Reminiscence from the Levant: Part Ten - Damascus, the history personified.
Damascus is a very special city… often dubbed as world's oldest continuously inhabited city… it is the history personified.
I first heard about Damascus, when I was barely a teen… my father while telling me about Timur Lang and his conquest of Delhi… told me that an equally horrific crime was commited by him in Damascus, where he made an entire wall of skulls… (One of the walls of the old city is still known as Burj Al Ruus – tower of the heads). Timur conquest of Delhi had been recorded in his autobiography as
In a short space of time all the people in the fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground....All these infidel Hindus were slain, their women and children, and their property and goods became the spoil of the victors. I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death.
One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives....on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty...no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword.
Timur, while attacking India, reasoned that the Sultans of Delhi were very tolerant towards Hindus… however his Islamic credentials are doubtful… because while attacking Damascus; he massacred thousands of Muslims and ransacked the great Umayyad mosque... that is often considered the fourth most holiest site in Islam. In India, the toughest resistance to Timur was put in by one Illyas Awan… a Shiite noble in Punjab, and a Muslim… who valourly fought with him and shielded his Hindu subjects…till his death. The line between Hinduism and Islam therefore blurs, and savagery and humanity become prominent, if we see the events in totality.
Timur exploits hold a very strong contemporary message- one, there are good and bad people in every community… two, that some bad people often derive the justification of their wrong deeds from a noble cause and mutilate it… three, in an effort to see the goodness of one's own community- people tend to relate the other community with only bad people, easily overlooking the good ones… four, that such an outlook is not only wrong but fraught with unmentionable dangers towards nation building.
Today's Damascus is a very gentle city… apart from the dense downtown… rest of Damascus is spacious, green and a pleasure to negotiate around. People are extremely friendly and helpful. You are reminded of a saying that everybody has two homes, one in his country of residence and other in Syria. Very true, indeed.
I stayed in the house of an acquaintance Devesh Uttam… he however was not around, having gone to Turkey. His house was a very comfortable place; to stay… it felt as if I am staying in a five star suite…. However in the hindsight, staying away from a travelers haunt and in the residential quarters of a city is often disadvantageous… apart from the fact that traveler haunts are located closer to the tourist spots… they are a virtual goldmine of information for travelers… ask your hotel owner what are the places to see and he will give you an insight as to what are they and how to best reach them and the lesser known facts about it… such assistance is often missing when we live in residential quarters… people who come to Cairo on a tour and stay in the touristy quarters are often able to see more of Cairo than I had in one and a half year of my stay in Zamalek. I believe that there is an atmosphere of enthusiasm to see new places in the touristy haunts that is entirely missing in the residential quarters, replaced by a complacence that there is a lot of time… to visit new places….
The best thing about Damascus is its atmosphere… frankly there is not much to be seen in Damascus… apart from the Umayyad mosque, Hamiddiya Souq, the Citadel, and may be the museum and the Azem Palace… and vantage of Damascus in the night from Mount Qaison. It reminds me of Alexandria… that is one of the most favourite cities of mine, has splendid history but nothing much to show… and yet has a wonderful atmosphere that compensates for it all.
Earlier in the day in Palmyra, I met the South African guy again… in the ruins of Palmyra… he told me a lot of things about South Africa. His roots are in Surat in Gujarat. He visited the place in 1989 and back then, he was appalled by the state of infrastructure in India… it took him 10 hours by bus to go from Bombay till Surat…. I gleefully told him about the changes happening all around in India and that the state of infrastructure has undergone sea change in last few years… he was pleasantly surprised… He recalled that on his return to Bombay, from Surat, he took a train called Flying Ranee... and wondered if it still runs… I said yes…
Flying Ranee… it was a nostalgic reference… when I was in Jamnagar… and traveled from Bombay to Jamnagar… in three days, stopping in Surat, Vadodara, and Rajkot.
Life, they say is short and nothing but a chain of reminiscences… some bother to recollect and some don’t.
I first heard about Damascus, when I was barely a teen… my father while telling me about Timur Lang and his conquest of Delhi… told me that an equally horrific crime was commited by him in Damascus, where he made an entire wall of skulls… (One of the walls of the old city is still known as Burj Al Ruus – tower of the heads). Timur conquest of Delhi had been recorded in his autobiography as
In a short space of time all the people in the fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground....All these infidel Hindus were slain, their women and children, and their property and goods became the spoil of the victors. I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death.
One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives....on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty...no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword.
Timur, while attacking India, reasoned that the Sultans of Delhi were very tolerant towards Hindus… however his Islamic credentials are doubtful… because while attacking Damascus; he massacred thousands of Muslims and ransacked the great Umayyad mosque... that is often considered the fourth most holiest site in Islam. In India, the toughest resistance to Timur was put in by one Illyas Awan… a Shiite noble in Punjab, and a Muslim… who valourly fought with him and shielded his Hindu subjects…till his death. The line between Hinduism and Islam therefore blurs, and savagery and humanity become prominent, if we see the events in totality.
Timur exploits hold a very strong contemporary message- one, there are good and bad people in every community… two, that some bad people often derive the justification of their wrong deeds from a noble cause and mutilate it… three, in an effort to see the goodness of one's own community- people tend to relate the other community with only bad people, easily overlooking the good ones… four, that such an outlook is not only wrong but fraught with unmentionable dangers towards nation building.
Today's Damascus is a very gentle city… apart from the dense downtown… rest of Damascus is spacious, green and a pleasure to negotiate around. People are extremely friendly and helpful. You are reminded of a saying that everybody has two homes, one in his country of residence and other in Syria. Very true, indeed.
I stayed in the house of an acquaintance Devesh Uttam… he however was not around, having gone to Turkey. His house was a very comfortable place; to stay… it felt as if I am staying in a five star suite…. However in the hindsight, staying away from a travelers haunt and in the residential quarters of a city is often disadvantageous… apart from the fact that traveler haunts are located closer to the tourist spots… they are a virtual goldmine of information for travelers… ask your hotel owner what are the places to see and he will give you an insight as to what are they and how to best reach them and the lesser known facts about it… such assistance is often missing when we live in residential quarters… people who come to Cairo on a tour and stay in the touristy quarters are often able to see more of Cairo than I had in one and a half year of my stay in Zamalek. I believe that there is an atmosphere of enthusiasm to see new places in the touristy haunts that is entirely missing in the residential quarters, replaced by a complacence that there is a lot of time… to visit new places….
The best thing about Damascus is its atmosphere… frankly there is not much to be seen in Damascus… apart from the Umayyad mosque, Hamiddiya Souq, the Citadel, and may be the museum and the Azem Palace… and vantage of Damascus in the night from Mount Qaison. It reminds me of Alexandria… that is one of the most favourite cities of mine, has splendid history but nothing much to show… and yet has a wonderful atmosphere that compensates for it all.
Earlier in the day in Palmyra, I met the South African guy again… in the ruins of Palmyra… he told me a lot of things about South Africa. His roots are in Surat in Gujarat. He visited the place in 1989 and back then, he was appalled by the state of infrastructure in India… it took him 10 hours by bus to go from Bombay till Surat…. I gleefully told him about the changes happening all around in India and that the state of infrastructure has undergone sea change in last few years… he was pleasantly surprised… He recalled that on his return to Bombay, from Surat, he took a train called Flying Ranee... and wondered if it still runs… I said yes…
Flying Ranee… it was a nostalgic reference… when I was in Jamnagar… and traveled from Bombay to Jamnagar… in three days, stopping in Surat, Vadodara, and Rajkot.
Life, they say is short and nothing but a chain of reminiscences… some bother to recollect and some don’t.
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