a tiny kitchen, one bedroom and a bathroom. Emthisal’s is by far the smallest family in the area where most families have four or five or more children. The entrance and stairways are littered with rubbish and spilt soft drinks and papers and dust and leaves ....
Emthisal’s apartment is threadbare. There are two sofas facing each other with a table between. To the right of the door is a tattered cabinet with a small television on top. There is also a small bookcase. The whole place lacked any feeling of homeliness. A cage with two budgies hung outside the window on the tiny terrace. The little boy, who had stayed with a neighbour while we were out, came home and he turned out to be a bright child. At first he was a bit shy, particularly as he is not used to being in male company very much. However, he had got a plastic bow and arrow as his Eid gift, so Robert started an arrow-shooting competition which soon brought him out of his shell.
The day after our meeting Emthisal resigned from her job and is now looking for something else.
April 9th 1998
Monday, September 19, 2005
THE RUIN FIELDS OF P
THE RUIN FIELDS OF PALMYRA
The first day of Eid al-Adha dawned around 4a.m. - not with the usual call to prayer but with a special service being transmitted over the loudspeakers from the various mosques to celebrate the day on which Abraham, in obedience to the call of the Lord, took his son Isaac up to a high place to sacrifice him but, when God saw that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice even his own son for Him, He told him to untie Isaac and sacrifice a sheep instead. Robert took Simon out for his morning walk just as the faithful were leaving the mosque and a sad queue of sheep and goats was forming outside in preparation for ritual slaughter, the meat to be distributed among the poor.
We were glad to be leaving Damascus and set out early taking the road through the desert to Palmyra. The Syrian desert, or at least the few hundred kilometres of it that we crossed, in marked contrast to the golden, beige or white emptiness - but always emptiness - of the Atacama desert in Chile, is remarkably green at this time of year. It is also well populated with bedouin camps dotted all over the landscape. No fear of being lost and languishing for days here. The bedouin are nearly all motorized these days, and this makes life easier for them as they can drive to the nearest water point and fill up tanks with water (some of them even have a tanker trailer) which they then bring back to the place where their flocks are grazing to provide them with water. Most shepherds also have at least one tiny donkey which provides them with transport and carries their supplies for the day. Another difference is that the landscape of the Syrian desert speaks of its antiquity - the hills are low and rounded - and has a familiar feel whereas the Chilean desert reaches the shores of the Pacific Ocean on the western side and is flanked to the east by the towering abruptness of the Andes, a geological formation whose youth in geological terms is apparent in the lack of rounded forms.
If the desert was lacking in drama, the sudden appearance of the ruin fields of Palmyra was nothing if not dramatic. A bend in the road and there, suddenly, are the columns and porticos marching across the desert plain with the backdrop of the green oasis of palm, olive and pomegranate trees.
Palmyra, which lies about two hundred kilometres from Damascus and more or less half way between Damascus and the Euphrates River which is the border between Syria and Iraq, was one of the great caravan cities of antiquity and its greatness, for the ruins speak eloquently of its greatness, was based on trade and the possession of the one indispensable commodity in the desert, water. The desert caravans had to come through Palmyra or perish. The site was settled from earliest times and there is evidence that already by the third millennium BC a settled community existed at Palmyra with a Temple to the Palmyrene god, Bel, already in existence on the same spot where the ruins of the Temple of Bel still stand today. The place is mentioned in the ancient tablets of Mari and Assyria under its Semitic name, Tadmor, which is the name of the modern town which stands alongside the ruins. The bible also mentions “Tadmor in the wilderness”, or the city of dates, as having been built by Solomon, but this is now regarded as a mistake arising from confusion over the Semitic root of the word Tadmor (tamar which means date) and the reference is probably to Tamar in the Judean desert.
However, Palmyra does not lie on the natural trading route between the coast and the Euphrates and for centuries was nothing more than a desert chiefdom and watering-hole for desert nomads. The main routes followed either the curve of the Fertile Crescent to the north or through Petra in modern Jordan to the south. In the first century B.C. the northern route was affected by the instability which came with the fall of the Seleucid Kingdom and the fall of Petra forced trade routes to move further north. Tadmor and Homs made a coalition which secured a new desert short-cut which was an instant success, aided and abetted by the security brought by the Pax Romana. The insatiable appetite of Rome’s upper and provincial classes for exotic goods meant that trade through Palmyra was brisk, and much of the gold sent out from Rome to pay for the merchandise went no further than Palmyra. Rome and Parthia were enemies but each wanted or needed things the other had, so Palmyra, in the timeless tradition of trading people, maintained a neutral stance serving as the point of exchange where the goods from the east could be traded with the west.
Palmyra reached its greatest prosperity around the second century A.D. when it probably rivalled Antioch as an economic centre. The people of Palmyra were only interested in trade and they clearly had a sense of civic pride, spending a great deal of money on embellishing their city. Most of the public works were endowed by private merchants as a way of broadcasting their financial strength and, in return for the works undertaken, they were allowed to erect statues of themselves and members of their families on the columns lining the main streets of the town and in public buildings.
This happy state of affairs came to an end when a new, more aggressive dynasty came to power in Parthia and seized the territory at the mouth of the Euphrates River which had previously been the point from which Palmyra controlled the traffic arriving from the Indian Ocean and, consequently, the cross-desert caravan trade at source. The breakdown of centralized power in Rome also affected Palmyra in the sense that the local ruler was encouraged by Rome as a buffer against Parthia.
The murder of the Palmyra ruler gave rise to a romantic incident. His widow, Zenobia, decided that she was going to build up her own commercial empire and power base, conquering westwards and southwards as far as Egypt, and had designs on taking Antioch, the plan being that she should share the Roman Empire with Rome, she ruling in the east and Aurelian ruling in the west. Rome decided that enough was enough and took to the field against her. According to legend, Zenobia, the “desert queen” was brought to Rome in chains of gold. The fact that a woman had been treated in such an iniquitous fashion was brought up in the senate at the time and Aurelian was given a dressing down for such unworthy behaviour. Although Palmyra hung on until the 6th century, after that point its fortunes waned, with trade virtually strangled, and it languished more as a strategic asset than a trading centre. It was taken by the Islamic forces in 634 and played a minor defensive role around the 12th century. By the time the Ottoman period dawned the city lay in ruins which were being reclaimed by the desert.
Appropriately enough, we stayed at the Zenobia Hotel, a small hotel standing virtually on the edge of the ruin fields overlooking the Temple of Baal-Shamin, the Canaanite god of rain. There is another large hotel belonging to the most important Syrian hotel chain at the other side of the ruins and next to the sulphur springs which flow there. However, this is a rather unfortunate edifice and we were glad that we were staying at the Zenobia which is low and painted ochre, thus blending harmoniously with the golden stone of the ruins. Having checked in, we sat down at a table under an olive tree in the outside patio and drank in the amazing spectacle standing before our eyes as well as quenching our thirst after the long drive. The tables are capitals of columns simply taken from the ruins lying all around whereas the chairs, typical of the lack of coherence apparent everywhere, were white and purple and blue plastic!
As usual, we began our visit the opposite way round from everyone else. We turned our backs on the Roman ruins and set off across the desert to climb a nearby hill topped by the ruins of an Arab fortress. It was hot and I had forgotten my scarf, so halfway across I had to stop and take off my underskirt which I used to cover my head as a temporary measure. Fortunately for us, when we reached the top, we came upon Ali, the “guardian” of the citadel who invited us to sit down and rest on his bedouin mats. He also produced a black plastic bag full of keffiyeh for both men and women so Robert was provided with a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh, complete with the rings to keep it on, which were originally a rope ring used to hobble the camels by night and by day were “stored” in the most convenient place which was on the bedouin’s head, at the same time serving the useful purpose of keeping his keffiyeh in place. I acquired a white keffiyeh of fine cotton lawn embroidered with white flowers. Both proved worth their weight in gold as we wandered round the ruins. Ali told us he had eleven children, two of whom were doing their military service and two of whom were blind. Asked how this came to be, he replied, “It is the will of Allah”.
The fortress was used by a 17th. century Lebanese Emir who wanted to test the Ottomans, hoping that he would be able to extend his control further to the east, but his calculations went badly wrong. He was captured and arrested and taken to Constantinople where he was held captive until his execution a year later. However, the history of the fortress probably dates back to the 12th century. Certainly the 360º view is spectacular and affords a perspective of the Roman ruins below which is useful for exploring them later.
On our return journey we entered the ruins from the north-western side where the largest ruin is a funerary temple. I was glad we did, because that end has not been excavated or restored and the colonnaded street of the decamanus running east-west is littered with remains of columns and lintels and carvings of every kind. The row upon row of tall golden columns is impressive by any standard and it is not hard to imagine the frantic commercial activity which would once have been the daily life of Palmyra. The columns at Palmyra are distinctive because each column has a kind of shelf bracket about two thirds of the way up where the statues of the merchants who had paid for the public works or statues of gods would have been displayed. In some cases the shelf was carved as a part of the column itself and in others the column was made up of several sections and the shelf was part of one of these inserts which fitted together perfectly with the sections of the column above and below. A statute of Zenobia once stood on one of the columns and there is an inscription to her there, but her name was effaced by the Romans after her unacceptable conduct made her persona non grata.
All along the decamanus and in the transverse streets are low rounded stone sections which, on further examination, turned out to be a piping system, the stones having been perforated to form a pipeline about six inches in diameter. Through the holes in certain parts of the road or under ruins, particularly the baths, we could see the remains of the water system made of ceramic pipes.
The decamanus reaches a tetrapylon, or four-way arch, which is formed of columns of red Egyptian granite brought all the way from Aswan! How did they transport these gigantic columns all that way? From this point onward the ruins have been excavated and cleared so the roadway is much as it must have been almost 2,000 years ago. As most people start their visit at the opposite end, the tetrapylon was full of young people running about and making a great deal of noise, so we decided to retire to the Zenobia and wait till the sun went down a little.
Later we continued our visit from where we had left off earlier. The tetrapylon has been restored but not too obtrusively. The main street continues eastwards passing the theatre and temple of Nebu on the right and the baths of Diocletian on the left. The theatre has been restored on the outside but inside it looks much as it must have done but the outline, marked by the columns, is just about all that is to be seen of the Temple of Nebu, a Mesopotamian god of wisdom who was equated with Apollo. The Arch of Triumph which marks the eastern end of the decamanus is classical in style with a tall, wide central entrance for wheeled traffic and smaller lower arches either side for pedestrians.
Perhaps the buildings, as opposed to the colonnades, which I found most evocative were the forum or market-place and the caravanserai, the middle eastern equivalent of medieval toll-booths where taxes were paid on the goods entering the city. The forum is huge and is surrounded on all four sides by columned porticos, the space between each of which would have been filled by a stall, and there are windows in the walls with richly decorated surrounds. The usual Palmyrene brackets are to be seen where the moguls of trans-desert trade would have displayed their effigies to let the world know just who was who. It seems only appropriate that the forum should have been such a grand place in a city which made its fortune from trading activities. At one end of the forum are the remains of a banqueting hall with benches for reclining guests all around the walls. Next door to the forum is the large caravanserai or Tariff Court where the caravans would have paid their taxes before unloading their goods for sale in Palmyra or continuing their journey towards Damascus and the coast. Just outside the forum can be seen the remains of Zenobia’s defensive wall.
Our last call was to the immense Temple of Bel which stands opposite the Arch of Triumph on the other side of the modern road through Palmyra to Tadmor and eastwards through the desert to Deir az-Zor on the Euphrates. Bel is a Semitic god who was often associated with Zeus in the Roman pantheon and the Canaanite god of rain and fertility Baal-Shamin whose temple stands just in front of the Zenobia hotel. It is no surprise that so many gods should have been worshipped at Palmyra where there was probably a great mix of people of different origins, each group bringing its own religious beliefs along, just as people do today. However, the magnitude of the Temple of Bel demonstrates clearly enough that this was the most significant god in Palmyra.
