DamascusDamascus, Arabic Dimashq, city, capital of Syria. Located inthe southwestern corner of thecountry, it has been called the“pearl of the East,” praised forits beauty and lushness; the10th-century traveler andgeographer al-Maqdisī laudedthe city as ranking among thefour earthly paradises. Uponvisiting the city in 1867, MarkTwain wrote
The city’s Arabic name derives from Dimashka, a word of possibly pre-Semitic etymology, suggesting that the beginnings ofDamascus go back to a time before recorded history. The city is commonly called al-Shām, the vernacular name of Syria as awhole, which is said to mean “the left” or “the north,” where the region is situated relative to the Arabian Peninsula. Owing toassociations of Damascus with Aram, the biblical capital of the Aramaeans, some Arabic sources link Damascus and the Iramdhāt al-ʿimād (“Colonnaded Aram”) mentioned in the Qurʾān, an identification that has long been disputed. Also contended hasbeen the association of Damascus with Jilliq, a fertile pre-Islamic site whose name derives from a word of unknown origin in useby the Ghassānids active there in the 6th century (see Ghassān). The city is still known by its popular epithet al-Fayḥāʾ (“theFragrant”), earned perhaps for the freshness of its surrounding orchards and gardens. Many scholars believe that, among theancient cities of the world, Damascus is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited.
Over the centuries, Damascus has been conqueror and conquered, wealthy and destitute, and capital of empire and smallstates. Its fame has been sustained by its continuous prominence as a commercial and intellectual centre. Its life has beennourished periodically by immigrants from the hinterland and from the Mediterranean Basin and Southwest Asia. Often a focus
ToDamascus,years areonlymoments,decadesare onlyflittingtrifles oftime. Shemeasurestime not bydays andmonthsand years,but by theempiresshe hasseen riseandprosperandcrumble toruin. She isa type ofimmortality.
Table of ContentsIntroductionCharacter of the cityLandscape
City siteClimateCity layout
PeopleEconomy
Manufacturing, finance, and other servicesTransportation
Administration and societyGovernmentMunicipal services and healthEducation
Cultural lifeHistory
Early centuriesIslamic cityOttoman periodModern city
of contention by powers of East and West, Damascus’s fortunes have frequently been linked to those of distant capitals, mostnotably Ashur, Antioch, Rome, Baghdad, Cairo, and Istanbul. Now a burgeoning metropolis of the Middle East, it retains, as it hasthrough centuries of triumph and disaster, an indomitable spirit and a considerable charm.
Area city, 17 square miles (43 square km). Pop. (2007 est.) municipality, 1,669,000.
Travelers to Damascus have been struck by the sight of aspens and poplars growing along streams, of fruit (particularly apricot)and nut orchards, and of olive groves and vegetable gardens. A popular story about the Prophet Muhammad’s journey to Syriarecounts that, upon seeing verdant Damascus, he refused to go in, as man should only enter paradise once. Upon reachingDamascus in 1326, Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, the Arab travel writer from Tangier, said that no words could do justice to the city’s charm; heresorted to quoting his Maghribi predecessor, Ibn Jubayr, who sojourned in Damascus in 1184 and wrote that Damascus had“adorned herself with flowers of sweet scented herbs” and “is encircled by gardens as the moon…by its halo.” In 1350 aEuropean traveler, Ludolph van Suchem, wrote of the city as “begirt with gardens and orchards and watered in and out bywaters, rivers, brooks, and fountains cunningly arranged to minister to men’s luxury.” While the accelerated and oftendisordered growth of the city since World War II has sharply raised the ratio of buildings to trees and open space, Damascenesstill enjoy some of the former splendor of al-Ghūṭah, the fertile belt of irrigated land adjacent to the city.
