Damascus Gate

“ It is where these two roads cross one another that we get, at a later period, the Damascus Gate set up. Streets running direct towards a city wall seem to demand a gate in that wall to complete their usefulness. ”

“ Besides these, there are two gates now walled up, one being the Gate of Herod, on the north side, about half-way between the Damascus Gate and the north-east angle of the city; the other the Golden Gate, in the eastern wall of the Haram. The Arabs call this the Eternal Gate, and it is sometimes called the Gate of Repentance.
About one-sixth of the area of the city is occupied by the Haram or Sanctuary, on Mount Moriah, within which stands the great mosque, called the Dome of the Rock, and where also there is ample breathing space.
Jerusalem is not a fine city according to western ideas. ”

“ The Street called Straight, the glass-roofed, unique bazaar and a dozen other city-marks are bafflingly suggestive of contact with a dozen periods of greatness. And last year, when the demoralized Turks marched out of the city under the Arab flag that flew defiantly from the city gate, Arab thinkers began to dream of yet another period of greatness, in which Damascus was to be the centre of a re-united Arabian Empire.... ”

“ Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered flowers are dead, Yasmin.
Contents / Contents, p. 2
The Gates of Damascus
Four great gates has the city of Damascus,
And four Grand Wardens, on their spears reclining,
All day long stand like tall stone men
And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining.
This is the song of the East Gate Warden
When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden.
Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear,
The Portal of Bagdad am I, the Doorway of Diarbekir. ”

“ The entrance looks like a hole in the wall outside the town, not far from the Gate of Damascus. Creeping in, you find yourself in endless caves and galleries unexplored. We used to use magnesium fusees, and take plenty of ropes to have a clue.
[1] "We were living at the foot of the eastern spur of the Anti-Libanus, upon whose south-eastern slopes lies the large northern suburb of Damascus, El Salahíyyah ('of the Saints') , facetiously changed on account of its Kurdish population into El Talahíyyah ('of the Sinners') . ”

“ This gate dates from the same age as the Eastern or Desert gate, Bab al-Nasr (A.D. 1087) and is still much admired. M. Jomard describes it (Description, etc., ii. 670) and lately my good friend Yacoub Artin Pasha has drawn attention to it in the Bulletin de l'Inst. Egypt., Deuxième Série, No. 4, 1883.
[FN#531] This ornament is still seen in the older saloons of Damascus: the inscriptions are usually religious sentences, extracts from the Koran, etc., in uncial characters. They take the place of our frescos; and, as a work of art, are generally far superior. ”

“ A rock about half way down the declivity, projects a little; and some stains, produced by an oxide of iron in the rock, are pointed out to the pilgrims as caused by his blood.
This gate is at present the only outlet on this side of the city; but there was formerly another gate opening from the court of the mosque, about 230 yards further south. It was called from its splendor “the Golden Gate;” but it is now walled up, in consequence of a tradition current among the Turks, that the city will one day be taken by the Christians, and that they will make their entrance through this gate. ”

“ You look down on a world of foliage, and fruit, and blossoms, whose hue, by contrast with the barren mountains and the yellow rim of the desert which incloses it, seems brighter than all other gardens in the world. Through its centre, following the course of the river, lies Damascus; a line of white walls, topped with domes and towers and tall minarets, winding away for miles through the green sea. Nothing less than a city of palaces, whose walls are marble and whose doors are ivory and pearl, could keep up the enchantment of that distant view. ”

“ The northern wall of Acra, sometimes called “the second wall,” commenced at the gate Gennath, (i. e. “gate of the gardens,”) and then making a curve, [41] terminated at the castle of Antonia. [42] I have placed the gate Gennath about five hundred feet from the tower Hippicus, and have carried the wall, in the first place at right angles across the valley of the Cheesemongers, and then placing a tower at the angle, have there commenced the course over towards Antonia. ”