The temple is regarded as the most important religious building of the first century A.D. in the Middle East and the proportions are truly imperial in scale. The temple itself follows the tradition of Middle Eastern religious compounds. The monumental entrance opens on to a huge courtyard where worshippers would have gathered in the open air, much as the faithful do today when they go to Mecca. In the middle of the courtyard stands the building, surrounded by columns, where the gods were housed. Here Bel was accompanied by the Palmyrene gods of the sun and the moon and he is represented as controlling the movements of the heavens. To the left of the monumental entrance is another smaller entrance which comes up through a kind of tunnel just to the left of the altar. This entrance was probably used to bring in the sacrificial animals. To the right of the altar is a basin for ritual washing.
There was a kind of quiet about the temple precinct, so we sat down in the shade there for a while. Suddenly a man’s voice said, “That’s Lord Byron!” Then a lady came into the inner sanctuary were we were sitting and said, “Absolutely. Lord Byron”. It was an elderly American couple who had once had a dog, called Lord Byron, who looked just like Simon, so conversation then ensued about the virtues of such a dog. The lady was based at Aleppo in northern Syria where, I think from the conversation with other people who were with them, she must be teaching at an American school.
The hotel was full in the evening, the guests visiting the ruins being joined by groups of young people from Damascus on a day out. It was almost full moon so, once we had had something to eat, we had a last moonlit walk through the ruins before going to bed.
The stone now took on a pale, spectral quality, and it was satisfying to wander among the ruins in the silence of the night.
The following day we got up just after dawn and walked out to the ruin fields once more where the stone, whitish pale in the moonlight, was now glowing bathed in a halo of golden light as the rays of the rising sun struck the ruins. It was like wandering in a golden world of light. The call of a flock of bee-eaters was to be heard as they flew overhead. Despite the sharp cold wind of the desert, where temperatures fall dramatically at night, we were glad that we had stayed overnight to experience this vision of the columns and ruins of Palmyra.
As we wandered around looking at the columns and lintels, the cornices particularly attracted my attention. Remote as it may seem, the cornices of Palmyra influenced architecture in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Two English travellers, Wood and Dawkins by name, visited Palmyra in the mid-18th century. On their return, they published a book where the details of the cornices and art of Palmyra were richly depicted and the book had an enormous influence on the neo-classical architecture of Britain, with Palmyrene cornices and ceilings becoming tremendously popular in the stately homes of the day. Palmyra cornices are to be found at Blair Castle and Dumfries House. But, the more I looked, the more familiar the lower part of the cornices seemed to become. I realised that these same motifs were common in the cornices of houses in Garnethill before that once beautiful area of Glasgow began its slow slide into decrepitude. The lower part of the cornices in my aunt’s house, circular shapes interspersed with a vertical division, were a direct copy of the lower cornices and lintels of Palmyra!
Having checked out of the hotel, we drove past the sulphur springs and parked the car by the roadside to walk up to the Valley of the Tombs. The necropolis of Palmyra is interesting in that over time various methods of burying the dead were used. The most ancient was to bury the dead in Tower Tombs which could be anything up to four stories high, so each family would build up the tower to accomodate its dead. The ceilings of the various storeys were carved. Later, underground burials became the norm with a transitional phase when both tower tombs and underground burials coexisted. A late fashion was for House or Temple Tombs, the most intact example of which we had seen on our way up to the citadel. The countryside all around the ruins of Palmyra is dotted with Tower Tombs which stand up like sentinels.
As we walked up the hill, a young bedouin shepherd got up from his vantage point under a rock and approached in a state of agitation. Did we have a lighter - or matches? His lighter was broken and he was desperate to smoke a cigarette. His disappointment knew no bounds when he discovered that, of all the people he had to come across, it had to be these two with no source of fire of any kind. Fortunately, we later remembered that there was a lighter in the car which we used to relieve his misery and off he went with his flock of sheep behind him, being joined later by another goatherd.
As we wandered among the tombs, a curious thing happened. We were approaching the door of one of the tower tombs when suddenly, about a metre away from the entrance, Simon spooked. He stopped and stood motionless, his head and tail stretched out in “pointing” position. He sniffed and sniffed and no amount of coaxing could entice him to approach the entrance to the tomb. The same thing happened at another tomb further into the valley, so we decided to respect his intuition and did not enter any of the tombs. Could the spirits of the dead still be present there?
We were sorry indeed to be leaving Palmyra. The sight of the golden columns marching quietly across the desert is impressive and dramatic and the desert itself bores into the soul creating a kind of peace and tranquility which can only be found in expansive places like the desert and the sea. It is no surprise that visionairies and mystics have nearly always and everywhere found inspiration in the desert which forces one to come down to basics and file away all frills and unnecessary trappings.
Driving back - more slowly than we had come - we saw red kite and buzzards and booted eagles, crested larks and even a hoopoe and, strangely, the desert looked more desert-like than it had on the outward journey. Palmyra is indeed an experience to be remembered and it is worth making a trip to Syria just to experience Palmyra!
April 8th. 1998
The first day of Eid al-Adha dawned around 4a.m. - not with the usual call to prayer but with a special service being transmitted over the loudspeakers from the various mosques to celebrate the day on which Abraham, in obedience to the call of the Lord, took his son Isaac up to a high place to sacrifice him but, when God saw that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice even his own son for Him, He told him to untie Isaac and sacrifice a sheep instead. Robert took Simon out for his morning walk just as the faithful were leaving the mosque and a sad queue of sheep and goats was forming outside in preparation for ritual slaughter, the meat to be distributed among the poor.
We were glad to be leaving Damascus and set out early taking the road through the desert to Palmyra. The Syrian desert, or at least the few hundred kilometres of it that we crossed, in marked contrast to the golden, beige or white emptiness - but always emptiness - of the Atacama desert in Chile, is remarkably green at this time of year. It is also well populated with bedouin camps dotted all over the landscape. No fear of being lost and languishing for days here. The bedouin are nearly all motorized these days, and this makes life easier for them as they can drive to the nearest water point and fill up tanks with water (some of them even have a tanker trailer) which they then bring back to the place where their flocks are grazing to provide them with water. Most shepherds also have at least one tiny donkey which provides them with transport and carries their supplies for the day. Another difference is that the landscape of the Syrian desert speaks of its antiquity - the hills are low and rounded - and has a familiar feel whereas the Chilean desert reaches the shores of the Pacific Ocean on the western side and is flanked to the east by the towering abruptness of the Andes, a geological formation whose youth in geological terms is apparent in the lack of rounded forms.
If the desert was lacking in drama, the sudden appearance of the ruin fields of Palmyra was nothing if not dramatic. A bend in the road and there, suddenly, are the columns and porticos marching across the desert plain with the backdrop of the green oasis of palm, olive and pomegranate trees.
Palmyra, which lies about two hundred kilometres from Damascus and more or less half way between Damascus and the Euphrates River which is the border between Syria and Iraq, was one of the great caravan cities of antiquity and its greatness, for the ruins speak eloquently of its greatness, was based on trade and the possession of the one indispensable commodity in the desert, water. The desert caravans had to come through Palmyra or perish. The site was settled from earliest times and there is evidence that already by the third millennium BC a settled community existed at Palmyra with a Temple to the Palmyrene god, Bel, already in existence on the same spot where the ruins of the Temple of Bel still stand today. The place is mentioned in the ancient tablets of Mari and Assyria under its Semitic name, Tadmor, which is the name of the modern town which stands alongside the ruins. The bible also mentions “Tadmor in the wilderness”, or the city of dates, as having been built by Solomon, but this is now regarded as a mistake arising from confusion over the Semitic root of the word Tadmor (tamar which means date) and the reference is probably to Tamar in the Judean desert.
However, Palmyra does not lie on the natural trading route between the coast and the Euphrates and for centuries was nothing more than a desert chiefdom and watering-hole for desert nomads. The main routes followed either the curve of the Fertile Crescent to the north or through Petra in modern Jordan to the south. In the first century B.C. the northern route was affected by the instability which came with the fall of the Seleucid Kingdom and the fall of Petra forced trade routes to move further north. Tadmor and Homs made a coalition which secured a new desert short-cut which was an instant success, aided and abetted by the security brought by the Pax Romana. The insatiable appetite of Rome’s upper and provincial classes for exotic goods meant that trade through Palmyra was brisk, and much of the gold sent out from Rome to pay for the merchandise went no further than Palmyra. Rome and Parthia were enemies but each wanted or needed things the other had, so Palmyra, in the timeless tradition of trading people, maintained a neutral stance serving as the point of exchange where the goods from the east could be traded with the west.
Palmyra reached its greatest prosperity around the second century A.D. when it probably rivalled Antioch as an economic centre. The people of Palmyra were only interested in trade and they clearly had a sense of civic pride, spending a great deal of money on embellishing their city. Most of the public works were endowed by private merchants as a way of broadcasting their financial strength and, in return for the works undertaken, they were allowed to erect statues of themselves and members of their families on the columns lining the main streets of the town and in public buildings.
This happy state of affairs came to an end when a new, more aggressive dynasty came to power in Parthia and seized the territory at the mouth of the Euphrates River which had previously been the point from which Palmyra controlled the traffic arriving from the Indian Ocean and, consequently, the cross-desert caravan trade at source. The breakdown of centralized power in Rome also affected Palmyra in the sense that the local ruler was encouraged by Rome as a buffer against Parthia.
The murder of the Palmyra ruler gave rise to a romantic incident. His widow, Zenobia, decided that she was going to build up her own commercial empire and power base, conquering westwards and southwards as far as Egypt, and had designs on taking Antioch, the plan being that she should share the Roman Empire with Rome, she ruling in the east and Aurelian ruling in the west. Rome decided that enough was enough and took to the field against her. According to legend, Zenobia, the “desert queen” was brought to Rome in chains of gold. The fact that a woman had been treated in such an iniquitous fashion was brought up in the senate at the time and Aurelian was given a dressing down for such unworthy behaviour. Although Palmyra hung on until the 6th century, after that point its fortunes waned, with trade virtually strangled, and it languished more as a strategic asset than a trading centre. It was taken by the Islamic forces in 634 and played a minor defensive role around the 12th century. By the time the Ottoman period dawned the city lay in ruins which were being reclaimed by the desert.
Appropriately enough, we stayed at the Zenobia Hotel, a small hotel standing virtually on the edge of the ruin fields overlooking the Temple of Baal-Shamin, the Canaanite god of rain. There is another large hotel belonging to the most important Syrian hotel chain at the other side of the ruins and next to the sulphur springs which flow there. However, this is a rather unfortunate edifice and we were glad that we were staying at the Zenobia which is low and painted ochre, thus blending harmoniously with the golden stone of the ruins. Having checked in, we sat down at a table under an olive tree in the outside patio and drank in the amazing spectacle standing before our eyes as well as quenching our thirst after the long drive. The tables are capitals of columns simply taken from the ruins lying all around whereas the chairs, typical of the lack of coherence apparent everywhere, were white and purple and blue plastic!
As usual, we began our visit the opposite way round from everyone else. We turned our backs on the Roman ruins and set off across the desert to climb a nearby hill topped by the ruins of an Arab fortress. It was hot and I had forgotten my scarf, so halfway across I had to stop and take off my underskirt which I used to cover my head as a temporary measure. Fortunately for us, when we reached the top, we came upon Ali, the “guardian” of the citadel who invited us to sit down and rest on his bedouin mats. He also produced a black plastic bag full of keffiyeh for both men and women so Robert was provided with a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh, complete with the rings to keep it on, which were originally a rope ring used to hobble the camels by night and by day were “stored” in the most convenient place which was on the bedouin’s head, at the same time serving the useful purpose of keeping his keffiyeh in place. I acquired a white keffiyeh of fine cotton lawn embroidered with white flowers. Both proved worth their weight in gold as we wandered round the ruins. Ali told us he had eleven children, two of whom were doing their military service and two of whom were blind. Asked how this came to be, he replied, “It is the will of Allah”.