Water and geography have determined the site and role of Damascus. Early settlers were naturally attracted to a place where ariver, the Baradā, rising in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains (Al-Jabal al-Sharqī), watered a large and fertile oasis before vanishing intothe desert. This tract, al-Ghūṭah, has supported a substantial population for thousands of years. Damascus itself grew on aterrace 2,250 feet (690 metres) above sea level, south of Mount Qāsiyūn and overlooking the Baradā River. The originalsettlement appears to have been situated in the eastern part of the walled Old City. City and oasis grew together, and over timeDamascus came to dominate the lesser rural settlements surrounding it.
The natural endowments of an assured water supply and fertile land made Damascus self-sufficient. Successive colonizers fromthe 2nd millennium BCE onward developed an intricate irrigation system that fed the city through a system of branches derivedfrom the river, contributing to a steady expansion of al-Ghūṭah, especially to the east and west. Damascus’s position on the edgeof the desert and at the eastern end of the easiest route through the Anti-Lebanon range made it a trade centre where caravanroutes originated and terminated. Since the advent of Islam, the city has also been the starting point of the northern pilgrimageroad, the Darb al-Hajj al-Shāmī, to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Some 50 miles (80 km) from the sea yet separated from it by two mountain ranges, Damascus receives only about 7 inches (178mm) of precipitation annually, most of it from November through February. The Anti-Lebanon range gets far greater amounts ofboth rain and winter snow, which annually replenish the water table that is a source of the Baradā River and other, more minorsprings watering Damascus. Owing to the city’s elevation, winter is rather cold, with average temperatures of around 40 to 45 °F(5 to 7 °C). A short blossoming spring in March and April is followed by six to seven months of hot dry summer. Temperaturesaverage around 80 °F (27 °C) in midseason, although they occasionally reach 100 °F (38 °C) or above. Summer evenings tend tobe tempered by cooler breezes, with temperatures dropping to 65 °F (18 °C). Dust-laden winds blowing in from the desert aresomewhat mitigated by small mountain ranges to the east and south of the city.
Damascus was an active commercial centre in the 2nd millennium BCE
and developed through different stages of urbanization thereafter,reaching its zenith at the beginning of the 7th century CE when itbecame the capital of the Umayyad empire. The heart of Damascus’sOld City, which contains most of the city’s historical monuments, isHellenistic in origin, with significant Roman additions andmodifications. It is a rough oblong about 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) longand 3,300 feet (1,000 metres) wide and is defined by historic walls, ofwhich sizeable stretches still stand, especially in the north and west.Eight gates, seven of which are of Classical derivation, pierce the walls.The long axis of the oblong runs between two gates, Bāb al-Jābiyya (theRoman Jupiter Gate) in the west and Bāb Sharqī (the Roman Sun Gate)in the east. It occupies the former location of the decumanus maximus(main east-west thoroughfare) of the Classical city, which lies some 15feet (5 metres) below the modern street level; no cardo maximus (mainnorth-south thoroughfare) has been positively identified. Manysecondary streets and some of the most prominent features of the OldCity owe their positions to the Roman city planners of the 2nd and 3rdcenturies CE.
The city’s orthogonal plan deteriorated during the late Byzantine period in the 6th and 7th centuries. The Umayyads (661–750)chose Damascus as their capital but did not much change its layout or considerably expand beyond its walls. Although the citywas neglected and its population drastically decreased between the 8th and 11th centuries, by the 13th century Damascus hadrevived and was outgrowing its walls. Two axes of development extra-muros, beyond the city walls, predominated. One linked thecity to the northwest with the suburb of Ṣālḥiyyah, which was established in the 12th century by immigrants from Jerusalem onthe slopes of Mount Qāsiyūn; the second extended as a long, narrow strip southward along the road leading to the Ḥawrān andPalestine. The Old City was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.