“ The road is pleasant and picturesque, and leads gently upward beyond a village that lies between the hill and the city. An hour’s ride brings one to a point where the whole plain is spread out like a map at the spectator’s feet.
Embowered in gardens and tinted by the lights that varied every moment, Damascus looked to us as much like an earthly paradise as anything in the Orient. Away to the east was the range of Anti-Lebanon; to the north was the plain, with a strip of desert, and to the south the plain stretched away and broke into the hills in the distance. ”

“ A city surviving an age-long struggle with the encroaching desert—a struggle that must go on through ages to come; but, as long as the Abana and Pharpar continue to flow, the sands that would bury her forever in oblivion will be changed into a soil of life-giving and life-sustaining fertility sufficient to support her thousands of inhabitants. Damascus! A city of the long ago, practically unchanged, where the Occidental may look to-day with unfeigned interest upon architecture, costumes, and customs similar to those that prevailed in the East while Greece and Rome were yet young. ”

“ Dark-eyed beauties, who are not ashamed to show their tattooed faces and nose-rings, meet you at every corner; and, if you know the city well, you may penetrate into the recesses of the wicked bath-houses, or visit the slave-market. Damascus is still the scene of intrigue and passion, as of old; the yearly poisonings are incredibly numerous, and the place is one of the chief strongholds of that obstinate fanaticism which refuses to see anything good in the manners and civilisation of the “heathen.” ”

“ Most conspicuous were the minarets, then a few domes, and then thousands of dome-shaped roofs. You see the top of a covered city, but not the city. In fact, it scarcely looks like a city; you see no streets, and few roofs proper, for we have to look twice to convince ourselves that the flat spaces covered with earth and often green with vegetation (gardens in the air) are actually roofs of houses. The streets are either roofed over or are so narrow that we cannot see them from this height. Damascus is a sort of rabbit-burrow.
Not far from the Great Mosque is the tomb of Saladin. ”

“ Habib pointed out landmarks near and far—minarets of the great mosque, the direction of Jerusalem, of Mecca; he showed us where the waters of Damascus [Pg 258] rise and where they waste into the desert sands. To the westward was Mount Hermon; southward came the lands of Naphtali, and Bashan where the giant Og once reigned. All below us lay Palestine; Mount Hermon was the watch-tower, Damascus the capital of the North.
Damascus in the sunset, its domes and minarets lifting above the lacing green! There is no more beautiful picture in the world than that. ”

“ To appreciate truly the significance of Damascus, one should approach it from the east, across the thirsty wilderness which stretches between the Euphrates and the Syrian mountains. The long, wearisome journey would be worth while if only for the first glimpse of the city as it appears to the wondering eyes of the desert-dweller. But the twentieth century visitor may be excused if he prefers to save time and strength by utilizing the railway. To-day there is even a choice of routes. He can travel to Damascus from the west comfortably, or from the south speedily. ”

“ Farther below is Damascus itself—a maze of flat buildings, squat mosques, and minaret spires, all in gray-white, as if sprinkled with the powder of time, and now smudged with faint rose by the sinking sunlight. Eastward and southeastward stretches the great desert that leads to the sites of Babylon and Nineveh, to Bagdad, to Persia, to the beginnings of human history.
In Damascus, as I knew from intelligence officers of the Palestine army, were many friends of the British. Nearly all the population, in fact, were secretly anti-Turk and anti-German. ”

“ In Damascus the buildings are modern, and look outside like railway stations with arched roofs, though within is seen the true and perfect life of the East, so unspoiled that the passing stranger feels his European clothes a positive eyesore, and knows that it is barely possible that the picture will be marred for him by any other intruder. Here the long vaulted halls, lighted only by rays of sunshine falling through square holes in the roof, are as fine as in Constantinople, and, in addition, are full of life and colour. ”