The fortress was used by a 17th. century Lebanese Emir who wanted to test the Ottomans, hoping that he would be able to extend his control further to the east, but his calculations went badly wrong. He was captured and arrested and taken to Constantinople where he was held captive until his execution a year later. However, the history of the fortress probably dates back to the 12th century. Certainly the 360º view is spectacular and affords a perspective of the Roman ruins below which is useful for exploring them later.
On our return journey we entered the ruins from the north-western side where the largest ruin is a funerary temple. I was glad we did, because that end has not been excavated or restored and the colonnaded street of the decamanus running east-west is littered with remains of columns and lintels and carvings of every kind. The row upon row of tall golden columns is impressive by any standard and it is not hard to imagine the frantic commercial activity which would once have been the daily life of Palmyra. The columns at Palmyra are distinctive because each column has a kind of shelf bracket about two thirds of the way up where the statues of the merchants who had paid for the public works or statues of gods would have been displayed. In some cases the shelf was carved as a part of the column itself and in others the column was made up of several sections and the shelf was part of one of these inserts which fitted together perfectly with the sections of the column above and below. A statute of Zenobia once stood on one of the columns and there is an inscription to her there, but her name was effaced by the Romans after her unacceptable conduct made her persona non grata.
All along the decamanus and in the transverse streets are low rounded stone sections which, on further examination, turned out to be a piping system, the stones having been perforated to form a pipeline about six inches in diameter. Through the holes in certain parts of the road or under ruins, particularly the baths, we could see the remains of the water system made of ceramic pipes.
The decamanus reaches a tetrapylon, or four-way arch, which is formed of columns of red Egyptian granite brought all the way from Aswan! How did they transport these gigantic columns all that way? From this point onward the ruins have been excavated and cleared so the roadway is much as it must have been almost 2,000 years ago. As most people start their visit at the opposite end, the tetrapylon was full of young people running about and making a great deal of noise, so we decided to retire to the Zenobia and wait till the sun went down a little.
Later we continued our visit from where we had left off earlier. The tetrapylon has been restored but not too obtrusively. The main street continues eastwards passing the theatre and temple of Nebu on the right and the baths of Diocletian on the left. The theatre has been restored on the outside but inside it looks much as it must have done but the outline, marked by the columns, is just about all that is to be seen of the Temple of Nebu, a Mesopotamian god of wisdom who was equated with Apollo. The Arch of Triumph which marks the eastern end of the decamanus is classical in style with a tall, wide central entrance for wheeled traffic and smaller lower arches either side for pedestrians.
Perhaps the buildings, as opposed to the colonnades, which I found most evocative were the forum or market-place and the caravanserai, the middle eastern equivalent of medieval toll-booths where taxes were paid on the goods entering the city. The forum is huge and is surrounded on all four sides by columned porticos, the space between each of which would have been filled by a stall, and there are windows in the walls with richly decorated surrounds. The usual Palmyrene brackets are to be seen where the moguls of trans-desert trade would have displayed their effigies to let the world know just who was who. It seems only appropriate that the forum should have been such a grand place in a city which made its fortune from trading activities. At one end of the forum are the remains of a banqueting hall with benches for reclining guests all around the walls. Next door to the forum is the large caravanserai or Tariff Court where the caravans would have paid their taxes before unloading their goods for sale in Palmyra or continuing their journey towards Damascus and the coast. Just outside the forum can be seen the remains of Zenobia’s defensive wall.
Our last call was to the immense Temple of Bel which stands opposite the Arch of Triumph on the other side of the modern road through Palmyra to Tadmor and eastwards through the desert to Deir az-Zor on the Euphrates. Bel is a Semitic god who was often associated with Zeus in the Roman pantheon and the Canaanite god of rain and fertility Baal-Shamin whose temple stands just in front of the Zenobia hotel. It is no surprise that so many gods should have been worshipped at Palmyra where there was probably a great mix of people of different origins, each group bringing its own religious beliefs along, just as people do today. However, the magnitude of the Temple of Bel demonstrates clearly enough that this was the most significant god in Palmyra.
The temple is regarded as the most important religious building of the first century A.D. in the Middle East and the proportions are truly imperial in scale. The temple itself follows the tradition of Middle Eastern religious compounds. The monumental entrance opens on to a huge courtyard where worshippers would have gathered in the open air, much as the faithful do today when they go to Mecca. In the middle of the courtyard stands the building, surrounded by columns, where the gods were housed. Here Bel was accompanied by the Palmyrene gods of the sun and the moon and he is represented as controlling the movements of the heavens. To the left of the monumental entrance is another smaller entrance which comes up through a kind of tunnel just to the left of the altar. This entrance was probably used to bring in the sacrificial animals. To the right of the altar is a basin for ritual washing.
There was a kind of quiet about the temple precinct, so we sat down in the shade there for a while. Suddenly a man’s voice said, “That’s Lord Byron!” Then a lady came into the inner sanctuary were we were sitting and said, “Absolutely. Lord Byron”. It was an elderly American couple who had once had a dog, called Lord Byron, who looked just like Simon, so conversation then ensued about the virtues of such a dog. The lady was based at Aleppo in northern Syria where, I think from the conversation with other people who were with them, she must be teaching at an American school.
The hotel was full in the evening, the guests visiting the ruins being joined by groups of young people from Damascus on a day out. It was almost full moon so, once we had had something to eat, we had a last moonlit walk through the ruins before going to bed.
The stone now took on a pale, spectral quality, and it was satisfying to wander among the ruins in the silence of the night.
The following day we got up just after dawn and walked out to the ruin fields once more where the stone, whitish pale in the moonlight, was now glowing bathed in a halo of golden light as the rays of the rising sun struck the ruins. It was like wandering in a golden world of light. The call of a flock of bee-eaters was to be heard as they flew overhead. Despite the sharp cold wind of the desert, where temperatures fall dramatically at night, we were glad that we had stayed overnight to experience this vision of the columns and ruins of Palmyra.
As we wandered around looking at the columns and lintels, the cornices particularly attracted my attention. Remote as it may seem, the cornices of Palmyra influenced architecture in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Two English travellers, Wood and Dawkins by name, visited Palmyra in the mid-18th century. On their return, they published a book where the details of the cornices and art of Palmyra were richly depicted and the book had an enormous influence on the neo-classical architecture of Britain, with Palmyrene cornices and ceilings becoming tremendously popular in the stately homes of the day. Palmyra cornices are to be found at Blair Castle and Dumfries House. But, the more I looked, the more familiar the lower part of the cornices seemed to become. I realised that these same motifs were common in the cornices of houses in Garnethill before that once beautiful area of Glasgow began its slow slide into decrepitude. The lower part of the cornices in my aunt’s house, circular shapes interspersed with a vertical division, were a direct copy of the lower cornices and lintels of Palmyra!
Having checked out of the hotel, we drove past the sulphur springs and parked the car by the roadside to walk up to the Valley of the Tombs. The necropolis of Palmyra is interesting in that over time various methods of burying the dead were used. The most ancient was to bury the dead in Tower Tombs which could be anything up to four stories high, so each family would build up the tower to accomodate its dead. The ceilings of the various storeys were carved. Later, underground burials became the norm with a transitional phase when both tower tombs and underground burials coexisted. A late fashion was for House or Temple Tombs, the most intact example of which we had seen on our way up to the citadel. The countryside all around the ruins of Palmyra is dotted with Tower Tombs which stand up like sentinels.
As we walked up the hill, a young bedouin shepherd got up from his vantage point under a rock and approached in a state of agitation. Did we have a lighter - or matches? His lighter was broken and he was desperate to smoke a cigarette. His disappointment knew no bounds when he discovered that, of all the people he had to come across, it had to be these two with no source of fire of any kind. Fortunately, we later remembered that there was a lighter in the car which we used to relieve his misery and off he went with his flock of sheep behind him, being joined later by another goatherd.
As we wandered among the tombs, a curious thing happened. We were approaching the door of one of the tower tombs when suddenly, about a metre away from the entrance, Simon spooked. He stopped and stood motionless, his head and tail stretched out in “pointing” position. He sniffed and sniffed and no amount of coaxing could entice him to approach the entrance to the tomb. The same thing happened at another tomb further into the valley, so we decided to respect his intuition and did not enter any of the tombs. Could the spirits of the dead still be present there?
We were sorry indeed to be leaving Palmyra. The sight of the golden columns marching quietly across the desert is impressive and dramatic and the desert itself bores into the soul creating a kind of peace and tranquility which can only be found in expansive places like the desert and the sea. It is no surprise that visionairies and mystics have nearly always and everywhere found inspiration in the desert which forces one to come down to basics and file away all frills and unnecessary trappings.
Driving back - more slowly than we had come - we saw red kite and buzzards and booted eagles, crested larks and even a hoopoe and, strangely, the desert looked more desert-like than it had on the outward journey. Palmyra is indeed an experience to be remembered and it is worth making a trip to Syria just to experience Palmyra!
April 8th. 1998
Sunday, September 18, 2005
ARABIC LESSONS
ARABIC LESSONS
I had been looking around for a place to go for Arabic lessons, but most courses seem to be coming to an end, and some of the places looked so unappetizing that I was leaving them for later in case nothing else more attractive should turn up. The first school I was taken to happened to be closed at the time, but it looked so grey and drab it was not a place I felt drawn to. Then I heard that the British Council ran courses but, when I spoke to them on the phone, the course I would probably have to join was between 4.30 and 6.30 in the evening which is just when Robert gets home starving, so that did not seem too promising, and anyway it was very expensive. Next I went to the University. The building where the classes are held is fairly new but crumbling and dull, and nearly all the girls I met were covered from head to toe. As I waited for the secretary to come back from her morning break, I managed to get a glimpse of the textbook they were using which was all exercises, and so the impression I got - true or false I don’t know - was of a lot of writing and not much spoken work. Anyway, we then decided to try the Spanish Cultural Centre, the Instituto Cervantes. Robert spoke to the secretary on the phone and she told him that they were hoping to start a new course next week and that one was already running.
I went along with a view to talking to the teacher to see what level she would put me in at. As the teacher only speaks Arabic, I had to make myself understood at all costs. I managed. She asked why I didn’t join the class she was about to give to see whether I thought I could fit in and whether I liked the way she worked.
The other students arrived: one Italian lady and another Canadian both in their fifties, I suppose, married to Syrian husbands but unable to speak a word, although they did understand some Arabic; another Frenchwoman who was born and spent most of her life in Tunisia before and understood a lot and could speak quite a lot but was taking the course to iron out the differences with Syrian Arabic; a Cuban woman who I think probably works at the embassy; a Spanish girl in her thirties, the reason for whose stay I did not manage to suss out but it would seem to be on account of her husband’s work, and another girl, half Spanish and half Mexican, married to a Syrian but unable to speak and practically unable to understand any Arabic. They had already had forty hours of lessons and this series of lessons comes to an end next Tuesday.
I found that, with what I already know, I was able to fit in without too much trouble and, apart from the Frenchwoman, I don’t think I am any worse than the rest of the group. Of course, having dedicated my life to language and communication in one way or another makes it easier, because I can see links and catch on quicker than a lot of other people. Most of this group have decided to carry on for another month, so I will continue with them and then, after the month, we’ll see what happens, because the two Spanish girls have children and will want to stop their lessons when the school holidays start.
The main thing I realized from this first lesson is that modern spoken Arabic is much less sophisticated and, therefore, less complicated than the classical Arabic I have learned, so the verb structures are much simpler. Also, some of the vocabulary I know, and which is also used in the Gulf region, is not used here in ordinary everyday conversation when other words are used, although the vocabulary I know is used in formal situations and on TV. However, I am sure I will manage to get to grips with that.