The modern city began with the Ottoman Tanzimat (Reorganization) in the late 19th century. Buildings in pseudo-Europeanstyles were constructed along new, straight streets to the west and north of the walled city or in Al-Mujāhirīn, the new quarter forimmigrants on Mount Qāsiyūn. Later developments followed a plan originally devised by the French during the mandate period(1920–46), with a number of revisions attempted thereafter. Its basic elements include wide boulevards radiating from squaresspread around the Old City, especially in the west and northwest and, later, in the east. New housing has developed in the formof concrete blocks of 䐽�ats along these boulevards. Government buildings are concentrated in an area west of the walled cityaround Marjah Square, along Nasr Street, and in several districts west of Ṣālḥiyyah Street. Stimulated by the appeal of modernhousing and amenities, well-to-do families began in the 1930s to move to the area northwest of the Old City, whose magni�centcourtyard houses were left to poorer tenants recently arrived from the countryside, or to light industry. As the population grew,more and more of the garden and farm area was converted into residential districts, many of them illegal settlements, whilemukhalafāt (informal districts, such as upper Al-Muhājirīn and the Kurdish quarter) expanded up the slopes of Mount Qāsiyūn.Ancient farming villages close by, such as Al-Mazzah, Barzah, Kafr Sūsah, Al-Qābūn, and Al-Qadam, were incorporated into thecity, both administratively and physically. Government efforts to retain green areas and to zone housing and industry have beenplagued not only by overwhelming population growth but also by administrative laxity and corruption. The development ofaffluent residential suburbs in the 1990s added precious new parks and gardens in the north, northwest, and southeast of thecity, yet more than half of the city’s green space has been lost since 1945.
Damascus experienced tremendous growth during the second half of the 20th century, withits population estimated to have increased more than tenfold. The city’s growth rate ishigher than that of the country as a whole, owing mainly to steady migration from ruralareas. So heavy has been the influx of young migrants drawn by employment andeducational opportunities that the average age of Damascenes has dropped below that ofthe national level. Among the religious minorities, the ʿAlawites from the coastal mountainregion are notable for their prominence in the army and in the intelligence services (al-mukhābarāt). Other religious and ethnic groups, principally the Druze, Kurds, Circassians,Twelver Shīʿites, and Ismāʿīlīs (see Islam: Ismāʿīlīs) maintain their identity among the majorityArab Sunni Muslim populace. The city’s minorities include a Palestinian community. There isalso a substantial Christian population representing various denominations, including Syriacand Armenian, while a once-flourishing Jewish population has been greatly decreased. Thepopulation decline owes largely to emigration in the late 20th century following pressure onSyria to allow the remainder of its Jewish population—previously subject to limitations ontravel, employment, and other restrictions—to leave the country.
Government is Damascus’s most important economic activity. National politics and administration, including large military andsecret services establishments, are centred there. Well-known over the centuries for luxurious manufactured wares, especiallytextiles, the growing city has attracted many new industries since the mid-20th century. All major factories and most strategicindustries are state-run, but the private sector began in the 1990s to assert its economic agility in small, service-orientedindustries. Textile plants, the chemical industry, cement works, and food-processing factories are principally distributed to thesouth, east, and northeast. Most of the population’s requirements for food, clothing, and the like are met by private businesses.Traditional artisan crafts such as copper engraving, mother-of-pearl-encrusted woodwork, and brocades are still practiced in theOld City.
The historical role of Damascus as a “desert port” has changed because of political developments and the scale of moderncommerce. Most imports come through Syria’s own ports of Latakia, Tartus, and Bāniyās instead of through Lebanon, as was thecase until about the mid-20th century. Goods are transshipped to countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Damascus distributes itsown products and imported goods within Syria as well. A large international trade exposition is held there in the autumn. Thepotential for a highly profitable tourism sector—particularly cultural tourism, for which Damascus is well suited—has beenmodestly explored since the late 1980s through the active promotion and development of new accommodations andtransportation facilities. Attempts to modernize the financial and banking systems and to liberalize trade that took place underPres. Bashar al-Assad in the early 2000s largely lacked the vigour required for a measurable impact on the economy. After a
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series of delays, the country’s first stock exchange formally opened for trading in Damascus in March 2009.
