Damascus

Damascus grew where the Barada river leaves the Anti-Lebanon mountains and spreads into the Ghouta, an oasis of orchards on the edge of the desert, and it is counted among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was the seat of an Aramaean kingdom in the early first millennium BC, then passed to the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. Under Rome it became a wealthy provincial city whose main east–west avenue, the Via Recta, is still the line of Straight Street, and the temple of Jupiter at its heart became a Christian basilica dedicated to John the Baptist.

The Arab armies took the city in 634, and from 661 to 750 Damascus was the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from Spain to Central Asia. The caliph al-Walid replaced the basilica with the Umayyad Mosque, whose mosaics and plan influenced mosque architecture far beyond Syria. The Abbasids moved the capital to Iraq, and Damascus was fought over by Fatimids, Seljuks and Crusaders. Nur al-Din and then Saladin made it a base against the Crusader states, and Saladin was buried beside the mosque in 1193. Timur sacked the city in 1401, carrying its craftsmen to Samarkand.

From 1516 Damascus was an Ottoman city and the assembly point for the annual pilgrim caravan to Mecca, which shaped the Midan quarter and paid for its khans and mosques. French rule followed the First World War and was resisted in the Great Syrian Revolt, which reached Damascus in 1925 and which the French suppressed by bombing and shelling the city. Independence came in 1946, and Damascus has been the seat of government ever since, including the Assad family's from 1970 until December 2024. The old city, listed by UNESCO in 1979, came through the war largely intact, while outer suburbs were heavily damaged.

Damascus thinks of itself as a city of manners. The Damascene accent has long been the standard voice of Syrian television drama, exported across the Arab world, and the historical series filmed here — above all the long-running Bab al-Hara, set in a walled-city quarter under the French — fixed an image of old Damascus in millions of homes. The city's writers, singers and dramatists have been central to modern Arabic culture, and the poet Nizar Qabbani, born and raised in the old city, is its best-known literary son.

The courtyard house is the city's defining institution: closed and plain towards the street, opening inward on a paved court with a fountain, citrus trees and a liwan, the open room that catches the evening air. Many have been restored as restaurants and hotels in the old city, which is where visitors most easily see the architecture. The old coffee house is the other, with tea, water pipes and, at al-Nofara behind the Umayyad Mosque, a hakawati reading folk epics aloud.

Religious life runs along several tracks in a small area. The Umayyad Mosque is a major Sunni monument and also draws Shia pilgrims to its shrine commemorating Husayn; Sayyida Zaynab and Sayyida Ruqayya are Shia pilgrimage centres; and the Christian quarter around Bab Touma holds Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Syriac, Armenian and Maronite congregations whose bells and Easter processions are part of the city's year. Crafts survive in the souks: inlaid wood, brocade, copper and the mouth-blown glass that Damascus has made for centuries.

The city itself counted about 1.5 million people at the 2004 census, at the centre of a metropolitan area usually estimated at several million, swollen and then reshaped by years of displacement. Damascus was Syria's seat of government, banking, trade and universities before 2011, and the state payroll, the University of Damascus and small commerce still employ much of the city. Salaries in the pound are worth little, so households rely on second jobs, small trade and money sent by relatives abroad.

Life is unevenly distributed across the city. The old city and the western districts such as Abu Rummaneh and Malki came through the war comparatively well, while the eastern Ghouta and the southern suburbs, including the Palestinian camp at Yarmouk, were devastated; returning families there live among ruins and slow reconstruction. Electricity and water cuts structure the day, generators and batteries are normal household equipment, and fuel queues can be long.

The rhythm begins early, with bread queues, school runs and traffic on the ring roads, slows through the hot afternoon, and picks up again after sunset, when families walk in Tishreen Park, sit in the old city's cafés or gather on rooftops. Friday is the day off, with midday prayers, visiting and long lunches; Sunday adds church for Christian families. The return of displaced people, the cost of living and how the new authorities will govern are the everyday conversations.

Damascus is the home of refined urban Levantine cooking, built on mezze: hummus and msabbaha (warm chickpeas with tahini), moutabal of smoked aubergine, tabbouleh heavy with parsley, fattoush with fried bread, and sheets of flatbread to lift them. Breakfast is foul (stewed fava beans with oil and lemon) or fatteh, layers of bread, chickpeas and yoghurt topped with fried nuts, bought hot from shops that sell nothing else. Kibbeh appears in a dozen shapes, from fried stuffed ovals to trays baked with pine nuts; shakriyeh is lamb simmered in yoghurt, and yabraq are vine leaves rolled around rice and meat.

Street food means shawarma carved from the spit, falafel, and manakish flatbreads baked with thyme and oil or with cheese. The Midan quarter is the city's sweet district and the likely birthplace of barazek, thin sesame biscuits studded with pistachio; baklava, halawet el-jibn and semolina cakes come from the same streets. Bakdash in the Hamidiyah souk pounds booza, a stretchy mastic ice cream, with wooden mallets and rolls it in crushed pistachio.

The Ghouta orchards supply apricots, pressed into sheets of qamar al-din that dissolve into a Ramadan drink, along with figs, walnuts and the Damask rose, whose petals become rose water and jam and which UNESCO listed in 2019 as Syrian intangible heritage. Street sellers pour tamar hindi (tamarind) and jallab, a syrup of carob, dates and grape molasses served with pine nuts, from brass jugs carried on the back. Coffee is bitter, strong and scented with cardamom; tea is drunk very sweet; and arak, the aniseed spirit, is served with mezze where alcohol is sold.