April 7th 1998
I had been looking around for a place to go for Arabic lessons, but most courses seem to be coming to an end, and some of the places looked so unappetizing that I was leaving them for later in case nothing else more attractive should turn up. The first school I was taken to happened to be closed at the time, but it looked so grey and drab it was not a place I felt drawn to. Then I heard that the British Council ran courses but, when I spoke to them on the phone, the course I would probably have to join was between 4.30 and 6.30 in the evening which is just when Robert gets home starving, so that did not seem too promising, and anyway it was very expensive. Next I went to the University. The building where the classes are held is fairly new but crumbling and dull, and nearly all the girls I met were covered from head to toe. As I waited for the secretary to come back from her morning break, I managed to get a glimpse of the textbook they were using which was all exercises, and so the impression I got - true or false I don’t know - was of a lot of writing and not much spoken work. Anyway, we then decided to try the Spanish Cultural Centre, the Instituto Cervantes. Robert spoke to the secretary on the phone and she told him that they were hoping to start a new course next week and that one was already running.
I went along with a view to talking to the teacher to see what level she would put me in at. As the teacher only speaks Arabic, I had to make myself understood at all costs. I managed. She asked why I didn’t join the class she was about to give to see whether I thought I could fit in and whether I liked the way she worked.
The other students arrived: one Italian lady and another Canadian both in their fifties, I suppose, married to Syrian husbands but unable to speak a word, although they did understand some Arabic; another Frenchwoman who was born and spent most of her life in Tunisia before and understood a lot and could speak quite a lot but was taking the course to iron out the differences with Syrian Arabic; a Cuban woman who I think probably works at the embassy; a Spanish girl in her thirties, the reason for whose stay I did not manage to suss out but it would seem to be on account of her husband’s work, and another girl, half Spanish and half Mexican, married to a Syrian but unable to speak and practically unable to understand any Arabic. They had already had forty hours of lessons and this series of lessons comes to an end next Tuesday.
I found that, with what I already know, I was able to fit in without too much trouble and, apart from the Frenchwoman, I don’t think I am any worse than the rest of the group. Of course, having dedicated my life to language and communication in one way or another makes it easier, because I can see links and catch on quicker than a lot of other people. Most of this group have decided to carry on for another month, so I will continue with them and then, after the month, we’ll see what happens, because the two Spanish girls have children and will want to stop their lessons when the school holidays start.
The main thing I realized from this first lesson is that modern spoken Arabic is much less sophisticated and, therefore, less complicated than the classical Arabic I have learned, so the verb structures are much simpler. Also, some of the vocabulary I know, and which is also used in the Gulf region, is not used here in ordinary everyday conversation when other words are used, although the vocabulary I know is used in formal situations and on TV. However, I am sure I will manage to get to grips with that.
April 7th 1998
Monday, September 12, 2005
HAJJ AND EID
HAJJ AND EID
Every year the Hajj season comes around, though, as the Moslem calendar is an unmodified lunar calendar, all the festivals rotate around the seasons, and every year pilgrims make their way to Mecca, as they have done since the advent of Islam, to fulfil one of the five pillars of their religion. Nowadays, with relatively cheap air travel available to most, the numbers have increased, and this year over two million pilgrims had to be catered for.
Courtesy of Saudi Arabian television which broadcasts daily programmes on the events and possible problems of each day of the Hajj, we were able to follow the procedures of the pilgrimage. Before the Hajj began, Saudi TV also broadcast a programme recorded in previous years following a family of three pilgrims, a man with his wife and mother, from the time they were making their preparations in their country of origin. This was most enlightening for us and, I think, also to Moslems who have not made the pilgrimage, because the regulations governing ritual purity and cleansing are quite complicated as are the procedures to be carried out at each stage of the Hajj. This was clear from the number of programmes dedicated to explaining to pilgrims what was necessary for their pilgrimage to be complete and which prayers and visits are merely optional. However, even all the information broadcast by the television was not sufficient to avert another major tragedy provoked ultimately by the convergence of such a vast number of people on a restricted area for such a short period of time and aggravated by the obligation to leave the stoning area before sunset of the last day of the Hajj.
The Hajj includes a number of different stages: arrival at Jeddah airport, arranging documentation, assignment to the national group of pilgrims with a guide, then accomodation in Mecca. One of the major spectacles of the Hajj is to see thousands upon thousands of pilgrims in their white robes, the men with one shoulder uncovered (the right one I think), circling the Ka’abah seven times. The great mosque where all this takes place has been greatly enlarged over the years, but particularly by King Fahd, the present king, who has extended the mosque enormously. Interestingly, the new part is a reproduction of the great mosque at Córdoba in Spain except that, whereas the Córdoba mosque is built in white and red, the new one at Mecca is blue and white. In any case it is an astounding edifice. However, in the final analysis, this is the most extensive manifestation of ancient Semitic religious architecture and traditions still in use today. In the Semitic tradition the most important part of temples and places of worship was not the enclosed areas but the vast open spaces where the faithful could congregate en masse. The Temple of Bel at Palmyra is an example of this same tradition in its ancient form. The Ka’abah, the huge block covered with a black woven drape embroidered in gold, is the ultimate manifestation of another ancient Semitic religious tradition, whereby cubes and obelisks, known as god-blocks, were erected, not as gods to be worshipped but as an abstract manifestation of the Almighty to remind people of the existence of God. Indeed the word “ka’abah” means “cube”.
The pilgrims then proceed to Medina where the Prophet Muhammed moved when the citizens of his native town, Mecca, proved unresponsive to his new religion. This move is known as the Hijra and is the event which marks the start of calculations for the Islamic calendar. The next stage of the pilgrimage takes place on Mount Arafat and this is the heart of the hajj. After the first ten days of the pilgrimage, the Eid al-Adha takes place. This is the feast to commemorate when Abraham was told by God to take his son Isaac up to a high place and offer him in sacrifice. According to one tradition this took place on Mount Qassioun overlooking Damascus. However, and fortunately for Isaac, when God had tested Abraham’s obedience, he then told him to release his son and sacrifice an animal instead. The commemoration of this sacrifice is the most unsavoury part of the pilgrimage to me because, whereas Judaism discontinued the practice of sacrifice with the fall of the Temple at Jerusalem and, in Christianity, sacrifice was sublimated in the form of the offering of bread and wine instead, Islam continues to take the practice literally, and every pilgrim is obliged to sacrifice an animal: some sacrifice a goat, some a lamb and some a camel. Some carry out the sacrifice themselves and others simple pay the price of the animal and the sacrifice is carried out on their behalf in the vast modern slaughter-house which is part of the hajj installations.
The final ritual of the hajj is the stoning of the pillars. For three days the pilgrims must stone certain pillars with a certain number of pebbles declaring the oneness and greatness of God. When they have competed this final ritual, all pilgrims must leave the area before sunset. The rush to comply with this final injunction is what led to the catastrophe this year.
As access to the holy places at Mecca and Medina is prohibited to non-Moslems, being able to contemplate the whole pilgrimage on television was quite an education. Robert was amazed at the complexity of the prescribed rituals and the rules governing the order in which each one should be carried out. In terms of logistics, the government of Saudi Arabia makes an enormous effort, sparing no cost, and every eventuality is considered. There is a Ministry for the Hajj whose representatives meet with delegates from the various Hajj committees throughout the year in order to plan the event as minutely as possible. However, at the end of the day, the vast numbers in such a confined space will be the limiting factor. In the old days, up to fifty years ago, the numbers making the hajj rarely exceeded half a million but today, with cheap travel more accessible to all, the physical impossibility of crowding in any more people will probably lead to numbers being limited. In terms of spectacle, it is quite unique to see such a throng of humanity surging as one and circling the Ka’abah chanting the same monotonous, hypnotic chant.
The Eid sacrifice is also carried out by Moslem families throughout the world at the start of the Eid and the meat is distributed to the poor. This marks the start of three days of celebration. The Eid is in effect the Moslem equivalent of Christmas, in the sense that it provides an opportunity for families to get together and eat copiously, and it is the children’s holiday when parents, and particularly fathers, spend time with their children and take them out for treats. Funfares sprang up overnight all over Damascus and they were packed with excited children during the three days of the Eid holiday. On the first day the children are also given a gift. As elsewhere, the choice of gift leaves much to be desired. There were many little dolls saying “mama” for the girls, but most of all there were guns with rolls of “explosives” and firecrackers and fireworks which turned the town into an infernal battle-field with little boys shooting at one another around every corner. The worst of it was that the supply of “explosives” far outlasted the Eid holiday so, for at least two weeks, we had to suffer the consequences of this martial fever.
April 6th. 1998
Every year the Hajj season comes around, though, as the Moslem calendar is an unmodified lunar calendar, all the festivals rotate around the seasons, and every year pilgrims make their way to Mecca, as they have done since the advent of Islam, to fulfil one of the five pillars of their religion. Nowadays, with relatively cheap air travel available to most, the numbers have increased, and this year over two million pilgrims had to be catered for.
Courtesy of Saudi Arabian television which broadcasts daily programmes on the events and possible problems of each day of the Hajj, we were able to follow the procedures of the pilgrimage. Before the Hajj began, Saudi TV also broadcast a programme recorded in previous years following a family of three pilgrims, a man with his wife and mother, from the time they were making their preparations in their country of origin. This was most enlightening for us and, I think, also to Moslems who have not made the pilgrimage, because the regulations governing ritual purity and cleansing are quite complicated as are the procedures to be carried out at each stage of the Hajj. This was clear from the number of programmes dedicated to explaining to pilgrims what was necessary for their pilgrimage to be complete and which prayers and visits are merely optional. However, even all the information broadcast by the television was not sufficient to avert another major tragedy provoked ultimately by the convergence of such a vast number of people on a restricted area for such a short period of time and aggravated by the obligation to leave the stoning area before sunset of the last day of the Hajj.
The Hajj includes a number of different stages: arrival at Jeddah airport, arranging documentation, assignment to the national group of pilgrims with a guide, then accomodation in Mecca. One of the major spectacles of the Hajj is to see thousands upon thousands of pilgrims in their white robes, the men with one shoulder uncovered (the right one I think), circling the Ka’abah seven times. The great mosque where all this takes place has been greatly enlarged over the years, but particularly by King Fahd, the present king, who has extended the mosque enormously. Interestingly, the new part is a reproduction of the great mosque at Córdoba in Spain except that, whereas the Córdoba mosque is built in white and red, the new one at Mecca is blue and white. In any case it is an astounding edifice. However, in the final analysis, this is the most extensive manifestation of ancient Semitic religious architecture and traditions still in use today. In the Semitic tradition the most important part of temples and places of worship was not the enclosed areas but the vast open spaces where the faithful could congregate en masse. The Temple of Bel at Palmyra is an example of this same tradition in its ancient form. The Ka’abah, the huge block covered with a black woven drape embroidered in gold, is the ultimate manifestation of another ancient Semitic religious tradition, whereby cubes and obelisks, known as god-blocks, were erected, not as gods to be worshipped but as an abstract manifestation of the Almighty to remind people of the existence of God. Indeed the word “ka’abah” means “cube”.
The pilgrims then proceed to Medina where the Prophet Muhammed moved when the citizens of his native town, Mecca, proved unresponsive to his new religion. This move is known as the Hijra and is the event which marks the start of calculations for the Islamic calendar. The next stage of the pilgrimage takes place on Mount Arafat and this is the heart of the hajj. After the first ten days of the pilgrimage, the Eid al-Adha takes place. This is the feast to commemorate when Abraham was told by God to take his son Isaac up to a high place and offer him in sacrifice. According to one tradition this took place on Mount Qassioun overlooking Damascus. However, and fortunately for Isaac, when God had tested Abraham’s obedience, he then told him to release his son and sacrifice an animal instead. The commemoration of this sacrifice is the most unsavoury part of the pilgrimage to me because, whereas Judaism discontinued the practice of sacrifice with the fall of the Temple at Jerusalem and, in Christianity, sacrifice was sublimated in the form of the offering of bread and wine instead, Islam continues to take the practice literally, and every pilgrim is obliged to sacrifice an animal: some sacrifice a goat, some a lamb and some a camel. Some carry out the sacrifice themselves and others simple pay the price of the animal and the sacrifice is carried out on their behalf in the vast modern slaughter-house which is part of the hajj installations.
