Download or read book Damascus written by Ross Burns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-06-11 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs and original plans, traces the story of this colourful, significant and complex place through its physical development and provides, for the first time in English, a compelling and unique exploration of a.
Download or read book Damascus written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts of Damascus' history *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says thus: 'Abraham reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner, who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans: but, after a long time, he got him up, and removed from that country also, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan, but now the land of Judea, and this when his posterity were become a multitude; as to which posterity of his, we relate their history in another work. Now the name of Abraham is even still famous in the country of Damascus; and there is shown a village named from him, The Habitation of Abraham.'" - Josephus "In Damascus there is a mosque that has no equal in the world, not one with such fine proportion, nor one so solidly constructed, nor one vaulted so securely, nor one more marvellously laid out, nor one so admirably decorated in gold mosaics and diverse designs, with enamelled tiles and polished marbles." - Muhammad al-Idrisi, 1154 Throughout history, Syria has been dominated not by one great city but by two. Aside from Aleppo to the north, the religious and commercial metropolis of Damascus has been a place desired by the powerful. For thousands of years the Phoenicians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Muslims all vied for control of the city. Damascus has many important architectural sites dating from almost all eras of its history, and vestiges of the past have existed and been valued in Damascus throughout its existence. The history of Damascus from the Byzantine period to the 12th century is particularly fascinating, in terms of its role as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate and the changes that it experienced when the Abbasid Caliphate and Seljuk dynasty came to power. At Damascus, the vibrant capital of modern Syria, one can experience the passion and spirituality of the many faiths that have coexisted in Syria for centuries. The stories of Damascus are a living embodiment of the age of Islamic renaissance; the city has one of the oldest and most important mosques in the world, and it has a vibrant history linked to the rise of Islam in the region. The Umayyad Mosque is a wonderful illustration of the continuity of sacred sites in the city through the millennia. Although it has never been subjected to an archaeological investigation, this was probably the site of a temple of the Semitic thunder god Haddad, and it was certainly the site of the Roman cult of Jupiter following the amalgamation of Haddad with the Roman god, typical of the syncretic approach that the Romans took to foreign religions. It was also certainly the site of the Christian Cathedral of St. John the Baptist; in fact, it may be surprising to learn that the relics of St. John the Baptist are held within this mosque, and are revered by Muslims and Christians alike. Christians make up about 10 percent of the population, with the remainder being mostly Muslim. A number of Christian holy sites relating to the conversion and work of St. Paul - who is considered by many to be the main founder of the Christian church after Jesus - can be found in Damascus. The longstanding tolerance and respect between people of different faiths in Syria is a noteworthy feature of this exceptional city. Damascus: The History and Legacy of the Syrian Capital from Antiquity to Today examines the tumultuous history of one of the most important places in the Middle East. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Damascus like never before.
Download or read book Five Years in Damascus written by Josias Leslie Porter and published by . This book was released on 1855 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ancient Damascus written by Wayne T. Pitard and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 1987 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first detailed synthesis of the epigraphic and archaeological evidence for ancient Damascus in this generation. Pitard surveys the geographical setting of the area, its development as the land of Apum in the Middle Bronze Age, growth in the Late Bronze Age, and the emergence of the powerful city-state in the Iron Age, including its relations with the Israelite kingdoms, and finally its fall at the hand of the Assyrians.
Download or read book My House in Damascus written by Diana Darke and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ongoing conflict in Syria has made clear just how limited the general knowledge of Syrian society and history is in the West. For those watching the headlines and wondering what led the nation to this point, and what might come next, this book is a perfect place to start developing a deeper understanding. Based on decades of living and working in Syria, My House in Damascus offers an inside view of Syria’s cultural and complex religious and ethnic communities. Diana Darke, a fluent Arabic speaker who moved to Damascus in 2004 after decades of regular visits, details the ways that the Assad regime, and its relationship to the people, differs from the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—and why it was thus always less likely to collapse quickly, even in the face of widespread unrest and violence. Through the author’s firsthand experiences of buying and restoring a house in the old city of Damascus, which she later offered as a sanctuary to friends, Darke presents a clear picture of the realities of life on the ground and what hope there is for Syria’s future.
Download or read book Damascus written by Brigid Keenan and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Damascus, reputed to be the worldʹs oldest continually inhabited city, has enjoyed a history of immense grandeur, enormous political and mercantile power, and great cultural and artistic achievement. In addition to some of Islamʹs most magnificent architecture, such as the Umayyad Mosque, the city boasts a heritage of fairy-tale palaces and sumptuous private houses. Sadly, many of them are in urgent need of restoration. Brigid Keenan and Tim Beddow were given unprecedented access to the inner, "hidden" city, which has resulted in a book that is of immense importance to all concerned with the heritage of architecture in the Islamic world. The superb photographs include façades, courtyards, alleyways and fountains, and the breathtaking interiors that often lie behind the unassuming walls of the old town, with exquisite details in stone, wood, paint, marble, plaster, glass and mother-of-pearl. The whole, published with the generous support of Wafic Rida Said, forms a convincing and elegiac plea for the preservation of the heart of this historic ancient capital. -- Jacket.
Download or read book The Great Mosque of Damascus written by Finbarr Flood and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focussing on the Great Mosque of Damascus, this volume discusses the scope and significance of the building campaign undertaken by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik (86-96/705-15), and its implications for the development of early Islamic visual culture.
