Damascus
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Damascus by night, pictured from Jabal Qasioun; the green spots are minarets |
Damascus ( Also commonly:
الشام ash-Shām) is the
capital and largest city of
Syria. Founded approximately 2500 BCE, it is thought to be
the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world, before
Al Fayyum, and
Gaziantep. Its current population is estimated at about 4.5 million.
In
Arabic, the city is called
Dimashq ash-Shām. Although this is often shortened to
Dimashq by many, the citizens of Damascus, and of Syria and some other Arab neighbors, colloquially call the city
ash-Shām.
Ash-Shām is an Arabic term for
North and for Syria. (Syria " particularly historical
Greater Syria " is called
Bilād ash-Shām " , 'country of the north' " in Arabic.) The English name for Damascus is taken from the
Greek "αμασκός, via
Latin. This comes from the old
Aramaic name for the city " "רמשק
Darmeśeq, which means "a well-watered place". However, pre-Aramaic tablets unearthed at
Ebla refer to a city to the south of Ebla named
Damaski [
1]. It is possible that the name 'Damascus' pre-dates the Aramaic era of the city. Damascus is designated as having been part of the ancient
province of
Amurru in the
Hyksos Kingdom, from 1720 to 1570 BC. (MacMillan, pp. 30-31).
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Khan as'ad Pacha built in 1749 |
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Location of Damascus in relation to the rest of Syria |
Damascus lies about 80 km inland from the
Mediterranean Sea, sheltered by the
Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It lies on a plateau 680 meters above sea-level.
The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, lies on the south bank of the river
Barada. To the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages:
Midan in the south-west,
Sarouja and
Imara in the north and north-west. These districts originally arose on roads leading out of the city, near the tombs of religious figures. In the nineteenth century outlying villages developed on the slopes of
Jabal Qasioun, overlooking the city, already the site of the
Salihiyye district centred around the important shrine of Sheikh
Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi. These new districts were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule. Thus they were known as
al-Akrad (the Kurds) and
al-Muhajirin (the migrants). They lay two to three kilometres north of the old city.
From the late nineteenth century on, a modern administrative and commercial centre began to spring up to the west of the old city, around the Barada, centred on the area known as
al-merjeh or
the meadow.
Al-Merjeh soon became the name of what was initially the central square of modern Damascus, with the city hall on it. The courts of justice, post office and railway station stood on higher ground slightly to the south. A Europeanised residential quarter soon began to be built on the road leading between al-Merjeh and
Salihiyye. The commercial and administrative centre of the new city gradually shifted northwards slightly towards this area.
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Satellite image of Damascus, with Umaween Square just above the centre. The Barada river can be seen entering the picture in the upper left corner, and the western half of the old city is in the centre of the right hand edge of the photograph. The modern district of Mezze extends north of the motorway on the centre of the left edge. |
In the twentieth century, newer suburbs developed north of the Barada, and to some extent to the south, invading the Ghouta oasis. From 1955 the new district of
Yarmouk became a second home to thousands of Palestinian refugees. City planners preferred to preserve the Ghouta as far as possible, and in the later twentieth century some of the main areas of development were to the north, in the western Mezze district and most recently along the Barada valley in Dumar in the northwest and on the slopes of the mountains at Berze in the north-east. Poorer areas, often built without official approval, have mostly developed south of the main city.
Damascus is surrounded by an
oasis, the Ghouta (الغوطة
), watered by the Barada. The Fijeh spring, west along the Barada valley, provides the city with drinking water. The Ghouta oasis has been decreasing in size with the rapid expansion of housing and industry in the city. It has also become polluted due to the city's traffic, industry, and sewage.
