Welcome to Syria

Syria April, 2008

I am returned from a very un-solo trip to Syria, a country labeled a 'state sponsor of terror' by the US  administration. It did not feel like that as we walked unmolested late at night through the streets of Damascus, or met with scores of teenage girls in Maloula, mingled with thousands of schoolchildren in Bosra, went shopping in Palmyra and had a private visit of the citadel in Aleppo.  Just for good measure we met with Dr. Mohammed Habash, a member of the Syrian parliament and General Director of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus http://altajdeed.org/en/.

He gave us a very frank talk touching on subjects as diverse as the US invasion of Iraq, the historic link with and involvement of Syria in Lebanon,  reformist and conservative Islam, the evolution of the Shia/Sunni divide and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli crisis with its attendant rise in militant extremism there and elsewhere.   

We began our tour of the country by driving north. Krak des Chevaliers - supreme expression of medieval castle-building - had a moat again, the first time I have ever seen it.

Reflected blue moat of Krak des Chevaliers abutting its infamous steep glacis.

Hama sits on the banks of the river Orontes; at dusk swallows flitted and darted in and out of the city's ancient eaves, and its waterwheels glowed amber in the floodlights, while in the morning a barrage of twittering avian exuberance filled the yellow limestone and black basalt paved courtyard of the hauntingly lovely Azem Palace – smaller but more refined than its sister palace in Damascus. 

The waterwheels or norias at night.

The highly-decorated windows of Azem Palace in Hama.

 

We crossed the Jebel Ansariye which had become an irregular grid of jade and emerald rectangles of fecundity and shyly sprouting almond blossom - its hills were blanketed by a painter’s palette of wild flowers; tiny red poppies, pale yellow cowslip-like flowers, golden daisies, miniature blue iris and long-stemmed black iris, and purple wild snapdragons. 

At Marqab, an austere black basalt fortress with a commanding site over the Mediterranean, we came across restorers who were uncovering frescoes in the castle chapel. Marqab was in the possession of the Knights Hospitaller from 1186 until it fell to the Mamluk Sultan, Qala’un, in 1285. The castle was fortified as a principal Crusader defense post mainly during the late 12th to early 13th centuries when the Gothic-style chapel would have been built. The discovery of the covered-over frescoes is new, and we have yet to find out if they were deliberately covered by the departing knights to protect them – Qala’un offered the Hospitallers terms of safe conduct to the sea-ports of Tripoli and Tartus in return for surrender, or did the Mamluks, in keeping with the Islamic injunction against portrayal of the human form, cover them when they took it over?

Serjilla is one of Syria's 'dead hill cities', several towns and villages  which began to die out in the 7th century and which by the 10th century had been completely abandoned. Many theories have been put forward; an over-reliance on the olive, the devastating earthquake in Antioch in 528 which destroyed the port which they needed to export their product, being in the geographical zone of tension between the competing Byzantine and Persian spheres of influence, and over-population in an area that was unable to support it. The likelihood is that it was a combination of factors.    
Dusk over a basilica in Serjilla.

Aleppo is a city resurgent; the area around its focal point, the mighty citadel, is being pedestrianized and rehabilitated, the accumulated grime of decades of pollution is being scraped off surrounding buildings revealing ash-blonde stone and architectural details long-forgotten, centuries-old urban courtyard houses and palaces are being converted apace into charming hotels and restaurants, and the city has an air of expectation. Its souk merchants however seem to have been excluded from this renaissance and behave aggressively, accosting window-shoppers quite witlessly since potential patrons flee their gnat-like persistence.


The minaret of the Mosque in the Citadel of Aleppo

Reem Qudsi, the engineer working on the Aga Khan Trust for Culture Aleppo citadel project, who took me around the citadel on my last visit, graciously took us around again, showing us recent finds of carvings from what was an ancient Amorite temple dating back to the 16^th century BC. This is quite a find as until now the earliest discoveries in the citadel dated back to the neo-Hittite period of the 9^th or 10^th century BC. The site is locked for the time being as funds are required to carry out the necessary excavations. You can get further information on the project from Aleppo Citadel Friends at www.aleppocitadelfriends.org  or from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture at  http://195.186.63.162/agency/aktc.html or from UNESCO World Heritage Sites at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/21

Later we visited Deir Samaan, first Christian building built to a cruciform plan, in the 5th century.

Poppies among the stones near long-dead monks at Deir Samaan.

 

Resafe is an ancient site but it came to prominence first as a defensive structure against the Sassanians, built by Emperor Diocletian in the late 3^rd century AD and later as a Byzantine cult center to Sergius, a Roman soldier and early Christian convert who was martyred there in 305. Renamed Sergiopolis in the late 5^th century by the Byzantine emperor, a basilica was built in honor of the city’s namesake. Although it retained a military function, the detailing on the triple arched northern entrance as well as on one of the surviving churches indicates that it had considerable ecclesiastical importance. Resafe lies near the Euphrates just before the turn-off south for Palmyra where we arrived late afternoon. Palmyra has been much mentioned in this blog so suffice it to say that we were fortunate enough to see inside the Eastern tombs which are normally closed to visitors. The Palmyrenes liked to display their wealth, and the carved sarcophagi of the tombs’ occupants portray amply bejeweled women in diaphanous draped silk garments wearing diadems, necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings, while the patriarchs, each with an avoirdupois befitting his wealthy status, recline majestically appropriately clad in toga-like drapery with medallioned belts. The look is Roman and yet of the East - Palmyra grew rich in knowing how to straddle both worlds, and the richly carved statuary of their resting places are not to be seen elsewhere.

Perhaps my favorite site in Syria is the oft-overlooked Apamea; it has been partly reconstructed yet remains ethereal, it was a military camp yet has a haunting beauty – Bedouin goatherds move their flocks idly through its long, cobbled cardo-maximus which still bears the imprint of chariot wheels, while soaring plain, fluted and spiraled white stone pillars ending in crumbled entablatures and shattered pediments, remain in mute grandeur, testimony to Apamea’s days of glory.
Apamea's graceful cardo-maximus
 

And so back to Yemen, which has fallen victim – let us hope temporarily - to the scourge of militant extremism in the form of several mortar attacks in the capital against a Canadian oil company, and the US embassy. Some embassies suggest deferring all non-essential travel. But here I am anyway and life goes on as usual - at least for the time being.