The final ritual of the hajj is the stoning of the pillars. For three days the pilgrims must stone certain pillars with a certain number of pebbles declaring the oneness and greatness of God. When they have competed this final ritual, all pilgrims must leave the area before sunset. The rush to comply with this final injunction is what led to the catastrophe this year.
As access to the holy places at Mecca and Medina is prohibited to non-Moslems, being able to contemplate the whole pilgrimage on television was quite an education. Robert was amazed at the complexity of the prescribed rituals and the rules governing the order in which each one should be carried out. In terms of logistics, the government of Saudi Arabia makes an enormous effort, sparing no cost, and every eventuality is considered. There is a Ministry for the Hajj whose representatives meet with delegates from the various Hajj committees throughout the year in order to plan the event as minutely as possible. However, at the end of the day, the vast numbers in such a confined space will be the limiting factor. In the old days, up to fifty years ago, the numbers making the hajj rarely exceeded half a million but today, with cheap travel more accessible to all, the physical impossibility of crowding in any more people will probably lead to numbers being limited. In terms of spectacle, it is quite unique to see such a throng of humanity surging as one and circling the Ka’abah chanting the same monotonous, hypnotic chant.
The Eid sacrifice is also carried out by Moslem families throughout the world at the start of the Eid and the meat is distributed to the poor. This marks the start of three days of celebration. The Eid is in effect the Moslem equivalent of Christmas, in the sense that it provides an opportunity for families to get together and eat copiously, and it is the children’s holiday when parents, and particularly fathers, spend time with their children and take them out for treats. Funfares sprang up overnight all over Damascus and they were packed with excited children during the three days of the Eid holiday. On the first day the children are also given a gift. As elsewhere, the choice of gift leaves much to be desired. There were many little dolls saying “mama” for the girls, but most of all there were guns with rolls of “explosives” and firecrackers and fireworks which turned the town into an infernal battle-field with little boys shooting at one another around every corner. The worst of it was that the supply of “explosives” far outlasted the Eid holiday so, for at least two weeks, we had to suffer the consequences of this martial fever.
April 6th. 1998
Sunday, September 11, 2005
THE STREET CALLED ST
THE “STREET CALLED STRAIGHT”
Yesterday was a religious and classical day. Having decided that we would take a walk along ”Straight Street”, at first we thought that our plans had been thwarted because Robert did not feel well during the night and was still under the weather in the morning. However, by late morning he felt better so we went ahead with our plan as best we could.
Most guide books advise starting the walk along “Straight Street” at the western end just to the right of the Souk al-Hamidiye but, as the straightness of the street is somewhat confused (Mark Twain said it was straighter than a corkscrew but not as straight as a rainbow), we thought it would be easier to start at the eastern end, so we made the mistaken decision of trying to get there by car, which meant that we were caught up in a traffic pandemonium with cars and lorries pulling in every direction and tooting and cutting in in the manner which makes Damascus traffic the chaos it undoubtedly is. Getting to the eastern end of Old Damascus involves driving through a narrow winding street with room enough for only one vehicle to squeeze past and lined on either side with tiny businesses of every description: metalworkers making everything from stoves to decorative brass trays, cobblers with a queue of clients waiting to have their trainers sewn together again on an ancient machine, sweet sellers, bakeries, woodworkers and butcher’s shops with their offputting wares displayed. I find it sad to see the animals hung up on the hooks, particularly a camel’s head and neck with the hook strung through its nostrils.
Finally we arrived at Bab Sharki, or the Eastern Gate of Old Damascus, which was called the Gate of the Sun by the Romans. This is the oldest extant monument in Damascus and it marks the eastern gateway to the city and one end of the Via Recta or Straight Street of Roman times, which comes out at the western end via the Bab al-Jabiye. The gateway is made up of three arches, the central one is the widest and was (and is) for wheeled traffic, whereas the two smaller side arches are for pedestrians. Just inside the gate are the remains of several columns on either side. In Roman times this street, which was the decamanus, or main east-west thoroughfare of Damascus, was 24 metres wide and was lined along its full length with columns on either side which supported a cloth awning to filter the sun’s rays. In the course of time, however, the 24m. span was gnawed away by encroaching stalls and shops which make up the various small souqs still in existence today.
The Romans were not the first to plan their city on this site by any means. Halfway along the street is a small mound, as yet unexcavated, which marks the point of the original bronze-age settlement at Damascus, and all the subsequent conquerors and rulers used this site, because the importance of Damascus was due to its strategic position as a caravan centre for the caravans coming from the East. The caravanserais, or khans, still exist today though no caravans now arrive. The city is mentioned in the Ebla tablets which date from the 3rd millenium B.C. and on numerous occasions in the Bible, as Damascus was ruled by King David and only regained its independence under King Solomon. The Greeks made a major contribution in terms of town planning with their tidy grid system and, although there would seem to be little of that Greek order left in the warren of tiny streets of the old town, aerial photography shows that the basic skeleton is still discernible. However, the Romans, who were much “flashier” and pretentious in their fever for municipal embellishment, lost no time in tracing their main east-west and north-south roads through the city. “Straight Street” was the Via Recta or decamanus. However, even when it was originally laid out, the street was not absolutely straight because it had to make detours around buildings which already existed, so its name is something of a misnomer. On account of this, the Acts of the Apostles in perhaps one of the few strokes of humour contained in the gospels and similar texts, refer to this street as the “Street called Straight”.
The New Testament associations of this street are many, and they are mostly related to St. Paul. When Saul of Tarsus, a Roman soldier, was sent to arrest the followers of Jesus at Damascus, he was, as we all know, struck down not far from Damascus at a place we have still to visit. His companions brought their now blind leader to Damascus where Ananias, a Christian, had a vision in which he was told of Saul’s arrival. Ananias sought Saul out and and took him to his home where he instructed him in the fundamentals of Christianity which Saul embraced. After that he was known as Paul. When Paul then began to preach Christianity declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, he raised the ire of the Jewish population and had to flee. The spot where Ananias’s house stood, about 150m. down the first street on the right just as you come through the Bab Sharki, is now a chapel and the earliest remains do date from the first century A.D., although the actual chapel now standing is from about 7A.D., but we were unable to visit it because it was closed.
Another monument connected to the origins of Christendom and St. Paul stands to the left of the Bab Sharki at another gate to the city, the Bab Kaysan. Blocking up the entrance to the ancient gate is now a chapel called St. Paul’s chapel built by the Greek catholic community to mark the spot where, according to tradition, St. Paul was lowered over the city walls to escape from Damascus when he was being pursued. This chapel was also closed, so, from the point of view of Pauline history, our morning was rather
frustrated.
In any case, it is clear that Damascus played a major role in the development of Christianity, and undoubtedly Christendom would never have become what it is today without the skills of Paul, that arch marketing man and Billie Graham of the first century A.D., who saw what had to be done to make this essentially Judaic offshoot attractive to the Roman world and lost no time in selling his “product” in a highly successful fashion, which would be the envy of many marketing departments today.
As we walked though the Bab Sharki, people were milling about all around. The atmosphere in this part of town is quite different from elsewhere. The women are not veiled and there is scarcely a long garment to be seen. This is the Christian quarter of Damascus, which the Moslem conqueror consecrated as a Christian domain when Islam became the dominant religion in the seventh century in order to ensure that the Christian community could have continued access to their churches concentrated at the eastern end of the city. This tolerant attitude is typical of early Islam, which always sought to live in harmony alongside the other main religions. Conversion to Islam in those early days was more a result of tax incentives than anything else.
Here the women were wearing western style clothing, albeit with the hallmarks of an Eastern aesthetic sense, and the children were all dressed in white. We followed the throng into the church which stands just inside the city walls. This is the Armenian Orthodox church and the hymn books and prayer books are all in Armenian script. Many people were speaking Armenian among themselves. The building is modern and has no artistic merit, but it was interesting to see the iconostasis, where the predominant colour is blue, and the icons. To the right of the main door is a little chapel with a picture of the crucifixion and in front there is a long bank of candle holders where everyone was lighting candles and setting them in the sand. As all the liturgy was in Armenian, we had no idea what was going on, but yesterday’s liturgy was obviously geared towards the children and everyone had an elaborate white candle. At the end, families had their photographs taken with their children in front of the iconostasis and the candles. People were also carrying olive branches. At first I thought this was strange until I realized that, as the Orthodox liturgy follows the Julian calendar, Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church is next week.
Next stop was the Syrian Catholic church which is not far down on the same side of the street as the Armenian church. Here the altar and general disposition is similar to that of catholic churches in most places. The mass had ended, but the sacristan was explaining the significance of the statues (one of Our Lady of Lourdes) to two Europeans who had dropped by. The thing I like about Orthodox churches is that they use abundant incense, and clearly the Syrian church has not lost its Oriental roots as far as this aspect is concerned, because the smell of incense permeated the church, which has a beautiful large patio with a fountain in the middle around which huge palm branches were arranged to form a kind of canopy. There was also an arch of palm branches at the entrance to the church precinct. The liturgy here is in Arabic. Talking about Palm Sunday and entering Jerusalem in triumph on the back of a donkey, it occurs to me that, given the diminutive size of the donkeys here (and there is no indication that they were any larger in antiquity), if modern standards of cruelty to animals with a maximum weight of 45Kg. per donkey were applied, Jesus would be up before the magistrate’s court!
This fairly wide stretch of street flanked by shops on both sides carries on for about a kilometre at the end of which, just to the right, is a large precinct which is the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Damascus. The church was closed, so we could not go inside, and renovations were being carried out on an adjacent building which we could only assume was community halls and such like. There is a tall bell-tower in the middle of the precinct. As we intend to attend midnight mass there to mark the Greek Orthodox Easter, we should have a better idea of what it is like after that.
The streets on either side of the Via Recta are narrow and winding, the balconies of the houses on either side often meeting half way creating a kind of tunnel effect. These houses are built on the typical Middle Eastern model of a central patio on to which the rooms of the house open. This is the same model which is typical of Andalusian architecture, although it must be said that Andalucía could give lessons on the embellishment and decoration of the patios. We have been told that houses in the Christian quarter are extremely expensive because the modus vivendi is much more liberal than in the Islamic quarters and houses there are very sought after.
It is also worth noting that the goods sold in the shops in this district are of extremely fine quality: silk Oriental carpets, fine marquetry inlay work using real mother-of-pearl, top quality hand-blown coloured and hand painted glassware as well as wine (mostly Lebanese although some Greek is to be found) and arak, both of which are unobtainable in other parts of town.
Suddenly a Roman arch stands out, though not in the middle of the road as it runs today. This arch was discovered five metres under the present surface, having been buried by the debris of ages, and under the French mandate it was excavated and raised to be re-erected on the surface where it now stands. This arch marks the end of this relatively tranquil stretch of the Via Recta and the limit of the Christian quarter.
Beyond the Roman arch, what can only be described as bedlam reigns. The street narrows as it makes its way through the bazaar with barely enough space for a single vehicle to pass, pedestrians weaving in and out and around as best they can. In true Damascus fashion the horn dominates all traffic activity, despite the uselessness of any form of protest in this congested space where nothing can move until the vehicle in front moves on. Added to this cacophony of horns was the siren of the fire brigade truck which may still be stuck there for all I know. A snake of buses was stopping to pick up a mass of children of all ages being vomited forth from a number of schools.