Damascus’s traffic problems are relatively few and are largely resolvable. Damascus is adequately connected to its surroundingregions; major highways fan out in all directions, connecting Damascus with such cities as Beirut, Ammān, Aleppo, and Baghdad.A rail line north to Homs ties in with the national railroad system; along with the trucking industry, it transports importedproducts to the city. Damascus International Airport, located some 20 miles (32 km) east of the city, is served by manycommercial airlines that offer direct flights to major regional and international cities. Inner-city transportation is largely providedby motor vehicles. Animal-drawn carts, which once gave the city a picturesque aura, have largely disappeared, except in some ofthe poorer residential quarters. Buses and taxis carry passengers both within the city and to other parts of the country; these aresupplemented by the microbus and the “service,” a car or van that travels an established route for a fare. The substantialincrease in the number of private cars since the early 1980s with no corresponding expansion of the basic street system hassubjected the city to unprecedented congestion, especially in the administrative and commercial centre. New projects aimed atalleviating this problem have included the construction of a highway belt encircling the city, as well as the creation of satellitetowns through ventures such as the Dummar Project and the Qurā al-Assad (the Assad Villages) west and northwest of the city.
The municipality is administered as a muḥāfaẓah (governorate), one of 14 in the country. The president of Syria appoints agovernor who administers the city with the assistance of a council made up of elected and appointed members. The city isdivided into quarters (aḥyāʾ), each of which has a mayor appointed by the governor. The post of governor of Damascus is animportant one with national implications. Political activity is national, not municipal, as Syria is a centralized state with one partydominating public affairs. The outlying portions of al-Ghūtah and a vast surrounding district constitute another governorate, RīfDimashq (Rural Damascus), of which Damascus city is the capital.
Rapid population growth has put a strain on the city’s services, health facilities, and water supply. Damascus draws its watermainly from the Baradā River as well as other, smaller springs, receiving it through a centuries-old system that has beenenlarged several times. At the beginning of the 21st century, increasing demand on established water sources forced a steepdrop in the surrounding water table. As the water supply crisis grew more urgent, resources were rationed and plans wereconsidered to supply the city with water from the Euphrates River or other sources. The city’s electricity is generated locally andalso is brought from the hydroelectric station at the Euphrates Dam. Health care has been improving and is better than in muchof the country. About half of the country’s doctors practice in the capital, dividing their services between government hospitalsand private clinics. The ratio of hospital beds to population has been rising but is still low compared to more industrializedcountries.
On the whole, Syrian literacy rates are high by regional standards, with more than nine-tenths of males and more than three-fourths of females being literate. Primary education is mandatory; an extensive public school system provides primary andsecondary education for the vast majority of Damascene children. Private schools supplement the public schools, and there is aseparate system run by the United Nations for Palestinian refugee children. The University of Damascus was founded in 1923through the joining of four older institutions of higher learning and was a pioneer in the Arab world for introducing Arabic as thesole language of instruction and research. It is the largest and oldest of Syria’s universities, and there are several institutes oftechnical training and advanced research.
Damascus is both Syria’s cultural and political centre; the city has long attracted great interest for its numerous sites of historicand cultural significance, including the Great Mosque of the Umayyad period and the turbah, or tomb, of Saladin. Under theMinistry of Culture, which supervises most of the formal aspects of the cultural life of the capital, there has been an effort tocombine elements of the city’s heritage with contemporary developments. The prestigious Arabic Language Academy ofDamascus (1919) is a bastion of Arabic language, working both to preserve and modernize the language. The National Museum,established in 1936, boasts an extraordinary collection of artifacts from across the country, representing six millennia ofcivilization. A military museum occupies the cells of the 16th-century Ottoman takiyyah (monastic complex) of Süleyman I. Thesmall yet impressive Museum of Arabic Calligraphy is housed in a 15th-century Mamlūk madrasah, whereas the Museum of Artsand Popular Traditions is situated in the splendid 18th-century al-ʿAẓm Palace. An institute for music instructs in both traditionaland Western styles, another institute promotes the theatre arts, and a third sponsors a performing folklore troupe. The Dār al-Assad for Culture and Arts, a major cultural complex featuring a range of dance, musical, and �lm productions, was inauguratedin 2004.