“ More than three thousand years it has flourished; more than thirty centuries it has stood there a city—the beautiful city of the plain. Nations have appeared and vanished. Kingdoms and empires and republics have risen and fallen, but Damascus has stood unchanged. Thrones have crumbled, dynasties have come and gone. Statesmen and poets and scholars have lived their brief period of existence, brief and insignificant. In the centuries that have rolled over Damascus Saracen, Roman, Moslem, and Christian have besieged the city ”

“ Midhat Pasha greatly improved it in that respect, and also in other ways, for we see a large quarter of Damascus in ruins 35and are told that it was set fire to by Midhat Pasha (after the fashion of Nero) to make room for a new wide street. This is a much shorter and more economical way (to the government) of making street improvements than that we have in England, but as no notice of the contemplated improvement is given, it must be rather inconvenient to the inhabitants. Damascus is called by the Arabs El Sham, and in the eyes of the Moslem world is second in sanctity only to Mecca. ”

“ Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, And it shall be a ruinous heap. 2The cities of Aroer are forsaken; They shall be for flocks, Which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. 3The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, And the kingdom from Damascus; And the remnant of Aram shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, Saith the Lord of hosts.
4And it shall come to pass in that day, That the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, And the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. ”

“ Running water from the Abana flows through all the best houses. The public buildings and barracks built during the Egyptian occupation are very good for a Turkish city, and the citadel, an old mediæval castle, is interesting, but access is not allowed to it. Abdel-Kader, who so long kept the French at bay in North Africa, lived in Damascus, and had a quarter allotted to him and his Algerian fellow exiles. Damascus is not the dirty city it once was. ”

“ Standing on the utmost edge of fertility, on the shore of the much-voyaged desert, Damascus is indispensable alike to civilization and to the nomads. Moreover, she is the city of the Mediterranean world which lies nearest to the far East, and Islam has made her the western port of Mecca. ”

“ Damascus may be—we have abundant testimony that it is—a good city, if, as I said, one could see it. Arriving, you dive into a hole, and scarcely see daylight again; you never can look many yards before you; you move in a sort of twilight, which is deepened under the heavy timber roofs of the bazaars; winding through endless mazes of lanes with no view except of a slender strip of sky, you occasionally may step through an opening in the wall into a court with a square of sunshine, a tank of water, and a tree or two. ”

“ It was conquered by David after a protracted struggle, but recovered its independence in the reign of Solomon. It was subsequently subdued by the Assyrians. Rome may call itself, Damascus is the Eternal City, founded probably soon after the flood by a Semitic grandson of Noah. Damascus has never ceased to exist as a great city, and from its unique position, probably never will. The prey of every ambitious conqueror, it has seen the rise and survived the fall of every great empire. ”

“ Although it is ninety miles by railway from navigable water, Damascus partakes of the characteristics of a seaport. It is, in fact, the port of the wilderness. Just to the east of its fertile “garden” is the Syrian desert, across which slow caravans have always been coming and going—traveling from the rich river-bottoms of Mesopotamia, from Persia and India, and even from far distant China, to bring the riches of Asia to the overflowing warehouses of Damascus. ”

“ As already stated, a railway, starting from Beyrout, crosses the Lebanon and connects it with Damascus, one of the most ancient cities of the world. Damascus is also one of the most beautiful, the plain on which it stands being a continuous garden, over fifty miles in circuit, rich in oranges, lemons, pomegranates, mulberries, figs, plums, apricots, walnuts, pears, quinces, etc. The town, through which flows a river, contains several magnificent structures, including a splendid mosque, which was once a Christian church, but the streets of the city are squalid and dirty. ”

“ Still it has few relics of antiquity. Old material has constantly been utilized in the construction of new buildings and monuments. Its position has often been commented upon. "It is an astonishing site for what is said to be the oldest, and is certainly the most enduring, city of the world. For it is utterly incapable of defence; it is remote from the sea and the great natural lines of commerce. From the coast of Syria it is double barred by those ranges of snow-capped mountains whose populations enjoy more tempting prospects to the north and west. But look east and you understand Damascus. ”