Ancient
Excavations at Tell Ramad on the outskirts of the city have demonstrated that Damascus has been inhabited as early as 8000 to 10,000 BC. It is due to this that Damascus is considered to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. However, Damascus is not documented as an important city until the coming of the
Aramaeans, Semitic nomads who arrived from the
Arabian peninsula. It is known that it was the Aramaeans who first established the water distribution system of Damascus by constructing canals and tunnels which maximized the efficiency of the Barada river. The same network was later improved by the Romans and the Umayyads, and still forms the basis of the water system of the old part of Damascus today. In 1100 BC, the city became the center of a powerful Aramaean state called
Aram Damascus. The Kings of Aram Damascus were involved in many wars in the area against the
Assyrians and the
Israelites. One of the Kings,
Ben-Hadad II, fought
Shalmaneser III at the
Battle of Qarqar. The ruins of the Aramean town most probably lie under the eastern part of the old walled city. After
Tiglath-Pileser III captured and destroyed the city in
732 BC, it lost its independence for hundreds of years, and it fell under the
Neo-Babylonian rule of
Nebuchadnezzar starting in 572 BC. The Babylonian rule of the city came to an end in 538 BC when the Persians under
Cyrus captured the city and made it the capital of the Persian province of Syria.
Greco-Roman
Damascus first came under western control with the giant campaign of
Alexander the Great that swept through the near east. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the
Seleucid and
Ptolemaic empires. The control of the city passed frequently from one empire to the other.
Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's generals, had made
Antioch the capital of his vast empire, a decision that led Damascus' importance to decline compared with the newly founded Seleucid cities such as
Latakia in the north.
In 64 BC,
Pompey and the
Romans annexed the western part of Syria. They occupied Damascus and subsequently incorporated it into the league of ten cities known as the
Decapolis because it was considered such an important center of Greco-Roman culture. According to the
New Testament,
St. Paul was on the road to Damascus when he received a vision, was struck blind and as a result converted to
Christianity. In the year
37 AD,
Roman Emperor Caligula transferred Damascus into
Nabataean control by decree. The Nabataean king
Aretas IV Philopatris ruled Damascus from his capital
Petra. However, around the year
106, Nabataea was conquered by the Romans, and Damascus returned to Roman control.
Damascus became a metropolis by the beginning of the second century and in 222 it was upgraded to a
colonia by the Emperor
Septimius Severus. With the coming of the
Pax Romana, Damascus and the Roman province of Syria in general began to prosper. Damascus's importance as a caravan city was evident with the trade routes from southern
Arabia,
Palmyra,
Petra, and the silk routes from China all converging on it. The city satisfied the Roman demands for eastern luxuries.
Little remains of the architecture of the Romans, but the town planning of the old city did have a lasting effect. The Roman architects brought together the Greek and Aramaean foundations of the city and fused them into a new layout measuring approximately 1500 by 750 meters, surrounded by a city wall. The city wall contained seven gates, but only the eastern gate (Bab Sharqi) remains from the Roman period. Roman Damascus lies mostly at depths of up to five meters below the modern city.
According to the 1st Century Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus in histwenty-one volume Antiquities of the Jews"Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says thus: "Abraham reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner, who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans: but, after a long time, he got him up, and removed from that country also, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan, but now the land of Judea, and this when his posterity were become a multitude; as to which posterity of his, we relate their history in another work. Now the name of Abraham is even still famous in the country of Damascus; and there is shown a village named from him, The Habitation of Abraham."He is an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism
From the Muslim conquest to the Fatimids
Damascus was conquered by the
Caliph Umar I in AD
636. Immediately thereafter, the city's power and prestige reached its peak when it became the capital of the
Umayyad Empire, which extended from
Spain to
India from AD
661 to AD
750. In AD
744, the last Umayyad caliph,
Marwan II, moved the capital to
Harran in the
Jazira (Hugh Kennedy, "The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates"), and Damascus was never to regain the political prominence it had held in that period.