The assault on the senses has to be experienced to be believed: horns, voices, colours, smells of spices and food and perfumes, music and the pure crush of humanity all combine to create an atmosphere which can only be found in the east. If Robert was feeling rather weak to begin with, he was truly washed out by the time we reached the far end of the souq where underwear, bedouin goods, clothes, food, fruit, shoes, both new and second-hand, and a range of other products mostly of inferior quality are sold. So, to escape the bedlam for a few minutes we took a side street through another smaller covered souq which, though crowded, was quiet and relatively serene.
Then we had to repeat the journey in reverse order to get back to Bab Sharki where we had left the car. We were certainly thankful that we had left the dog at home, because the noise and the crush and the heat would have been too much for him to digest. Fortunately the sun was now over the city wall which was casting a shadow on the car reducing the heat just a little. The return trip through the traffic was even more chaotic than the outward journey and we vowed never to take the car into the vicinity of the old town again but to park at one of the big hotels and walk. In the end it will be quicker and less frustrating. The temperature seems to have suddenly risen yesterday and the flushed cheeks of the women enveloped in their long gowns and head coverings made me think of how uncomfortable it must be for them in high summer. In fact, the transition from loose traditional clothing to more modern constraining styles but maintaining the need for cover is a step backwards for the women, particularly when cotton and silk head coverings are exchanged for polyester, and some women even wear a tight head-hugging hat of man-made fibres either with or without a scarf on top which must be a recipe for poached brains when the heat increases!
April 5th 1998
Yesterday was a religious and classical day. Having decided that we would take a walk along ”Straight Street”, at first we thought that our plans had been thwarted because Robert did not feel well during the night and was still under the weather in the morning. However, by late morning he felt better so we went ahead with our plan as best we could.
Most guide books advise starting the walk along “Straight Street” at the western end just to the right of the Souk al-Hamidiye but, as the straightness of the street is somewhat confused (Mark Twain said it was straighter than a corkscrew but not as straight as a rainbow), we thought it would be easier to start at the eastern end, so we made the mistaken decision of trying to get there by car, which meant that we were caught up in a traffic pandemonium with cars and lorries pulling in every direction and tooting and cutting in in the manner which makes Damascus traffic the chaos it undoubtedly is. Getting to the eastern end of Old Damascus involves driving through a narrow winding street with room enough for only one vehicle to squeeze past and lined on either side with tiny businesses of every description: metalworkers making everything from stoves to decorative brass trays, cobblers with a queue of clients waiting to have their trainers sewn together again on an ancient machine, sweet sellers, bakeries, woodworkers and butcher’s shops with their offputting wares displayed. I find it sad to see the animals hung up on the hooks, particularly a camel’s head and neck with the hook strung through its nostrils.
Finally we arrived at Bab Sharki, or the Eastern Gate of Old Damascus, which was called the Gate of the Sun by the Romans. This is the oldest extant monument in Damascus and it marks the eastern gateway to the city and one end of the Via Recta or Straight Street of Roman times, which comes out at the western end via the Bab al-Jabiye. The gateway is made up of three arches, the central one is the widest and was (and is) for wheeled traffic, whereas the two smaller side arches are for pedestrians. Just inside the gate are the remains of several columns on either side. In Roman times this street, which was the decamanus, or main east-west thoroughfare of Damascus, was 24 metres wide and was lined along its full length with columns on either side which supported a cloth awning to filter the sun’s rays. In the course of time, however, the 24m. span was gnawed away by encroaching stalls and shops which make up the various small souqs still in existence today.
The Romans were not the first to plan their city on this site by any means. Halfway along the street is a small mound, as yet unexcavated, which marks the point of the original bronze-age settlement at Damascus, and all the subsequent conquerors and rulers used this site, because the importance of Damascus was due to its strategic position as a caravan centre for the caravans coming from the East. The caravanserais, or khans, still exist today though no caravans now arrive. The city is mentioned in the Ebla tablets which date from the 3rd millenium B.C. and on numerous occasions in the Bible, as Damascus was ruled by King David and only regained its independence under King Solomon. The Greeks made a major contribution in terms of town planning with their tidy grid system and, although there would seem to be little of that Greek order left in the warren of tiny streets of the old town, aerial photography shows that the basic skeleton is still discernible. However, the Romans, who were much “flashier” and pretentious in their fever for municipal embellishment, lost no time in tracing their main east-west and north-south roads through the city. “Straight Street” was the Via Recta or decamanus. However, even when it was originally laid out, the street was not absolutely straight because it had to make detours around buildings which already existed, so its name is something of a misnomer. On account of this, the Acts of the Apostles in perhaps one of the few strokes of humour contained in the gospels and similar texts, refer to this street as the “Street called Straight”.
The New Testament associations of this street are many, and they are mostly related to St. Paul. When Saul of Tarsus, a Roman soldier, was sent to arrest the followers of Jesus at Damascus, he was, as we all know, struck down not far from Damascus at a place we have still to visit. His companions brought their now blind leader to Damascus where Ananias, a Christian, had a vision in which he was told of Saul’s arrival. Ananias sought Saul out and and took him to his home where he instructed him in the fundamentals of Christianity which Saul embraced. After that he was known as Paul. When Paul then began to preach Christianity declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, he raised the ire of the Jewish population and had to flee. The spot where Ananias’s house stood, about 150m. down the first street on the right just as you come through the Bab Sharki, is now a chapel and the earliest remains do date from the first century A.D., although the actual chapel now standing is from about 7A.D., but we were unable to visit it because it was closed.
Another monument connected to the origins of Christendom and St. Paul stands to the left of the Bab Sharki at another gate to the city, the Bab Kaysan. Blocking up the entrance to the ancient gate is now a chapel called St. Paul’s chapel built by the Greek catholic community to mark the spot where, according to tradition, St. Paul was lowered over the city walls to escape from Damascus when he was being pursued. This chapel was also closed, so, from the point of view of Pauline history, our morning was rather
frustrated.
In any case, it is clear that Damascus played a major role in the development of Christianity, and undoubtedly Christendom would never have become what it is today without the skills of Paul, that arch marketing man and Billie Graham of the first century A.D., who saw what had to be done to make this essentially Judaic offshoot attractive to the Roman world and lost no time in selling his “product” in a highly successful fashion, which would be the envy of many marketing departments today.
As we walked though the Bab Sharki, people were milling about all around. The atmosphere in this part of town is quite different from elsewhere. The women are not veiled and there is scarcely a long garment to be seen. This is the Christian quarter of Damascus, which the Moslem conqueror consecrated as a Christian domain when Islam became the dominant religion in the seventh century in order to ensure that the Christian community could have continued access to their churches concentrated at the eastern end of the city. This tolerant attitude is typical of early Islam, which always sought to live in harmony alongside the other main religions. Conversion to Islam in those early days was more a result of tax incentives than anything else.
Here the women were wearing western style clothing, albeit with the hallmarks of an Eastern aesthetic sense, and the children were all dressed in white. We followed the throng into the church which stands just inside the city walls. This is the Armenian Orthodox church and the hymn books and prayer books are all in Armenian script. Many people were speaking Armenian among themselves. The building is modern and has no artistic merit, but it was interesting to see the iconostasis, where the predominant colour is blue, and the icons. To the right of the main door is a little chapel with a picture of the crucifixion and in front there is a long bank of candle holders where everyone was lighting candles and setting them in the sand. As all the liturgy was in Armenian, we had no idea what was going on, but yesterday’s liturgy was obviously geared towards the children and everyone had an elaborate white candle. At the end, families had their photographs taken with their children in front of the iconostasis and the candles. People were also carrying olive branches. At first I thought this was strange until I realized that, as the Orthodox liturgy follows the Julian calendar, Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church is next week.
Next stop was the Syrian Catholic church which is not far down on the same side of the street as the Armenian church. Here the altar and general disposition is similar to that of catholic churches in most places. The mass had ended, but the sacristan was explaining the significance of the statues (one of Our Lady of Lourdes) to two Europeans who had dropped by. The thing I like about Orthodox churches is that they use abundant incense, and clearly the Syrian church has not lost its Oriental roots as far as this aspect is concerned, because the smell of incense permeated the church, which has a beautiful large patio with a fountain in the middle around which huge palm branches were arranged to form a kind of canopy. There was also an arch of palm branches at the entrance to the church precinct. The liturgy here is in Arabic. Talking about Palm Sunday and entering Jerusalem in triumph on the back of a donkey, it occurs to me that, given the diminutive size of the donkeys here (and there is no indication that they were any larger in antiquity), if modern standards of cruelty to animals with a maximum weight of 45Kg. per donkey were applied, Jesus would be up before the magistrate’s court!
This fairly wide stretch of street flanked by shops on both sides carries on for about a kilometre at the end of which, just to the right, is a large precinct which is the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Damascus. The church was closed, so we could not go inside, and renovations were being carried out on an adjacent building which we could only assume was community halls and such like. There is a tall bell-tower in the middle of the precinct. As we intend to attend midnight mass there to mark the Greek Orthodox Easter, we should have a better idea of what it is like after that.
The streets on either side of the Via Recta are narrow and winding, the balconies of the houses on either side often meeting half way creating a kind of tunnel effect. These houses are built on the typical Middle Eastern model of a central patio on to which the rooms of the house open. This is the same model which is typical of Andalusian architecture, although it must be said that Andalucía could give lessons on the embellishment and decoration of the patios. We have been told that houses in the Christian quarter are extremely expensive because the modus vivendi is much more liberal than in the Islamic quarters and houses there are very sought after.
It is also worth noting that the goods sold in the shops in this district are of extremely fine quality: silk Oriental carpets, fine marquetry inlay work using real mother-of-pearl, top quality hand-blown coloured and hand painted glassware as well as wine (mostly Lebanese although some Greek is to be found) and arak, both of which are unobtainable in other parts of town.
Suddenly a Roman arch stands out, though not in the middle of the road as it runs today. This arch was discovered five metres under the present surface, having been buried by the debris of ages, and under the French mandate it was excavated and raised to be re-erected on the surface where it now stands. This arch marks the end of this relatively tranquil stretch of the Via Recta and the limit of the Christian quarter.
Beyond the Roman arch, what can only be described as bedlam reigns. The street narrows as it makes its way through the bazaar with barely enough space for a single vehicle to pass, pedestrians weaving in and out and around as best they can. In true Damascus fashion the horn dominates all traffic activity, despite the uselessness of any form of protest in this congested space where nothing can move until the vehicle in front moves on. Added to this cacophony of horns was the siren of the fire brigade truck which may still be stuck there for all I know. A snake of buses was stopping to pick up a mass of children of all ages being vomited forth from a number of schools.
The assault on the senses has to be experienced to be believed: horns, voices, colours, smells of spices and food and perfumes, music and the pure crush of humanity all combine to create an atmosphere which can only be found in the east. If Robert was feeling rather weak to begin with, he was truly washed out by the time we reached the far end of the souq where underwear, bedouin goods, clothes, food, fruit, shoes, both new and second-hand, and a range of other products mostly of inferior quality are sold. So, to escape the bedlam for a few minutes we took a side street through another smaller covered souq which, though crowded, was quiet and relatively serene.
Then we had to repeat the journey in reverse order to get back to Bab Sharki where we had left the car. We were certainly thankful that we had left the dog at home, because the noise and the crush and the heat would have been too much for him to digest. Fortunately the sun was now over the city wall which was casting a shadow on the car reducing the heat just a little. The return trip through the traffic was even more chaotic than the outward journey and we vowed never to take the car into the vicinity of the old town again but to park at one of the big hotels and walk. In the end it will be quicker and less frustrating. The temperature seems to have suddenly risen yesterday and the flushed cheeks of the women enveloped in their long gowns and head coverings made me think of how uncomfortable it must be for them in high summer. In fact, the transition from loose traditional clothing to more modern constraining styles but maintaining the need for cover is a step backwards for the women, particularly when cotton and silk head coverings are exchanged for polyester, and some women even wear a tight head-hugging hat of man-made fibres either with or without a scarf on top which must be a recipe for poached brains when the heat increases!