Since the final decades of the 20th century, Damascus has been the centre of a burgeoning artistic movement. The work of bothSyrian and international artists is exhibited regularly, increasingly in the private galleries proliferating around Damascus. The artsare subsidized by the government, though artistic expression is impeded by bureaucratic restrictions. State control dominatespublishing and journalism, both of which are centred in Damascus. Three national dailies, largely reflecting the state’s
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The Great Mosque, view of the courtyard and northern portico, Damascus, Syria.
Nasser Rabbat
viewpoints, are edited in the city, as are most of thecountry’s magazines. Damascus also leads the countryin book publication, an enterprise that involves thegovernment as the leading publisher and ultimatecensor. Al-Assad National Library was inaugurated in1984. Among other important materials, it containsthe precious collection of manuscripts and rare booksof Damascus’s venerable public library, al-Ẓāhiriyyah.The library associated with the University of Damascusis also significant.
Television enjoys considerable appeal; programmingincludes locally produced material in addition toimports from other Arab countries and from abroad. Anumber of locally produced television series,especially those treating historical topics, have begunto enjoy immense popularity across the Arab world.Damascus radio broadcasts in Arabic, English, French,Turkish, Hebrew, and other languages. Sports are verypopular among Damascenes. Football (soccer)especially is a national pastime, and swimming andbasketball, along with wrestling, boxing, and tennis,are among other widespread recreations. The city’s
stadiums draw large crowds for a heavy schedule of events.
Although Damascus is well-known to be an ancient city, it remains unclear exactly when the oasis was first settled. Excavations in1950 demonstrated that an urban centre existed in the 4th millennium BCE at Tall al-Ṣālḥiyyah, southeast of Damascus. Potteryfrom the 3rd millennium BCE has been discovered in the Old City, and mention of “Damaski” was found in a clay tablet at Ebla(present-day Tall Mardīkh) dating to the same period. The first certain written reference to the city is in the hieroglyphic tablets ofTell el-Amarna in Egypt, where it is listed among territories conquered by Thutmose III in 1490 BCE. In the 1st millennium BCE,Damascus became the capital of an Aramaean principality whose history is known mainly through biblical references andAssyrian records. An important material trace from that period is a basalt orthostat (stone slab) depicting a winged sphinx, foundduring excavations at the Great Mosque. The Aramaeans, however, also left a legacy in portions of the canal system, place-names in and around the city, and, in one outlying area, the Aramaic language itself, which served as the lingua franca of thewider Levant until the advent of Islam. In succeeding centuries before Christ, Damascus fell like other capitals of the region toforeign conquerors—to Assyrians in the 8th century, Babylonians in the 7th, Persians in the 6th, Greeks in the 4th, and Romansin the 1st.
With Alexander the Great’s conquest in 333 BCE, Damascus became part of the Hellenistic world for almost a thousand years. TheAramaean quarters coexisted with a new Greek settlement, which followed a Hippodamian, or orthogonal, plan. Incorporationinto the Roman Empire continued the Hellenistic tradition and gave Damascus the enviable status and endowments of ametropolis under Hadrian (ruled CE 117–138) and of a colonia under Severus Alexander (ruled CE 222–235). The citadel in thenorthwest corner rests on Roman foundations. About 660 feet (200 metres) east of it is the Great Mosque of Damascus, built bythe Umayyads on the same site as the Byzantine Church of St. John, the Roman Temple of Jupiter (Iuppiter Optimus MaximusDamascenus), and the Aramaean sanctuary of Hadad. Still preserved is Ananias (Hanania) Chapel, commemorating theconversion in Damascus of Saul of Tarsus, who became St. Paul, the Apostle. It stands near the eastern end of Midhat PashaStreet, also known as the Street Called Straight in the New Testament, which was the decumanus maximus (main east-westthoroughfare) of the Romans.