After the fall of the Umayyads and the establishment of the
Abbasid caliphate in AD
750, Damascus was ruled from
Baghdad, although in AD
858 al-Mutawakkil briefly established his residence there with the intention of transferring his capital there from
Samarra. However, he soon abandoned the idea. As the Abbasid caliphate declined, Damascus suffered from the prevailing instability, and came under the control of local dynasties. In
875 the ruler of Egypt,
Ahmad ibn Tulun, took the city, with Abbasid control being re-established only in
905. In
945 the
Hamdanids took Damascus, and not long after it passed into the hands of
Muhammad bin Tughj, founder of the
Ikhshidid dynasty. In
968 and again in
971 the city was briefly captured by the
Qaramita.
Fatimids, the Crusades and the Seljuks
In
970 AD the
Fatimid Caliphs in
Cairo gained control of Damascus. This was to usher in a turbulent period in the city's history, as the Berber troops who formed the backbone of the Fatimid forces became deeply unpopular among its citizens. The presence in Syria of the Qaramita and occasionally of Turkish military bands added to the constant pressure from the
Bedouin. For a brief period from
978, Damascus was self-governing, under the leadership of a certain
Qassam and protected by a citizen militia. However, the Ghouta was ravaged by the Bedouin and after a Turkish-led campaign the city once again surrendered to Fatimid rule. From 1029 to 1041 the Turkish military leader
Anushtakin was governor of Damascus under the Fatimid caliph
al-Zahir, and did much to restore the city's prosperity.
It appears that during this period the slow transformation of Damascus from a Graeco-Roman city layout - characterised by blocks of
insulae " to a more familiar Islamic pattern took place: the grid of straight streets changed to a pattern of narrow streets, with most residents living inside
harat closed off at night by heavy wooden gates to protect against criminals and the exactions of the soldiery.
With the arrival of the
Seljuk Turks in the late 11th century, Damascus again became the capital of independent states. It was ruled by a Seljuk dynasty from 1079 to 1104, and then by another Turkish dynasty - the
Burid Emirs, who withstood a
siege of the city during the
Second Crusade in
1148. In 1154 Damascus was conquered from the Burids by the famous
Zengid Atabeg
Nur ad-Din of
Aleppo, the great foe of the
Crusaders. He made it his capital, and following his death, it was acquired by
Saladin, the ruler of Egypt, who also made it his capital. Saladin rebuilt the citadel, and it is reported that under his rule the suburbs were as extensive as the city itself. It is reported by
Ibn Jubayr that during the time of Saladin, Damascus welcomed seekers of knowledge and industrious youth from around the world, who arrived for the sake of "undistracted study and seclusion" in Damascus' many colleges.
In the years following Saladin's death, there were frequent conflicts between different
Ayyubid sultans ruling in Damascus and Cairo.
Damascus steel gained a legendary reputation among the
Crusaders, and patterned steel is still "damascened". The patterned Byzantine and Chinese silks available through Damascus, one of the Western termini of the
Silk Road, gave the English language
damask.
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Azem Palace |
Mamluk rule
Ayyubid rule (and independence) came to an end with the Mongol invasion of Syria in
1260, and Damascus became a provincial capital of the
Mamluk Empire, ruled from Egypt, following the Mongol withdrawal.
Timurlank
In
1400 by
Timurlank, the
Mongol conqueror, besieged Damascus. The Mamluk sultan dispatched a deputation from Cairo, including
Ibn Khaldun, who negotiated with him, but after their withdrawal he put the city to sack. The Umayyad Mosque was burnt and men and women taken into slavery. A huge number of the city's artisans were taken to Timur's capital at
Samarkand. These were the luckier citizens: many were slaughtered and their heads piled up in a field outside the north-east corner of the walls, where a city square still bears the name
burj al-ruus, originally "the tower of heads".
Rebuilt, Damascus continued to serve as a Mamluk provincial capital until
1516.
The Ottoman conquest
In early
1516, the
Ottoman Turks, wary of the danger of an alliance between the Mamluks and the Persian
Safavids, started a campaign of conquest against the Mamluk sultanate. On
21 September, the Mamluk governor of Damascus fled the city, and on
2 October the
khutba in the Umayyad mosque was pronounced in the name of
Selim I. The day after, the victorious sultan entered the city, staying for three months. On
15 December, he left Damascus by Bab al-Jabiya, intent on the conquest of Egypt. Little appeared to have changed in the city: one army had simply replaced another. However, on his return in October 1517, the sultan ordered the construction of a mosque,
taqiyya and mausoleum at the shrine of Shaikh
Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi in Salihiyya. This was to be the first of Damascus' great Ottoman monuments.
