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SYRIA'S LOST HISTORY
BY Andrew Lawler
The Washington Post
October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Regional Edition
In March 2011, as she had done every Friday afternoon for years, Jenny
Poche Marrache held court at her 16th-century compound in the heart of
Aleppo's sprawling ancient market. Wearing a fur-lined leather coat to
ward off the spring chill, the tiny 72-year-old regaled visitors with
stories of this city's cosmopolitan past. When her great-grandfather -
a Bohemian crystal merchant - arrived here two centuries ago, Aleppo
had already been a hub of East-West trade for half a millennium.
Carpets from Persia, silks from China and high-quality local textiles
filled the warehouses and stalls. Even at the height of the Crusades,
Venetian agents exchanged timber and iron for Indian spices in the
city's souks.
In the midst of Syria's civil war, more is being lost than lives.
Aleppo may be the world's oldest continuously occupied city, dating
to the era of the pyramids, and at the height of the Ottoman Empire,
it was the world's largest metropolis after Istanbul and Cairo. That
antiquity, wealth and diversity left behind magnificent mosques with
Mameluke minarets, Ottoman-style bathhouses, and neoclassical columns
and balustrades overlooking traditional courtyards tiled with marble
and splashed by fountains. But Aleppo's legacy extends beyond historic
buildings. The city welcomed people of many faiths and traditions,
while its old rival Damascus, a holy city and a gateway to Mecca,
was long out of bounds for Westerners. Muslims, Christians and
Jews created Syria's commercial hub and one of the most tolerant,
long-lasting and prosperous communities in the Middle East. "What was
sold in the souks of Cairo in a month was sold in Aleppo in a day,"
Madame Poche said, quoting a Syrian adage.
As we sipped coffee the week that the civil war began, this refined,
prosperous world was already long in decline. "The situation
is deplorable," Madame Poche said in French-accented English,
looking with disdain at the crates of cheap Chinese shoes filling
the courtyard. Neighborhood merchants complained that the local
textile mills had shut down, forcing them to replenish their stock
with inferior cloth from Dubai. Despite Aleppo's status as a World
Heritage Site, many old buildings were in serious disrepair. And the
once-vibrant Jewish community had vanished.
Since my first visit to Aleppo two decades ago, a coalition of
entrepreneurs, city planners and foreign experts began the formidable
task of rescuing and restoring one of the cultural and architectural
jewels of the Middle East. Last year I walked along the new promenade
surrounding the moated and massive ancient citadel. I stayed at
one of the bed-and-breakfasts that had sprung up amid the warrens of
covered markets to cater to foreign tourists, and I visited a recently
uncovered 4,500-year-old temple. At an art gallery, I chatted with a
photographer who helped organize an edgy international arts festival -
an event unthinkable in dour Damascus.
The growing recognition of Aleppo's importance in Middle Eastern
history and culture makes the burning of the old city all the more
tragic. In recent online videos, flames crackle in the closely
packed alleys of the covered bazaar, smoke billows from a medieval
caravansary, and an armed fighter gestures at the collapsed dome of
a 19th-century mosque. Reportedly, more than 500 shops in the 71 /
2 miles of streets within the region's largest marketplace have been
damaged. The minaret of a 14th-century school is now only a stump. The
entrance of the medieval citadel is cratered, and the fortress's huge
wooden gates are gone. A car bomb last week blew out the windows
of the Aleppo Museum, one of the world's best collections of Near
Eastern artifacts.
And the fighting continues.
Amid the terrible human suffering - many remaining residents have no
running water or electricity, and they lack food amid the nightmare of
guerrilla warfare - concern about the destruction of material property
can appear gratuitous. But the ancient urban fabric of Aleppo is more
than an exotic tourist destination. "The Aleppo souks . . . stand
as testimony to Aleppo's importance as a cultural crossroads since
the second millennium B.C.," says Irina Bokova, director general
of UNESCO. She promised an investigation, though the conflict will
make it hard to assess damage, much less protect what is left. "The
situation is really catastrophic, as Aleppo is half destroyed," Michel
Amalqdissi, director of the Syrian government's archaeology division,
e-mailed me last week.