Download or read book Five Years in Damascus written by Josias Leslie Porter and published by . This book was released on 1855 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Five Years in Damascus written by Josias Léslie Porter and published by . This book was released on 1855 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Syria written by David Dean Commins and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Second Edition gives the reader easy access to the history and contemporary situation of one of the world's ancient civilizations. The heart of the work is more than 350 entries on the most influential political figures and events, religious groups and movements, economic sectors, social institutions, and cultural facets. The second edition includes nearly 100 entirely new entries and updates on 43 entries from the first edition. An important difference between the two editions is the inclusion of many more entries on social institutions, such as the family and coffeehouses, cultural aspects, such as art, architecture, cinema, literature, music, and theater, and economic facets, such as inflation, corruption, the public sector, and efforts at reform. There is also expanded coverage on Syria's political dynamics, with entries on human rights, civil society, and security forces. The only specific reference work in English, this new edition addresses profound changes in Syria's domestic and regional circumstances. The domestic political scene witnessed a major transition with the passing of Syria's ruler for 30 years, Hafiz al-Asad, and the unexpectedly smooth succession of his son Bashar as new president in 2000. The regional situation has changed even more since the first edition came out in 1996. Peace talks with Israel collapsed in 2000 and three years later the United States invaded Iraq, beginning an occupation of Syria's neighbor for an indeterminate period, with incalculable consequences. In addition to the A to Z dictionary, the second edition contains a chronology that presents fairly general information on early centuries and becomes quite detailed for the most recent years. The bibliography also reflects significant changes in research on Syria. Not only does the bibliographical essay highlight important new monographs, it introduces the reader to credible Internet resources for guides to travel and popular culture as well as news and statistical data at major international organizations'
Download or read book Damascus after the Muslim Conquest written by Nancy Khalek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before it fell to Muslim armies in AD 635-6 Damascus had a long and prestigious history as a center of Christianity. How did this city, which became the capitol of the Islamic Empire and its people, negotiate the transition from a late antique or early Byzantine world to an Islamic culture? In Damascus after the Muslim Conquest, Nancy Khalek demonstrates that the changes that took place in Syria during this formative period of Islamic life were not simply a matter of the replacement of one civilization by another as a result of military conquest, but rather of shifting relationships and practices in a multifaceted social and cultural setting. Even as late antique forms of religion and culture persisted, the formation of Islamic identity was affected by the people who constructed, lived in, and narrated the history of their city. Khalek draws on the evidence of architecture and the testimony of pilgrims, biographers, geographers, and historians to shed light on this process of identity formation. Offering a fresh approach to the early Islamic period, she moves the study of Islamic origins beyond a focus on issues of authenticity and textual criticism, and initiates an interdisciplinary discourse on narrative, storytelling, and the interpretations of material culture.
Download or read book Greater Syria written by Daniel Pipes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-03-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While for many years scholars and journalists have focused on the more obvious manifestations of political life in the Middle East, one major theme has been consistently neglected. This is Pan-Syrian nationalism--the dream of creating a Greater Syria out of an area now governed by Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. Though not nearly as well known as Arab or Palestinian nationalism and hardly studied in depth, Pan-Syrianism has had a profound effect on Middle Eastern politics since the end of World War I. In Greater Syria, the noted Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes provides the first comprehensive account of this intriguing, important, and little understood ideology.
Download or read book Damascus and Its People written by Mrs. Mackintosh and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century written by Thomas Philipp and published by Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH. This book was released on 1992 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The present volume emanated from a conference on the Syrian land which was held in the summer of 1989 in Erlangen"--P. xi.
Download or read book The View from Damascus written by Itamar Rabinovich and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheds new light on the recent history and current politics and policies of this important Middle Eastern country. Throughout the last hundred years Syria has been a crucial hub of Middle Eastern events: the birth place and 'pulsating heart' of Arab nationalism, the object of colonial and regional ambitions, it has transformed into a regional power exerting influence over Lebanon and the Palestinians, Iran's closest ally and a thorn in the side of the Bush Administration. Itamar Rabinovich is uniquely qualified to take a panoramic view of Syria's modern history and contemporary politics. As a scholar, he spent thirty-five years studying Syria in diplomatic archives and through the range of sources available to current research. As a diplomat, he was Yitzhak Rabin's chief negotiator with Syria and Israel's ambassador to Washington, and thus a key participant in some of the events addressed in this volume. The twenty-one essays cover the century from the eve of the First World War to the Bush Administration's row with Bashar al-Asad. They are focused on three principal themes: the notion of a Syrian entity and its translation into a Syrian state in its current boundaries; the conflict between rival concepts of the political community that inhabits the Syrian state; and issues of foreign policy with a particular emphasis on the Syrian-Israeli conflict and peace process. The main themes of Syrian history and politics are picked up at their inception and followed through the course of the twentieth century to the present day.
Download or read book The Barber of Damascus written by Dana Sajdi and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about a barber, Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber may have been a "nobody," but he wrote a history book, a record of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Dana Sajdi investigates the significance of this book, and in examining the life and work of Ibn Budayr, uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy. The Barber of Damascus offers the first full-length microhistory of an individual commoner in Ottoman and Islamic history. Contributing to Ottoman popular history, Arabic historiography, and the little-studied cultural history of the 18th century Levant, the volume also examines the reception of the barber's book a century later to explore connections between the 18th and the late 19th centuries and illuminates new paths leading to the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance.
Download or read book Damascus After the Muslim Conquest written by Nancy A. Khalek and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike other histories of the early Islamic period, which focus on the political and military aspects of the conquests, this book is about narrative history and the constitution of identity in the changing and dynamic landscape of the early Islamic world.--provided by publisher.