The Ottomans remained for the next 400 years, except for a brief occupation by
Ibrahim Pasha of
Egypt from
1832 to
1840. Because of its importance as the point of departure for one of the two great
Hajj caravans to
Mecca, Damascus was treated with more attention by the
Porte than its size might have warranted " for most of this period,
Aleppo was more populous and commercially more important. In 1560 the Taqiyya al-Sulaimaniyya, a mosque and
khan for pilgrims on the road to Mecca, was completed to a design by the famous Ottoman architect
Sinan, and soon afterwards a
madrasa was built adjoining it.
Perhaps the most notorious incident of these centuries was the massacre of Christians in
1860, when fighting between
Druze and
Maronites in
Mount Lebanon spilled over into the city. Some thousands of Christians were killed, with many more being saved through the intervention of the Algerian exile
Abd al-Qadir and his soldiers, who brought them to safety in Abd al-Qadir's residence and the citadel. The Christian quarter of the old city, including a number of churches, was burnt down. The Christian inhabitants of the notoriously poor and refractory Midan district outside the walls were, however, protected by their Muslim neighbours.
Rise of Arab nationalism
In the early years of the twentieth century, nationalist sentiment in Damascus, initially cultural in its interest, began to take a political colouring, largely in reaction to the
turkicisation programme of the
Committee of Union and Progress government established in Istanbul in
1908. The hanging of a number of patriotic intellectuals by
Jamal Pasha, governor of Damascus, in Beirut and Damascus in
1915 and
1916 further stoked nationalist feeling, and in
1918, as the forces of the
Arab Revolt and the
British army approached, residents fired on the retreating Turkish troops.
Modern
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Damascus at sunset |
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The Scene at the Turkish Hospital in Damascus on 1 Oct 1918, Shortly after the Entry Of The 4th Australian Light Horse Regiment. (AWM J05968) |
On
1 October 1918, the forces of the
Arab revolt led by
Nuri as-Said entered Damascus. The same day, Australian soldiers from the 4th and 10th
Light Horse Regiments entered the city and accepted its surrender from the Turkish appointed Governor Emir Said (installed as Governor the previous afternoon by the retreating Turkish Commander)[
2][
3]. A military government under
Shukri Pasha was named. Other British forces including
T.E Lawrence followed later that day, and
Faisal ibn Abd Allah was proclaimed king of Syria. Political tension rose in November 1917, when the new
Bolshevik government in
Russia revealed the
Sykes-Picot Agreement whereby Britain and France had arranged to partition the Arab east between them. A new Franco-British proclamation on 17 November promised the "complete and definitive freeing of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks." The
Syrian Congress in March adopted a democratic constitution. However, the
Versailles Conference had granted
France a
mandate over Syria, and in 1920 a French army crossed the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, defeated a small Syrian defensive expedition at the
Battle of Maysalun and entered Damascus. The French made Damascus capital of their
League of Nations Mandate of Syria.
When in
1925 the
Druze revolt in the
Hauran spread to Damascus, the French repressed it brutally, bombing and shelling the city. The area of the old city between Souq al-Hamidiyya and Souq Midhat Pasha was burned to the ground, with many deaths, and has since then been known as
al-Hariqa ("the fire"). The old city was surrounded with barbed wire to prevent rebels infiltrating from the Ghouta, and a new road was built outside the northern ramparts to facilitate the movement of armoured cars.