Nor is destruction limited to this commercial hub. Five of Syria's
six most important ancient sites reportedly have been damaged, and
massive looting of the country's ancient heritage may be underway.
Archaeologists fear that the losses could dwarf those that occurred
in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. Syria has arguably the richest
and most diverse history of any nation on Earth. It is home to the
ruin of what may be the world's first city, a mound near the Iraqi
border called Tell Brak, as well as the famous Roman-era desert city
of Palmyra, the Crusader fortress Krak des Chevaliers and some of
Islam's greatest monuments. Thousands of smaller sites encompass
more than 10,000 years of human history, from Neolithic villages to
Hittite strongholds, Roman forts, early Christian monasteries and
Umayyad palaces. Lacking protection, these sites are open to mass
theft that will feed the West's hungry antiquities market.
The day after our coffee, Madame Poche's son took me to lunch at
a fashionable restaurant in a restored Ottoman palace in today's
Christian quarter. At the next table, a half-dozen clergy of different
Christian sects drank wine and chatted while Sunni businessmen in
suits talked deals nearby. At the time, Egypt's revolution was only a
distant rumble, and those I spoke with dismissed the idea of a revolt
in a mercantile city tolerant of minorities. Aleppo, they noted,
took in thousands of Armenians fleeing Turkey a century ago and did
the same with Iraqi Christians after 2003. We didn't know about the
arrest of several boys in the southern town of Daraa that week. Three
days after my lunch, the first open demonstration against the Syrian
regime took place. Since then, most of Madame Poche's family, and
thousands of other Christians, have fled to Lebanon, Turkey and the
West. She, however, remains in her beloved city. "I'm worried about
my old house," she e-mailed me Monday.
Aleppo's remarkable history of diversity and tolerance - a model for
a region in turmoil - is itself perilously close to becoming history.
That past is an important bridge to a prosperous future that requires a
well-educated populace linked to the wider world. Amid the destruction
of a great city, there is more to mourn than shattered stone.
The writer is a freelance journalist who covers archaeology and
cultural heritage in the Middle East.
BY Andrew Lawler
The Washington Post
October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Regional Edition
In March 2011, as she had done every Friday afternoon for years, Jenny
Poche Marrache held court at her 16th-century compound in the heart of
Aleppo's sprawling ancient market. Wearing a fur-lined leather coat to
ward off the spring chill, the tiny 72-year-old regaled visitors with
stories of this city's cosmopolitan past. When her great-grandfather -
a Bohemian crystal merchant - arrived here two centuries ago, Aleppo
had already been a hub of East-West trade for half a millennium.
Carpets from Persia, silks from China and high-quality local textiles
filled the warehouses and stalls. Even at the height of the Crusades,
Venetian agents exchanged timber and iron for Indian spices in the
city's souks.
In the midst of Syria's civil war, more is being lost than lives.
Aleppo may be the world's oldest continuously occupied city, dating
to the era of the pyramids, and at the height of the Ottoman Empire,
it was the world's largest metropolis after Istanbul and Cairo. That
antiquity, wealth and diversity left behind magnificent mosques with
Mameluke minarets, Ottoman-style bathhouses, and neoclassical columns
and balustrades overlooking traditional courtyards tiled with marble
and splashed by fountains. But Aleppo's legacy extends beyond historic
buildings. The city welcomed people of many faiths and traditions,
while its old rival Damascus, a holy city and a gateway to Mecca,
was long out of bounds for Westerners. Muslims, Christians and
Jews created Syria's commercial hub and one of the most tolerant,
long-lasting and prosperous communities in the Middle East. "What was
sold in the souks of Cairo in a month was sold in Aleppo in a day,"
Madame Poche said, quoting a Syrian adage.
As we sipped coffee the week that the civil war began, this refined,
prosperous world was already long in decline. "The situation
is deplorable," Madame Poche said in French-accented English,
looking with disdain at the crates of cheap Chinese shoes filling
the courtyard. Neighborhood merchants complained that the local
textile mills had shut down, forcing them to replenish their stock
with inferior cloth from Dubai. Despite Aleppo's status as a World
Heritage Site, many old buildings were in serious disrepair. And the
once-vibrant Jewish community had vanished.