Like the rest of Syria, the city was Christianized by the 4th century. With the division of the Roman Empire in 395, Damascusbecame an important military outpost for the Byzantine Empire. Doctrinal, theological, and political differences, however,increasingly divided Constantinople from the Syrians. Furthermore, the Persian wars of the 6th century, fought largely on Syriansoil, ruined the economic life of the country. As a result, Damascus opened its gates not unwillingly to the Muslim armies in 635.
Though the Muslim Arabs brought with them a budding creed, with its sacred text, tentative worldviews, and still-developinglegal framework, they did little to change the physical layout of Damascus. In 661 Muʿāwiyah, the first Umayyad caliph,established his court in the Syrian capital and founded a dār al-imārah (centre of government) there. For almost a centurythereafter the city functioned as the capital of a widening empire stretching from what is now Spain to the borders of present-day China—the most far-reaching of any achieved in Islamic history. The principal extant monument of this period is the GreatMosque of Damascus, built by the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd between 706 and 715. Although it has been damaged, burned, andrepaired several times, it is still one of the marvels of Islamic architecture. Gilded mosaic once adorned the entirety of its walledsurfaces; of those embellishments, only fragments remain. They suggest that the whole composition featured largely vegetalthemes and scenes made up of picturesque buildings, suburbs, and villages set in fanciful landscapes. These renditions havebeen variously interpreted as scenes of paradise or of Damascus as it then was.
After the fall of the Umayyads in 750, the successor ʿAbbāsids moved their capital to Baghdad. Damascus retreated to the status
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Detail of a mosaic from the Great Mosque, Damascus, Syria.
Ciccione—Rapho/Photo Researchers
of a provincial town, subjected to punishments by the new dynasty for its numerous revolts. Umayyad buildings were sacked andthe city’s fortifications dismantled. As trade routes changed, Damascus also lost much of its economic prominence. The situation
did not improve with the transfer of sovereignty fromBaghdad to Cairo in the late 9th century, or when Turkishadventurers took turns ruling Damascus—whetherindependently or under the nominal suzerainty of either theFāṭimids or the Seljuqs—during most of the 11th century. TheCrusades posed a serious threat to the city at the end of the11th century, and although Damascus managed to escapedirect occupation, it endured numerous attacks and siegesand lost large parts of its hinterland.
During this chaotic period, the city walls were rebuilt withstrengthened gates, and a citadel was founded in thenorthwestern corner of the city. The appearance ofhomogeneous, introverted, and self-reliant residentialquarters emerged in this period. By the 12th century, the citywas divided into segregated communities, eachneighbourhood equipped with its own amenities, including amosque, bath, public oven, independent water supply, andsmall markets. The Great Mosque and central marketremained loci of civic unity.
A new era opened when Nūr al-Dīn ibn Zangī, a powerfulTurkish emir (military commander), captured the city in 1154and made it once again the capital of a strong kingdom andthe base for his military campaigns against the Crusaders. Thetown revived, and its fortifications were strengthened.Religious and civic buildings were erected, new forms ofarchitecture were introduced, and new quarters forimmigrants sprang up. Despite some military and economic
setbacks, the city continued to flourish under Saladin and his Ayyūbid successors, who ruled there until 1260. Damascusdeveloped into a major religious and educational centre, with emirs competing to build madrasahs (religious colleges) andqubbahs (funerary domes) and to bestow them with generous waqfs (land held in trust and dedicated to religious or educationalpurposes) to support their teachers and students. The Ayyūbid patronage was concentrated around the Great Mosque and inthe Kurdish quarter on the slopes of Mount Qāsiyūn, where many Kurds, owing to their ethnic affinity with the Ayyūbids, movedto serve in the army.
