Reminiscence from the Levant: Part Eleven – Sleepless in Damascus.
While coming from Palmyra to Damascus, one comes across a place called Baghdad Café… buses stop here for twenty odd minutes to let passengers stretch and de-stress themselves with a cup of hot Turkish coffee… When I was barely five year old… my father used to narrate me the stories of Sindabad the sailor… and how he conquered the seven seas. Seas have thereafter always fascinated me… and he was my hero… who was able to challenge the unchallengeable.
Baghdad and Iraq are not very far away from Palmyra… it takes about nine hours by bus to go to Baghdad… less than it takes to reach Allahabad, my home town, from Delhi…. But nobody goes there… an entire nation has perished… but its not only about a nation… its about an entire civilization, of Euphrates and Tigris, that got wiped from the surface of earth in last few years… it’s a poignant feeling, something same that I felt when the Buddhist monument was destroyed by Taliban in Afghanistan… history can not be reclaimed…
I reached the Hamiddiya Souq when it was getting dark… about six in the evening… I could see at a distance the statue of Saladdin, the mighty Muslim warrior – who single handedly changed the tide of the crusades and perhaps the history. He sat on a galloping horse, with Crusader kings sitting vanquished below the hoofs of his horse. A beautiful statue, however, a bit parochial. In the backdrop is the famous Damascus citadel… though it is closed for common public… people told me that there is hardly anything worthwhile to be seen within the precincts of the citadel.
Hamiddiya souq is magical… straight out of Arabian Nights… a vaulted souq at its best…. Compared to Aleppo's souq, this is definitely bigger, and more lively … with people chasing you around… offering a better bargain et al. The main thoroughfare is almost a kilometer long… with supporting alleys and by-alleys. Shops, workshops, cafes, and the most magical of them all…Hammams… the Turkish baths
I stepped in one such Hammam and took a look at the interiors of Hammam… earlier, I was made to believe that a Hammam is a steamy place, a bit ill kept and often a meeting point for Homosexuals… but the reality is far from it…. Hammams have separate hours for males and females and are often integral part of the Arab and Turk society…. And very well kept, neat and clean.
At the end of the souq, stands the grand Umayyad mosque… so beautiful that it will sure stop you to gasp for breath.
Umayyad is one of those mosques that welcome non-Muslims with an open heart. The only care one needs to take is to keep his shoes away before entering the mosque. And that there are some special enclosures for Women (even if you do enter them, you will be politely told to turn away….the mosque management is extremely friendly). One practical advice is to avoid the prayer hours in the mosque, when it gets very crowdy.
Umayyad is a good example of the period when Islam and Christianity were in perfect harmony. It is said that initially this was a Church that housed the tomb of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was one of the first saints of Christianity… he was a maternal cousin of Jesus, son of Zachariah and Elizabeth and performed the religious ceremony of baptism for Jesus… he however is well regarded by Islam also…therefore since the advent of Islam in Damascus, the Christians and Muslims started praying in this church… for about 700 years… however upon skirmishes on how to pray and who would lead the prayer, this 700 years old tradition gave way to a covenant by which Christians were given three churches outside Damascus in place of this Church.
The Christian features are very palpable in the mosque… a minaret is shaped like a bell tower, there is a baptism well… a treasury that is definitely a church feature… the interesting thing, however, is that thousands of Muslims come to this mosque to pay their reverence to John the Baptist (referred as Yahya)
In this mosque, while talking to an Australian national over a cup of coffee in a nearby café… I come to know about a small religion called Mandaeism… We generally believe that there are only three religions emanating from the region of Levant… Islam, Christianity and Judaism… however this world view is often governed by the Islamic world view that considered only these three religions as true religions. But there were few other religions that emanated from the same legacy… like the Mandaeism that considers Adam to be their first Prophet and John the Baptist as the last and the most important prophet. Even Bahaism is a part of the same family of religion… that reveres all the prophets of the three religions but argues that their last Prophet was Bahaullah. There is yet another religion of Durzes, that exists... more about it later. Today there are about 50000 to 60000 Mandaeists in the entire world- sizeable among them are in Australia… the man who told me this said he was a Christian… but I have a nagging feeling that he was actually a Mandaeist.
I roamed the old city to reach a place called Hejaz railway station… that runs a narrow gauge train to Jordan and other places in Syria… however the service to Jordan has stopped for last four years… it was a small, unassuming building…. In front of the building was a small railway engine for display.