April 5th 1998
Thursday, September 08, 2005
SHAHBA
SHAHBA
This week-end’s major excursion was to Shahba, another town in the Hauran region which we visited last week when we went to Bosra, but this time the access road was not the new Jordan highway which runs between the Ante-Lebanon Hills and the Jebel al-Arab but the Suweida road which runs south from Damascus further to the east and to the east of the Jebel Al-Arab.
Suweida is the principal town of the region for administrative purposes today, so the signposts all show that town. At first the road is fairly crowded as there is no real distinction between where Damascus ends and where other smaller places begin. They all seem to merge into one another. The largest and busiest town near Damascus is Newja where people were queueing to buy their bread, and the butchers were hosing down the pavements and nearby doors and clearing up the gruesome debris of the morning’s slaughter. On the left as we drove through is a large mosque elaborately decorated in blue mosaics or tiles which struck us as being distinctly Shi’a in character, reminiscent of the architecture of Iran. This impression was confirmed on the return journey when the people were coming out from midday prayers and the majority were dressed in the Shi’a fashion. The elaborate nature of the mosque in such an unlikely setting is due to the fact that this is the site of the Sitt or Lady shrine dedicated to the memory of Zeinab, the daughter of Hussein who was captured with a small number of followers when her brother was slaughtered by the Ommayyad forces in the seventh century, an event which was to confirm the separation between the two main Islamic factions we know today, the Sunnis and the Shi’as.
Once these small towns are passed, the road becomes quieter and most of the villages encountered along the way are some way away from the road. There is considerable military presence all the way down, with a huge aviation camp on the left with numerous rounded “bunker” hangars made of reinforced concrete with their roofs covered with earth, presumably as a camouflage measure from the air. This perimeter fence was many kilometres long.
Like the rest of the Hauran plateau, the countryside is flat and rather monotonous and the land was not so well cultivated as the land along the Jordan highway. There were intermittent olive groves and some vineyards, but the trees were small and bent over as a result of the prevailing westerly winds which blow mercilessly across the plain.
Shahba, which lies about 87Kms. south of Damascus, is a curious town. Philip the Arab who was Emperor of Rome between 444-447A.D. was born here and, not unnaturally, he spent considerable sums of money and not a little effort embellishing his home town which for a while was known as Philipopolis. If Bosra was not a “dead” Roman town, Shahba is even more alive, because the town area in use today is the same area enclosed within the walls of the Roman town, although the walls, the outline of which is visible, are no longer standing, and many of the houses and shops in use today are the same buildings which stood in Roman times, particularly in the decamanus, or east-west thoroughfare, and the cardus maximus running from north to south is the main street of modern Shahba. Remains of the northern and southern gates are still standing. As we parked the car in the decamanus, a manure cart appeared tooting its horn and the women emerged with their offerings which were carted away. Chickens clucked around the ancient stones and washing hung from the rooftops. The process of adaptation to modern times is evident everywhere as Roman stone walls are topped with concrete circular beams and new roofs put in place. In one of the old shops was a man with his two teenage sons weaving cloth on hand looms. We could not see the purpose of the cloth they were making so, as they did not have the words to explain it to us, the father took Robert into the back room where they slept to show him while I stayed outside with the dog. The long woven pieces with geometric designs are folded into pillows! Mystery solved. Just below this little shop are four monumental pillars, three still intact and one broken, which once marked the entrance to a temple. Today, however, they mark the entrance to a private house! Some entrance!
At the top of the decamanus, which is still paved with the original Roman paving, is the
forum, a wide open rectangle around which stands a temple which Philip the Arab had built to honour his deified father Julius Marinus. Though lacking a roof, the fabric of the walls is remarkably sound. Of course, at Shahba, which is in the same volcanic belt as Bosra, the main building material was volcanic basalt which accounts for the high degree of preservation of the buildings. The cone of an extinct volcano, Tell Shihan, dominates the town and the volcano sides are exploited by a scarring open-cast bitumen mine.
To the right of the temple and at the western end of the forum is another curious structure, rather like a stage, the purpose of which has been debated in the past. However, it would now appear that this “stage” was a kind of open air shrine where statuary of various gods and, naturally, of the Emperor’s family were displayed. Robert, ever looking at things with the technical eye, was impressed by the building techniques used. The lintels are not simply placed over the uprights but grooves were made in the upright stones and protuberances in the lintels themselves so that the two stones were put together something like tongue and groove joints in woodwork. Next door to this shrine are the remains of a palace but, as people live there and have been adding bits on, it is not easy to see.
While we were wandering around, a little man who lives in a room in the building came out and observed our comings and goings. Then he made his way off to the right indicating that we should follow him. He turned out to be the key-keeper for the theatre which stands just behind the temple. After the monumental proportions of Bosra which could seat 15,000, this is like a miniature jewel seating around 2,000. It is remarkably well preserved, although some restoration has been done and we were not too keen on it because it seemed too perfect and too modern. Meanwhile a goat was doing a high-wire act around the perimeter of the theatre walls.
As we stood taking pictures of the monumental temple pillars now guarding the entrance to a private house, another man dressed in black with a black and white keffiyeh around his head came up to us and asked if we would like to see the mosaics museum. I am the caretaker of the museum, he said, so we followed him back down the decamanus and into the cardus maximus which is the main bazaar street with its chaos of modern traffic. To reach the museum we had to go through the remains of the Roman baths. In fact, they are almost intact except that the barrel vaulted roofs and domes have partly fallen in. These are curious too because the Romans made use of light volcanic tufa and concrete (which the Romans invented) to make the vaults. The three main rooms are still clear, the caldarium or steam room, the tepidarium and the frigidarium. We could have done with the caldarium just then! Another interesting point about these baths is the number of holes made in the stones at regular intervals all the way up the walls. These holes are the points at which the marble slabs which once covered the walls were attached to the stone. The baths must have been sumptuous indeed. The water was brought from the mountains ten kilometres away and an aqueduct, remains of which are still standing, brought it the last kilometre.
The mosaics museum at Shahba was itself a 24 roomed Roman villa and a number of the mosaics were found in situ when the villa was discovered in the seventies, which is why it was turned into a museum where the mosaics can be appreciated in their original position. The most remarkable thing about these mosaics is the tiny size of the pieces which measure only half a centimetre. A number of other mosaics not found at Shahba but at nearby Suweida are displayed there too as well as quite a few terracotta jars and jugs uncovered on the site. There is also a statue of Philip the Arab wearing a crown of laurel leaves which has been partly restored.
Philip the Arab was the last of the Roman Emperors to hail from Syria. When we think of the spreading and sprawling Roman Empire, somehow or another I suppose we tend to think of the influence Rome exerted on the various territories of its Empire and ignore the traffic coming in the opposite direction. Syria had considerable influence in Rome due to the marriage of generals with daughters of that land, one of whom was the mother of a famous Emperor, Caracalla, and later with Syrian-born citizens becoming emperors themselves. One of the Syrian contributions to Rome which was to change the face of the entire world was the transmission of Christianity. Although Christianity was hatched in Jerusalem and the area of Palestine, it was not until it passed through the Damascus sieve with Paul, the ultimate marketing man, turning it into a viable “commercial” package that it began to spread, and the first organized centre of Christianity was at Antioch then a part of Syria. Roman Emperors such as Philip the Arab were not Christians themselves but they did support the product emanating from their native land, giving it the push necessary to become established in Rome from where it went on to conquer the world.
The caretaker of the museum was quite knowledgeable about the items in his care and told us the story of Orpheus and Ariadne and Bacchus and the other figures depicted in the mosaics. Then, when we had finished our tour, he offered us a cup of tea in his office. This, in itself, was an interesting experience. The main conversation piece while we waited for his son to bring the tea was the stove standing on an engraved brass platform in the middle of the room with its ancient seats and worn table. Why? you may ask. The interesting thing about this typical cylindrical wood-burner type stove was that it had a pipe attached to it with a small container at the top which fed diesel into the base of the stove. The container had a gauge which indicated the level of diesel still available. Not a drop escaped and there was no smell at all. The room was warm as toast and we were grateful for that because it was very cold outside. We were given a gift of a postcard of a mosaic depicting the son of the president who was killed in a traffic accident which had been made by the curator of the museum. As he presented his gift, his smile revealed his gold-capped teeth.
Outside again we gave in to temptation and stopped at a shop selling cakes and biscuits. These are to be found everywhere and it is difficult to pass them by because the cakes, mostly sweet filo pastry filled with pistachios and cream and bathed in honey, are piled up in appetizing pyramids on vast platters. It is fatal to stop in any spot because immediately a crowd gathers anxious to know where everyone is from, and whether you like Syria and what are the best and the worst things about the country. In our case, Simon the dog acts like a magnet and soon I was surrounded by about twenty people all wanting to look at his eyes and know what his name was, all completely mesmerized by this hairy animal which sits down when he is told and does not conform to the general expectation of a fierce dog. One young man asked if he was for sale and when I replied that you do not sell your friends, he said “I like that answer. A very nice answer.” It later turned out that he was the owner of a shop two doors up where we stopped to buy some pistachios and other things. When Robert went in, he asked if he was with a group. Robert replied that he was only with his wife and his dog and then the young man said “Oh dear! I think I may have said the wrong thing because I asked if your dog was for sale and maybe your wife took it as an insult”. Robert reassured him in that regard and we went back to find the car.
The question inevitably arises of how it is that a once abandoned Roman town now pulsates with life. The answer is that Shahba was repopulated in the last century when Druze people, fleeing from difficult times in Lebanon, settled in the town and made it their home. Most of the people in Shahba today are Druze, although the museum caretaker told us that there were also some “Christmas” but not many. This is evident in the dress of the people who still wear traditional clothing. The women wear voluminous long black dresses, frequently made of lacy material, and on their heads they wear white muslin headcloths framing the face completely. They do not cover their faces and many women wear a kind of fez type cap, but not so high as the Moroccan fez, below their veils. As it was a cold day, many women also wore white hand-knitted woollen shawls around their shoulders. The men wear traditional Arab trousers, wide black pants which are tight around the leg from the knee downwards, with a short black felt jacket. Over the jacket many men were wearing a long black cape-like garment with long sleeve-like pockets similar to the “wings” on graduation gowns.
The Druze are one of the branches of Shi’a Islam found in Syria today. Although the Hauran is a Druze stronghold, the Druze are a minority within a minority. Shi’a Moslems account for only about 10% of Moslems worldwide and the Druze are only a small minority within the Shi’a commununity. They are often regarded by Sunni Moslems as heretical. The Druze originated in Egypt in the 11th century and then spread mostly to the southern mountains in the Lebanon where they formed a close-knit community. Druze philosophy is not very well known by outsiders even today but it would seem to incorporate anicient philosophies as well as the teachings of the Bible and the Qur’an. They believe in redemption through a series of reincarnations.
The return journey was interesting from a climatic point of view. We had been lucky enough to see Shahba during a dry interlude because it had been raining as we drove down and dark clouds were gathering as we left. However, something quite unexpected happened. On the horizon we could see clouds of sand and dust gathering and then being whirled along by the relentless westerly wind which seems to eternally sweep the Hauran plateau. A sand storm was brewing. Suddenly we were in the middle of it. Vision was totally obscured by the brown cloud of sand particles and stones which battered the car roof and windows. Military trucks and tanks stopped on the road as soldiers endeavoured to secure their tarpaulins. Shepherds with their flocks headed for shelter in the lee of the nearest rocks and the donkeys turned their rumps stoically towards the source of this barrage, their ears flattened against their heads. Little birds struggling to fly across the road and buffetted by the storm realized from centuries of conditioning that their only hope was to fly as close to the ground as possible. They made it. As we drove on, we left the storm behind us only to find ourselves in the middle of a cloudburst. Life on the Hauran plateau is no easy matter.
