Textcalibur!

Having recently survived a whirlwind two weeks of hosting guests, I find myself finally browsing pictures of the Old Damascus I have come to love during my months here. Below you will find a variety of photos taken on March 29th 2008 in various parts of the Old City, mostly covering our path from Bab Touma (Thomas’ Gate, the ‘door’ to the Old City’s Christian Quarter) to the world famous souq Al-Hamidiyah.

Click on the thumbnails for full-sized pictures, all of them have been edited to 1024 by 768 pixels.

The first picture is a view of the first street to greet visitors to the Old City should they enter from Bab Touma. Note the mess of cars attempting to funnel into the narrow streets of the Old City…methinks they weren’t really made with automobiles in mind! On that note, travellers going to Bab Touma via taxi might want to get out before reaching the square proper – not only is the square incredibly congested, but there are many great stores just outside of Bab Touma. Simply head the opposite way to find the streets filled with stores selling every manner of clothing and shoe known to man. A number of western brands can be found there as well, for considerably better prices than you might find in the few malls of Damascus.

Behold the width of the streets of Bab Touma! How they manage to fit those cars in there is beyond me. Note to travellers: the Christian Quarter, which extends roughly from Bab Touma to Bab Sharqi, is the only area of Old Damascus with fully licensed restaurants. Consequently it is also the host to some of the best restaurants in town, not just in terms of their drinks but also their food. Elissar, Neutron and Naranj are all great places to have dinner, and lunch menus are available in virtually any of the cafés along Bab Touma street.

This is a photo from an earlier outing and taken by our guest Tiia, but since it’s in the Christian Quarter I’ll include it here. The Chapel of Ananias (also called the House of Ananias) is a seriously biblical church found not far from Bab Sharqi. Admission costs 25 SYP and whilst there isn’t much to see, it’s quite the trip to find yourself in a chapel dating back to the Roman times. The ticket office also sells excellent maps of Old Damascus with many more sights than any tourist guidebook I’ve seen.

Affectionately nicknamed “death alley”, this is one of those trickier places to navigate, as our guest Tommi and I aptly demonstrate below. Mind your toes and duck into doorways when you can, these cars will plow right on through and trust you to avoid them rather than vice versa. Extra dangerous at night, and super duper dangerous at night after spending time in one of the many bars or clubs nearby!

The following are some random alleyway pictures taken on our way from Bab Touma to the other side of Old Damascus. These are uncharacteristically empty as we were up and about well before noon – note that attempting to go shopping before 10 AM is a complete waste of time, and most of the Old City stores don’t open before noon.

Typically a “must see” place in the Old City, Medhat Pasha, also known as Straight Street, has recently been suffering from a disjointed attempt at renovating the ancient Roman street. This is one of those few streets in the world that is mentioned in the Bible, although whomever wrote it had a definite sense of irony as it is called “a street called Straight” in the good book.

I haven’t anything particularly enlightening to say about the following pictures, they’re just a sampling of the streets of the Old City once people start waking up and selling their wares. The best way to describe the atmosphere of those streets is with two simple words: living history.

Now we come to one of the more famous landmarks of Damascus: the Omayad Mosque. Originally the site was occupied by a Roman temple, supposedly dedicated to Jupiter. Eventually the Romans converted to Christianity and the temple was turned into a church, which was subsequently converted to one of the most well-known mosques in the world. Below you see a picture of the courtyard of the mosque, which is always bustling with activity and life. The Jawa-like creatures running about in grey robes aren’t here to steal your droids: they’re women whose dress wasn’t conservative enough to enter the mosque. Loaner robes are available in exchange for a small fee (50 SYP).

This is a picture taken of what I assume were once the main doors of the mosque; they no longer seem to be in use. Regardless, you can see the scale of the building and the incredible amount of detail and decoration on every facet of it.

This is a slightly backwards path to the route taken by most travellers, as they’d be entering via the souq al-Hamidiyah and would hence see the Roman columns just before the mosque, but since we came from Bab Touma, this was when the columns came into view. The columns at the end (or beginning, as seen from this direction) of the souq are roughly 2,000 years old and used to support the entrance to the Roman temple of Jupiter.

Finally, a few pictures of the souq al-Hamidiyah. As you can probably see, it is absolutely packed with people, which is more or less its natural state. I read that the ‘main street’ of al-Hamidiyah is 600 metres long, which actually seems a conservative figure if you’re on the ground doing the legwork, but that may be just because there is so much to see, hear, smell and most importantly buy along the main street. Not to mention all of the other streets that connect to it….

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and still I feel as though I should have a million more pictures to share before even a fraction of the soul of Old Damascus would be expressed with enough eloquence to capture its gravity and impact. Hopefully these few offerings can at least provide an inkling of an idea as to the vibrant mysticism that permeates the air within the walls of ancient Dimashq.