The buildings in Damascus are a mix of old and new… but a yearn for designing something unique is visible in every building… I just walked around the place and saw them all…
It was 10 in the night and I was far from asleep… I was sleepless in Damascus.
Baghdad and Iraq are not very far away from Palmyra… it takes about nine hours by bus to go to Baghdad… less than it takes to reach Allahabad, my home town, from Delhi…. But nobody goes there… an entire nation has perished… but its not only about a nation… its about an entire civilization, of Euphrates and Tigris, that got wiped from the surface of earth in last few years… it’s a poignant feeling, something same that I felt when the Buddhist monument was destroyed by Taliban in Afghanistan… history can not be reclaimed…
I reached the Hamiddiya Souq when it was getting dark… about six in the evening… I could see at a distance the statue of Saladdin, the mighty Muslim warrior – who single handedly changed the tide of the crusades and perhaps the history. He sat on a galloping horse, with Crusader kings sitting vanquished below the hoofs of his horse. A beautiful statue, however, a bit parochial. In the backdrop is the famous Damascus citadel… though it is closed for common public… people told me that there is hardly anything worthwhile to be seen within the precincts of the citadel.
Hamiddiya souq is magical… straight out of Arabian Nights… a vaulted souq at its best…. Compared to Aleppo's souq, this is definitely bigger, and more lively … with people chasing you around… offering a better bargain et al. The main thoroughfare is almost a kilometer long… with supporting alleys and by-alleys. Shops, workshops, cafes, and the most magical of them all…Hammams… the Turkish baths
I stepped in one such Hammam and took a look at the interiors of Hammam… earlier, I was made to believe that a Hammam is a steamy place, a bit ill kept and often a meeting point for Homosexuals… but the reality is far from it…. Hammams have separate hours for males and females and are often integral part of the Arab and Turk society…. And very well kept, neat and clean.
At the end of the souq, stands the grand Umayyad mosque… so beautiful that it will sure stop you to gasp for breath.
Umayyad is one of those mosques that welcome non-Muslims with an open heart. The only care one needs to take is to keep his shoes away before entering the mosque. And that there are some special enclosures for Women (even if you do enter them, you will be politely told to turn away….the mosque management is extremely friendly). One practical advice is to avoid the prayer hours in the mosque, when it gets very crowdy.
Umayyad is a good example of the period when Islam and Christianity were in perfect harmony. It is said that initially this was a Church that housed the tomb of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was one of the first saints of Christianity… he was a maternal cousin of Jesus, son of Zachariah and Elizabeth and performed the religious ceremony of baptism for Jesus… he however is well regarded by Islam also…therefore since the advent of Islam in Damascus, the Christians and Muslims started praying in this church… for about 700 years… however upon skirmishes on how to pray and who would lead the prayer, this 700 years old tradition gave way to a covenant by which Christians were given three churches outside Damascus in place of this Church.
The Christian features are very palpable in the mosque… a minaret is shaped like a bell tower, there is a baptism well… a treasury that is definitely a church feature… the interesting thing, however, is that thousands of Muslims come to this mosque to pay their reverence to John the Baptist (referred as Yahya)
In this mosque, while talking to an Australian national over a cup of coffee in a nearby café… I come to know about a small religion called Mandaeism… We generally believe that there are only three religions emanating from the region of Levant… Islam, Christianity and Judaism… however this world view is often governed by the Islamic world view that considered only these three religions as true religions. But there were few other religions that emanated from the same legacy… like the Mandaeism that considers Adam to be their first Prophet and John the Baptist as the last and the most important prophet. Even Bahaism is a part of the same family of religion… that reveres all the prophets of the three religions but argues that their last Prophet was Bahaullah. There is yet another religion of Durzes, that exists... more about it later. Today there are about 50000 to 60000 Mandaeists in the entire world- sizeable among them are in Australia… the man who told me this said he was a Christian… but I have a nagging feeling that he was actually a Mandaeist.
I roamed the old city to reach a place called Hejaz railway station… that runs a narrow gauge train to Jordan and other places in Syria… however the service to Jordan has stopped for last four years… it was a small, unassuming building…. In front of the building was a small railway engine for display.
The buildings in Damascus are a mix of old and new… but a yearn for designing something unique is visible in every building… I just walked around the place and saw them all…
It was 10 in the night and I was far from asleep… I was sleepless in Damascus.
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