In 1945 the French once more bombed Damascus, but on this occasion British forces intervened and the French agreed to withdraw, thus leading to the full independence of Syria in
1946. Damascus remained the capital.
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Ananias Chapel |
Damascus has a wealth of historical sites dating back to many different periods of the city's history. Since the city has been built up with every passing occupation, it has become almost impossible to excavate all the ruins of Damascus that lie up to 8 feet below the modern level. The Citadel of Damascus is located in the northwest corner of the Old City. The
street called straight (referred to in the conversion of
St. Paul in
Acts 9:11), also known as the
Via Recta, was one of the main streets of Roman Damascus, and extended for over 1500 meters. Today, it consists of the street of Bab Sharqi and the Souk Medhat Pasha, a covered market. The Bab Sharqi street is filled with small shops and leads to the old Christian quarter of Bab Touma (St. Thomas's Gate). Souq Medhat Pasha is also a main market in Damascus and was named after Medhat Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Damascus who renovated the Souq. At the end of the Bab Sharqi street, one reaches the House of
Ananias, an underground chapel that was the cellar of Ananias's house.
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The Minaret of the Bride, Omayyad Mosque in old Damascus |
The
Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is one of the largest mosques in the world, and one of the oldest sites of continuous prayer since the rise of Islam. A shrine in the mosque is said to contain the head of
John the Baptist.
The walls and gates of Damascus
The old city of Damascus is surrounded by ramparts on the northern and eastern sides and part of the southern side. There are eight extant city gates, the oldest of which dates back to the Roman period. These are, clockwise from the north of the citadel:
*Bab al-Faraj ("the gate of deliverance"),
*Bab al-Faradis ("the gate of the orchards") and
*Bab al-Salam ("the gate of peace"), all on the north boundary of the old city
*Bab Touma (the "Touma" or "Thomas gate") in the north-east corner, leading into the Christian quarter of the same name,
*Bab Sharqi ("eastern gate") in the east wall, the only one to retain its Roman plan
*Bab Kisan in the south-east, from which tradition holds that Saint Paul made his escape from Damascus, lowered from the ramparts in a basket; this gate is now closed and a chapel marking the event has been built into the structure,
*al-Bab al-Saghir (the small gate) in the south.
*Bab al-Jabiya at the entrance to Souq Midhat Pasha, in the south-west.
Two other areas outside the walled city also bear the name "gate": Bab Mousalla and Bab Sreija , both to the south-west of the walled city.
*
Nicolaus of Damascus (historian and philosopher)
*
John of Damascus (saint)
*
Ananias (disciple)
*
Sophronius (
Patriarch of Jerusalem)
*
Damascius (Byzantine philosopher)
*
Yasser Seirawan (chess player)
*
Ahmed Kuftaro (former grand
mufti of Syria)
*
Ikram Antaki (Mexican writer)
*
Ghada al-Samman (novelist)
*
Nizar al-Qabbani (poet)
*
Yousef Abdelke (painter)
*
Michel Aflaq (political thinker and co-founder of the
Ba'th Party)
*
Salah al-Din al-Bitar (political thinker and co-founder of the
Ba'th Party)
*
Constantin Zureiq (academic and Arab nationalist intellectual)
*
History of Syria*
Rulers of Damascus*
Names of Asian cities in different languagesMaps
*
Map of Downtown Damascus*
Interactive Map of Damascus*
Map showing routes of advance on Damascus 1918Images
*
An image gallery about a 2005 trip (117 pics) in Damascus, searchable and commented.
*
A large collection of pictures (116 pics) made in 2003 about Damascus.
*
A few Images from DamascusInformation
*
Damascus online*
Ancient Route history of Damascus*
Syria News Wire: daily tales from the streets of Damascus*
Oldamascus.com, a web site devoted to the city
*
An article about a large scale restoration project
*
Tell Ramad*
Australian War Memorial*
The Ride to Damascus*[
4]
* Jill, Duchess of Hamilton,
First to Damascus: The story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia (2002) ISBN 0 7318 1071-6
* Yohanan Aharoni & Michael Avi-Yonah, "The MacMillan Bible Atlas", Revised Edition, (1968 & 1977 by Carta Ltd.).