After the devastating Mongol invasion of 1260, much of Syria again became directly dependent on the new rulers in Egypt, theMamlūks. Damascus was the seat of the sultan’s deputy in Syria, with a miniature court fashioned after that of Cairo. Theeconomy recovered quickly after the Mongol withdrawal in 1260, and it was booming by the beginning of the 14th century,particularly during the governorate of Tankiz (1312–40). The city continued to expand: a new, southern quarter grew along theroad leading to Ḥawrān (Damascus’s wheat basket), Palestine, and Egypt, where most of the city’s exports of foodstuffs andluxury items were traded. Trade travel was facilitated by the numerous khāns (warehouse inns) dotting its main thoroughfare. Anew northern quarter, Sūq Sārūja, emerged as a market area around the citadel. Owing to its proximity to the citadel, this areabecame the Mamlūks’ choice residential quarter in the 15th century.
For more than 150 years, Damascus was the base for the Muslim struggle against the Crusades. The four most celebratedleaders of that struggle—Nūr al-Dīn ibn Zangī, Saladin, al-ʿĀdil (Saladin’s brother), and the Mamlūk sultan Baybars I—are interredin the vicinity of the Great Mosque. Their tombs, featuring relatively large domes and tall arched portals with intricate muqarnas—an architectural ornamentation of honeycombed niches—are combined with madrasahs. The tombs are among the city’s mostprominent medieval buildings and were all restored during the 1990s.
Damascus suffered two major disasters in close succession in the middle of the Mamlūk period. The first of these, the outbreakof plague in 1348–49 (see Black Death), wiped out perhaps as much as half of the city’s population. The second disaster was thepillage of the city in 1401 by Timur, accompanied by his policy of deporting skilled artisans to his own capital at Samarkand (inpresent-day Uzbekistan). Coupled with the later Mamlūks’ rapacious administration, these calamities resulted in a chronicallyanemic economy that was reflected negatively in the form and structure of the city. Although the built-up area increased in the15th century, the expansion was mostly due to migration from depressed rural regions. In addition, the extended urban domainconcealed countless deserted plots, called kharāb (“uninhabited,” or “in ruin”) in the waqf documents, where ruins stood asattestations to the bankrupt economy and dismal urban order on the eve of the Ottoman conquest by Sultan Selim I in 1516.
With the Ottoman conquest, Damascus lost its political position but retained its commercial importance. The incorporation ofthe Middle East and the Balkans into one empire facilitated internal trade, but the rise of European preeminence in internationalcommerce diminished the role of Syrian cities as final depots in the overland trade from Asia to the Mediterranean.
The main stimulus for the economic activities in Damascus during the Ottoman period was the hajj (pilgrimage) season. Ottomansultans, having acquired the prestigious title of Protectors of the Two Holy Cities (Mecca and Medina), were eager to organizeand secure the hajj. Damascus, as the last urban centre on the road from Anatolia to Mecca, was designated as the officialmeeting station for pilgrims coming from the north and east. As a result, accommodating pilgrims during the hajj season becamethe city’s leading commercial activity.
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad greets supporters at Damascus University, 2007.
Bassem Tellawi/AP
Urban development related to the hajj was naturally concentrated on the road to Mecca. Al-Maydān, an entire districtencompassing several quarters and villages, developed south of the walled city. The saturation of lucrative trades in the citycentre led to an increase in the building of khāns there. This construction boom culminated in two monumental khāns, erectedsouth of the Great Mosque in 1732 and 1751–52, respectively, by two members of the al-ʿAẓm family, Sulaymān Paşa and AsʿadPaşa, who dominated the political scene in the 18th century.
