WHEN you arrive in the Middle East at four in the morning, anything is likely
to prove a shock — even after a few hours’ nap in the hotel. But when you’re
sitting in a café, numbed by the flight and the midday sun, staring across
at the monumental citadel of Aleppo in northern Syria, shock seems something
of an understatement.
This is no ordinary castle. It rears stupendously up from street level, 50m
high on a partially stone-clad mound, or glacis, of alarming steepness (48
degrees, to be precise). The overall effect is one of absolute
impregnability.
The moat is more than 20m deep and 30m wide: the main entrance tower alone
would put many English castles to shame. In fact, for someone who grew up
with the boyish thrills of Dover, Bodiam and Leeds Castles and the Tower of
London, thinking they were pretty impressive at the time, it is a thoroughly
humbling but exhilarating experience.
And for someone who has spent four years researching a history of Tamerlane,
the 14th-century Central Asian conqueror, it brings home how utterly
devastating he and his Tatar hordes must have been on the battlefield.
For this was the city, and the citadel, which he put to the sword with
contemptuous ease in October 1400. Damurdash, Aleppo’s prescient governor,
had unsuccessfully advised his fellow citizens to surrender. “His wrath
burns a thousand times fiercer than fire; and if it is kindled, not even the
sea will be able to quench it,” he warned.
They should have listened, but didn’t. Women and children fled to the supposed
safety of the Umayyad Mosque, only to be bound, violated and butchered on
the spot. The massacres continued, according to one historian, until “Aleppo
stank with corpses”. Twenty thousand decapitated heads were piled into
Tamerlane’s trademark towers. The vultures had plenty to feed on.
These less-than-wholesome thoughts are soon dispelled by my excellent guide
Hussein, a Palestinian in exile whose father was interpreter to Field
Marshall Montgomery during the Desert Campaign. Hussein tells me his
grandfather was a sheikh famed for the beauty of his adhan, the Arabic call
to prayer.
Inside the citadel’s 13th-century Grand Mosque, he suddenly breaks into the
chant in a beautiful and penetrating voice. It echoes off the walls and out
into the courtyard where a scouring wind sieves through the pine trees with
a sigh that is at once bleak and biblical. You hear the sound a lot in Syria
and it is never less than captivating.
This sense of timelessness, of an ancient land which played host to some of
the Bible’s most dramatic moments, follows the visitor everywhere in Syria.
You find it 40km northeast of Aleppo in the magnificent ruins of St Simeon,
the Byzantine church built around the famous pillar on which the saint, the
ascetic’s ascetic, lived for 42 years. You find it in the winding Souk
al-Atarin of Aleppo, where gossiping merchants sit behind neat mounds of
spices, bundles of cloth, bottles of scent and towers of handmade soaps in
scenes which have barely changed over the centuries.
This is a country which inspires a measure of confidence, all too rare in the
Middle East these days, that the world’s religions can live peacefully side
by side. “We have Armenians, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Muslims and Jews
here,” says Habib Bassous, the ever-optimistic owner of Beit Wakil, a
marvellously restored 500-year-old townhouse, now a hotel in the heart of
Aleppo’s Old City (see page 3). “You’ll hear the muezzin’s call to prayer
one minute,” he says, “then church bells the next. It’s what makes Aleppo
glitter.”
Whichever way you turn, there is history new and old. Step into Aleppo’s
perfectly shabby-chic Baron Hotel and the concierge will take you around
this venerable building, pointing out that “Room 202 is where Lawrence of
Arabia lived; 203 is Agatha Christie’s room; 213 is Kemal Ataturk’s room;
214 is Charles Lindbergh’s room,” and so on. The classical desert-bound
ruins of Palmyra in the east, the ultimate crusader castle of Krak des
Chevaliers in the west — “the finest castle in the world,” thought T. E.
Lawrence. The range of sites is enormous, the distances between them
invitingly small.
You would think that St Simeon and Krak des Chevaliers would have been prime
targets for Tamerlane, an Islamic conqueror who prided himself on being the
scourge of Christians. Christopher Marlowe went one further and called him
the “Scourge of God” in Tamburlaine the Great. But after
the carnage of Aleppo, his eyes were set on Damascus, one of the greatest
and oldest cities in the world, set between the cloud-grazing Anti-Lebanon
mountains to the west and the spirit-shattering wilderness of the Badiyat
ash Sham desert to the east.