We had wanted to find some other smaller places with things of interest, Hayan, Hit and Shaqqa, but the bad weather and poor visibility made this a waste of time, so we decided to postpone these visits until another time
March 29th 1998
This week-end’s major excursion was to Shahba, another town in the Hauran region which we visited last week when we went to Bosra, but this time the access road was not the new Jordan highway which runs between the Ante-Lebanon Hills and the Jebel al-Arab but the Suweida road which runs south from Damascus further to the east and to the east of the Jebel Al-Arab.
Suweida is the principal town of the region for administrative purposes today, so the signposts all show that town. At first the road is fairly crowded as there is no real distinction between where Damascus ends and where other smaller places begin. They all seem to merge into one another. The largest and busiest town near Damascus is Newja where people were queueing to buy their bread, and the butchers were hosing down the pavements and nearby doors and clearing up the gruesome debris of the morning’s slaughter. On the left as we drove through is a large mosque elaborately decorated in blue mosaics or tiles which struck us as being distinctly Shi’a in character, reminiscent of the architecture of Iran. This impression was confirmed on the return journey when the people were coming out from midday prayers and the majority were dressed in the Shi’a fashion. The elaborate nature of the mosque in such an unlikely setting is due to the fact that this is the site of the Sitt or Lady shrine dedicated to the memory of Zeinab, the daughter of Hussein who was captured with a small number of followers when her brother was slaughtered by the Ommayyad forces in the seventh century, an event which was to confirm the separation between the two main Islamic factions we know today, the Sunnis and the Shi’as.
Once these small towns are passed, the road becomes quieter and most of the villages encountered along the way are some way away from the road. There is considerable military presence all the way down, with a huge aviation camp on the left with numerous rounded “bunker” hangars made of reinforced concrete with their roofs covered with earth, presumably as a camouflage measure from the air. This perimeter fence was many kilometres long.
Like the rest of the Hauran plateau, the countryside is flat and rather monotonous and the land was not so well cultivated as the land along the Jordan highway. There were intermittent olive groves and some vineyards, but the trees were small and bent over as a result of the prevailing westerly winds which blow mercilessly across the plain.
Shahba, which lies about 87Kms. south of Damascus, is a curious town. Philip the Arab who was Emperor of Rome between 444-447A.D. was born here and, not unnaturally, he spent considerable sums of money and not a little effort embellishing his home town which for a while was known as Philipopolis. If Bosra was not a “dead” Roman town, Shahba is even more alive, because the town area in use today is the same area enclosed within the walls of the Roman town, although the walls, the outline of which is visible, are no longer standing, and many of the houses and shops in use today are the same buildings which stood in Roman times, particularly in the decamanus, or east-west thoroughfare, and the cardus maximus running from north to south is the main street of modern Shahba. Remains of the northern and southern gates are still standing. As we parked the car in the decamanus, a manure cart appeared tooting its horn and the women emerged with their offerings which were carted away. Chickens clucked around the ancient stones and washing hung from the rooftops. The process of adaptation to modern times is evident everywhere as Roman stone walls are topped with concrete circular beams and new roofs put in place. In one of the old shops was a man with his two teenage sons weaving cloth on hand looms. We could not see the purpose of the cloth they were making so, as they did not have the words to explain it to us, the father took Robert into the back room where they slept to show him while I stayed outside with the dog. The long woven pieces with geometric designs are folded into pillows! Mystery solved. Just below this little shop are four monumental pillars, three still intact and one broken, which once marked the entrance to a temple. Today, however, they mark the entrance to a private house! Some entrance!
At the top of the decamanus, which is still paved with the original Roman paving, is the
forum, a wide open rectangle around which stands a temple which Philip the Arab had built to honour his deified father Julius Marinus. Though lacking a roof, the fabric of the walls is remarkably sound. Of course, at Shahba, which is in the same volcanic belt as Bosra, the main building material was volcanic basalt which accounts for the high degree of preservation of the buildings. The cone of an extinct volcano, Tell Shihan, dominates the town and the volcano sides are exploited by a scarring open-cast bitumen mine.
To the right of the temple and at the western end of the forum is another curious structure, rather like a stage, the purpose of which has been debated in the past. However, it would now appear that this “stage” was a kind of open air shrine where statuary of various gods and, naturally, of the Emperor’s family were displayed. Robert, ever looking at things with the technical eye, was impressed by the building techniques used. The lintels are not simply placed over the uprights but grooves were made in the upright stones and protuberances in the lintels themselves so that the two stones were put together something like tongue and groove joints in woodwork. Next door to this shrine are the remains of a palace but, as people live there and have been adding bits on, it is not easy to see.
While we were wandering around, a little man who lives in a room in the building came out and observed our comings and goings. Then he made his way off to the right indicating that we should follow him. He turned out to be the key-keeper for the theatre which stands just behind the temple. After the monumental proportions of Bosra which could seat 15,000, this is like a miniature jewel seating around 2,000. It is remarkably well preserved, although some restoration has been done and we were not too keen on it because it seemed too perfect and too modern. Meanwhile a goat was doing a high-wire act around the perimeter of the theatre walls.
As we stood taking pictures of the monumental temple pillars now guarding the entrance to a private house, another man dressed in black with a black and white keffiyeh around his head came up to us and asked if we would like to see the mosaics museum. I am the caretaker of the museum, he said, so we followed him back down the decamanus and into the cardus maximus which is the main bazaar street with its chaos of modern traffic. To reach the museum we had to go through the remains of the Roman baths. In fact, they are almost intact except that the barrel vaulted roofs and domes have partly fallen in. These are curious too because the Romans made use of light volcanic tufa and concrete (which the Romans invented) to make the vaults. The three main rooms are still clear, the caldarium or steam room, the tepidarium and the frigidarium. We could have done with the caldarium just then! Another interesting point about these baths is the number of holes made in the stones at regular intervals all the way up the walls. These holes are the points at which the marble slabs which once covered the walls were attached to the stone. The baths must have been sumptuous indeed. The water was brought from the mountains ten kilometres away and an aqueduct, remains of which are still standing, brought it the last kilometre.
The mosaics museum at Shahba was itself a 24 roomed Roman villa and a number of the mosaics were found in situ when the villa was discovered in the seventies, which is why it was turned into a museum where the mosaics can be appreciated in their original position. The most remarkable thing about these mosaics is the tiny size of the pieces which measure only half a centimetre. A number of other mosaics not found at Shahba but at nearby Suweida are displayed there too as well as quite a few terracotta jars and jugs uncovered on the site. There is also a statue of Philip the Arab wearing a crown of laurel leaves which has been partly restored.
Philip the Arab was the last of the Roman Emperors to hail from Syria. When we think of the spreading and sprawling Roman Empire, somehow or another I suppose we tend to think of the influence Rome exerted on the various territories of its Empire and ignore the traffic coming in the opposite direction. Syria had considerable influence in Rome due to the marriage of generals with daughters of that land, one of whom was the mother of a famous Emperor, Caracalla, and later with Syrian-born citizens becoming emperors themselves. One of the Syrian contributions to Rome which was to change the face of the entire world was the transmission of Christianity. Although Christianity was hatched in Jerusalem and the area of Palestine, it was not until it passed through the Damascus sieve with Paul, the ultimate marketing man, turning it into a viable “commercial” package that it began to spread, and the first organized centre of Christianity was at Antioch then a part of Syria. Roman Emperors such as Philip the Arab were not Christians themselves but they did support the product emanating from their native land, giving it the push necessary to become established in Rome from where it went on to conquer the world.
The caretaker of the museum was quite knowledgeable about the items in his care and told us the story of Orpheus and Ariadne and Bacchus and the other figures depicted in the mosaics. Then, when we had finished our tour, he offered us a cup of tea in his office. This, in itself, was an interesting experience. The main conversation piece while we waited for his son to bring the tea was the stove standing on an engraved brass platform in the middle of the room with its ancient seats and worn table. Why? you may ask. The interesting thing about this typical cylindrical wood-burner type stove was that it had a pipe attached to it with a small container at the top which fed diesel into the base of the stove. The container had a gauge which indicated the level of diesel still available. Not a drop escaped and there was no smell at all. The room was warm as toast and we were grateful for that because it was very cold outside. We were given a gift of a postcard of a mosaic depicting the son of the president who was killed in a traffic accident which had been made by the curator of the museum. As he presented his gift, his smile revealed his gold-capped teeth.
Outside again we gave in to temptation and stopped at a shop selling cakes and biscuits. These are to be found everywhere and it is difficult to pass them by because the cakes, mostly sweet filo pastry filled with pistachios and cream and bathed in honey, are piled up in appetizing pyramids on vast platters. It is fatal to stop in any spot because immediately a crowd gathers anxious to know where everyone is from, and whether you like Syria and what are the best and the worst things about the country. In our case, Simon the dog acts like a magnet and soon I was surrounded by about twenty people all wanting to look at his eyes and know what his name was, all completely mesmerized by this hairy animal which sits down when he is told and does not conform to the general expectation of a fierce dog. One young man asked if he was for sale and when I replied that you do not sell your friends, he said “I like that answer. A very nice answer.” It later turned out that he was the owner of a shop two doors up where we stopped to buy some pistachios and other things. When Robert went in, he asked if he was with a group. Robert replied that he was only with his wife and his dog and then the young man said “Oh dear! I think I may have said the wrong thing because I asked if your dog was for sale and maybe your wife took it as an insult”. Robert reassured him in that regard and we went back to find the car.
The question inevitably arises of how it is that a once abandoned Roman town now pulsates with life. The answer is that Shahba was repopulated in the last century when Druze people, fleeing from difficult times in Lebanon, settled in the town and made it their home. Most of the people in Shahba today are Druze, although the museum caretaker told us that there were also some “Christmas” but not many. This is evident in the dress of the people who still wear traditional clothing. The women wear voluminous long black dresses, frequently made of lacy material, and on their heads they wear white muslin headcloths framing the face completely. They do not cover their faces and many women wear a kind of fez type cap, but not so high as the Moroccan fez, below their veils. As it was a cold day, many women also wore white hand-knitted woollen shawls around their shoulders. The men wear traditional Arab trousers, wide black pants which are tight around the leg from the knee downwards, with a short black felt jacket. Over the jacket many men were wearing a long black cape-like garment with long sleeve-like pockets similar to the “wings” on graduation gowns.
The Druze are one of the branches of Shi’a Islam found in Syria today. Although the Hauran is a Druze stronghold, the Druze are a minority within a minority. Shi’a Moslems account for only about 10% of Moslems worldwide and the Druze are only a small minority within the Shi’a commununity. They are often regarded by Sunni Moslems as heretical. The Druze originated in Egypt in the 11th century and then spread mostly to the southern mountains in the Lebanon where they formed a close-knit community. Druze philosophy is not very well known by outsiders even today but it would seem to incorporate anicient philosophies as well as the teachings of the Bible and the Qur’an. They believe in redemption through a series of reincarnations.
The return journey was interesting from a climatic point of view. We had been lucky enough to see Shahba during a dry interlude because it had been raining as we drove down and dark clouds were gathering as we left. However, something quite unexpected happened. On the horizon we could see clouds of sand and dust gathering and then being whirled along by the relentless westerly wind which seems to eternally sweep the Hauran plateau. A sand storm was brewing. Suddenly we were in the middle of it. Vision was totally obscured by the brown cloud of sand particles and stones which battered the car roof and windows. Military trucks and tanks stopped on the road as soldiers endeavoured to secure their tarpaulins. Shepherds with their flocks headed for shelter in the lee of the nearest rocks and the donkeys turned their rumps stoically towards the source of this barrage, their ears flattened against their heads. Little birds struggling to fly across the road and buffetted by the storm realized from centuries of conditioning that their only hope was to fly as close to the ground as possible. They made it. As we drove on, we left the storm behind us only to find ourselves in the middle of a cloudburst. Life on the Hauran plateau is no easy matter.
We had wanted to find some other smaller places with things of interest, Hayan, Hit and Shaqqa, but the bad weather and poor visibility made this a waste of time, so we decided to postpone these visits until another time
March 29th 1998
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