The 19th century ushered in a new era in which European global hegemony was felt on the local level through the dualprocesses of Westernization and modernization. Both were eagerly carried out by Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha, the semi-independentruler of Egypt who controlled Syria between 1832 and 1840. After the return of the Ottomans with the help of European powers,the subjugation of the local economy to the markets of Europe intensified, but the process of systematic modernization slowed.The violent outbreak of religious fanaticism in 1860 led to direct European involvement in the region, particularly in the area ofmodern-day Lebanon.
Midhat Paşa, the great Ottoman reformer, became governor in 1878. He made civic improvements, widening streets andimproving sanitation. In the early 20th century the Damascus-Medina rail line, which shortened the pilgrims’ trip to five days, wasbuilt by German engineers. During World War I Damascus was the combined headquarters of Ottoman and German forces.
Before and during World War I the rise of Arab nationalism found ready ground in Damascus, which became a centre of anti-Ottoman agitation. Fayṣal, son of the grand sharīf of Mecca, made secret visits there to enlist support for the Arab Revolt begunby his father in 1916. In a countermove, Cemal Paşa, the Ottoman commander in chief, hanged 21 Arab nationalists on May 6,1916, a day that is still commemorated as Martyrs’ Day. The Ottomans, however, were defeated by the double-pronged attack ofthe British and Arab forces and evacuated the city in September 1918. An independent Syrian state was declared in 1919, withDamascus as its capital; Fayṣal was proclaimed king early in 1920.
The independence of the Kingdom of Syria was short-lived. During World War I, European powers had held secret negotiations todivide among themselves the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Syria was forcibly placed under French mandate, and Damascusfell to the army of Gen. Henri Gouraud on July 25, 1920, following the battle of Maysalūn. Damascus resisted the Frenchtakeover, and despite the French bombardment of the city in 1925, the resistance continued until early 1927. A new urban planwas immediately put in place that resulted in a modern residential cordon around the Old City, e䑀≨ectively separating it from al-Ghūṭah, where rebels regularly took refuge. In this modern city, European social, cultural, and architectural norms directlycompeted with traditional ones, and in time displaced them.
Syria’s years under French mandate witnessed intense political activities that encompassed the entire ideological spectrum,including liberalism, communism, and—above all—Arab nationalism. Damascenes, along with their fellow countrymen, struggledfor their country’s independence and for the broader goal of a single Arab state. The Baʿth Party, devoted to this goal, wasfounded in Damascus during World War II. The mandate period lasted until April 1946, when French troops finally left thecountry; once again, Damascus was the capital of an independent Syria.
The fragile Syrian Republic was ill-equipped towithstand the major political upheavals racking theregion, especially the partition of Palestine in 1948 andthe first of the Arab-Israeli wars, which followedalmost immediately. A series of coups from 1949 to1970 brought a varied array of leadership to powerand the rumble of tanks to the streets. During Syria’sshort-lived union with Egypt as the United ArabRepublic (1958–61), Damascus lost its title of capital toCairo. In 1963 the Baʿth Party came to power througha coup and embarked on an experiment of socialistreform. In 1970 Ḥa�z al-Assad, then the minister ofdefense, led an internal coup and established himselfat the helm of the country for 30 years, to besucceeded on his death in 2000 by his son Bashar.Damascus continued to function as a pole of attractionfor political forces, economic interests, and ruralSyrians seeking a better life in the capital.
Contemporary Damascus is a modern metropolis withmany of the features—and problems—found in citiesaround the world. The physical limits of terrain and�nite water sources argue for decentralization tosatellite communities some distance away. The fragile
and invaluable heart of the city, however, requires comprehensive conservationprograms that respect both its historic character and its continued vigour. Still,despite rapid modernization, as well as periods of neglect and greed throughoutthe millennia, Damascus has thus far managed to survive with its unique coreintact. Were Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, or other early visitors to return, they wouldnot exclaim so much over a city set in green gardens. They would, however,recognize the spirit and dynamism of the city that has epitomized urban life since