Since my first visit to Aleppo two decades ago, a coalition of
entrepreneurs, city planners and foreign experts began the formidable
task of rescuing and restoring one of the cultural and architectural
jewels of the Middle East. Last year I walked along the new promenade
surrounding the moated and massive ancient citadel. I stayed at
one of the bed-and-breakfasts that had sprung up amid the warrens of
covered markets to cater to foreign tourists, and I visited a recently
uncovered 4,500-year-old temple. At an art gallery, I chatted with a
photographer who helped organize an edgy international arts festival -
an event unthinkable in dour Damascus.
The growing recognition of Aleppo's importance in Middle Eastern
history and culture makes the burning of the old city all the more
tragic. In recent online videos, flames crackle in the closely
packed alleys of the covered bazaar, smoke billows from a medieval
caravansary, and an armed fighter gestures at the collapsed dome of
a 19th-century mosque. Reportedly, more than 500 shops in the 71 /
2 miles of streets within the region's largest marketplace have been
damaged. The minaret of a 14th-century school is now only a stump. The
entrance of the medieval citadel is cratered, and the fortress's huge
wooden gates are gone. A car bomb last week blew out the windows
of the Aleppo Museum, one of the world's best collections of Near
Eastern artifacts.
And the fighting continues.
Amid the terrible human suffering - many remaining residents have no
running water or electricity, and they lack food amid the nightmare of
guerrilla warfare - concern about the destruction of material property
can appear gratuitous. But the ancient urban fabric of Aleppo is more
than an exotic tourist destination. "The Aleppo souks . . . stand
as testimony to Aleppo's importance as a cultural crossroads since
the second millennium B.C.," says Irina Bokova, director general
of UNESCO. She promised an investigation, though the conflict will
make it hard to assess damage, much less protect what is left. "The
situation is really catastrophic, as Aleppo is half destroyed," Michel
Amalqdissi, director of the Syrian government's archaeology division,
e-mailed me last week.
Nor is destruction limited to this commercial hub. Five of Syria's
six most important ancient sites reportedly have been damaged, and
massive looting of the country's ancient heritage may be underway.
Archaeologists fear that the losses could dwarf those that occurred
in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. Syria has arguably the richest
and most diverse history of any nation on Earth. It is home to the
ruin of what may be the world's first city, a mound near the Iraqi
border called Tell Brak, as well as the famous Roman-era desert city
of Palmyra, the Crusader fortress Krak des Chevaliers and some of
Islam's greatest monuments. Thousands of smaller sites encompass
more than 10,000 years of human history, from Neolithic villages to
Hittite strongholds, Roman forts, early Christian monasteries and
Umayyad palaces. Lacking protection, these sites are open to mass
theft that will feed the West's hungry antiquities market.
The day after our coffee, Madame Poche's son took me to lunch at
a fashionable restaurant in a restored Ottoman palace in today's
Christian quarter. At the next table, a half-dozen clergy of different
Christian sects drank wine and chatted while Sunni businessmen in
suits talked deals nearby. At the time, Egypt's revolution was only a
distant rumble, and those I spoke with dismissed the idea of a revolt
in a mercantile city tolerant of minorities. Aleppo, they noted,
took in thousands of Armenians fleeing Turkey a century ago and did
the same with Iraqi Christians after 2003. We didn't know about the
arrest of several boys in the southern town of Daraa that week. Three
days after my lunch, the first open demonstration against the Syrian
regime took place. Since then, most of Madame Poche's family, and
thousands of other Christians, have fled to Lebanon, Turkey and the
West. She, however, remains in her beloved city. "I'm worried about
my old house," she e-mailed me Monday.
Aleppo's remarkable history of diversity and tolerance - a model for
a region in turmoil - is itself perilously close to becoming history.
That past is an important bridge to a prosperous future that requires a
well-educated populace linked to the wider world. Amid the destruction
of a great city, there is more to mourn than shattered stone.
The writer is a freelance journalist who covers archaeology and
cultural heritage in the Middle East.