“Damascus surpasses all other cities in beauty, and no description can do
justice to its charms,” wrote Ibn Battutah, the 14th-century Moroccan
traveller and travel writer par excellence. The Umayyad Mosque of
Damascus, he continued, was “the most magnificent mosque in the world”. At
least it was until Tamerlane’s armies arrived, storming this illustrious
city and subjecting its population to new horrors.
The people of Damascus, wrote the 15th-century Syrian historian Ibn Taghri
Birdi, “were bastinadoed, scorched in flames, and suspended head down; their
nostrils were stopped with rags full of fine dust which they inhaled each
time they took a breath so that they almost died.
“When near to death, a man would be given a respite to recover, then the
tortures of all kinds would be repeated.” Flames coursed through the city, a
roaring fire took hold of the sparkling Umayyad Mosque and within hours both
its walls and ceilings had collapsed. The self-styled Ghazi, or Warrior of
the Faith, had just desecrated one of Islam’s holiest places.
Six hundred years later, Syrians dismiss Tamerlane as just another in the long
line of conquerors who swept in from the east, caused havoc and left.
Damascus has long since recovered and the Umayyad Mosque, with its iridescent
mosaics shining in the sun, looms majestically above the Old City. History,
once again, presses in on all sides.
Hussein takes me to Bab Kissan, the ancient gate to Damascus where St Paul is
supposed to have been lowered over the city walls to escape the Jews.
Heading down the street called Straight, an address referred to in the Bible
and which Mark Twain, citing St Luke, observed was not all that straight, we
enter the maelstrom that is the covered market of Souk al-Hamidiyeh.
On the ground are discs of white light, so many you could be in an Eighties
disco. Cast an eye up along the shafts of sunlight to the battered
corrugated roof and you’ll see it’s peppered with holes.
The oldest date back to 1917, when Lawrence and the Arabs rode into Damascus,
celebrating their victory over the Turks and Germans by firing joyously into
the heavens.
By Syrian standards, that’s barely history.
- Justin Marozzi is author of Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of
the World, published this month by HarperCollins at £25.
Getting there: Justin Marozzi travelled with Cox & Kings
(020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk). A ten-day tour visiting Damascus,
Bosra, Hama, Aleppo and Palmyra costs from £995pp. Prices include flights,
transfers, accommodation, guides and most meals.
Reading: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence
(Penguin, £10.99); From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow
of Byzantium, by William Dalrymple (Flamingo £9.99); Syria and
Lebanon Handbook (Footprint, £12.99); The Rough Guide to Syria
(Rough Guides, £11.99).
Red tape: The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (0870
6060290, www.fco.gov.uk) suggests that, as in other Middle Eastern
countries, visitors should keep a low profile and be vigilant in public
places. The only area the FCO deems off-limits is around Qamlishi and
Syria’s north-east provinces— well away from the main tourist areas.
British passport holders will need a visa. If your passport has an Israeli
stamp you will be refused entry.
Call the Syrian Embassy on 020-7245 9012.
Old walled charm
WITH interesting hotel options in Aleppo severely limited, Beit Wakil is a
godsend, if only for Habib Bassous, its relentlessly, eccentrically upbeat
manager and co-owner. For a start, he is nothing if not honest about having
some dissatisfied customers.
“I’ve had lots of people who don’t like it,” he says cheerfully. “They book
three nights, stay one and leave. It’s not for people who like the Ritz and
Riviera style.”
Accommodation in the 14 rooms is admittedly a tad basic, but it is clean and
characterful. The main entrance is stunning, a cavern of ancient stonework
with a vaulted ceiling, the courtyard shaded by lemon trees and perfumed
with flowering jasmine.
You won’t find another 500-year-old converted townhouse in Aleppo, and for
those who like the freshest food and plate upon plate of Aleppan mezes the
hotel is a real must. Bassous counts President Assad among his regular
guests in the hotel restaurant and says that he delivers his famous dishes
as far afield as Greece and Lebanon.
The welcome is overwhelming. “Whoever comes to this house is part of my
family,” he purrs. He’s completely over- the-top, but beneath the
exuberance, you get the distinct impression he really means it.
Beit Wakil (00 963 21 221 7169, www.beitwakil.com), B&B doubles from £51.
- The Baron Hotel, in the centre of Aleppo, is handy for the museum. Though,
when it opened in 1909 to serve pilgrims en route to Jerusalem, it was
on the edge of a marsh and guests could shoot duck from the terrace.
Book through Travel Intelligence (0870 1201521). Doubles from £30, suites from
£47.
