Hama

Hama is one of the oldest continuously settled places in Syria: excavation of the citadel mound in the middle of the city found layers reaching back to the Neolithic. In the early first millennium BC it was Hamath, capital of an Aramaean kingdom on the Orontes that traded with Israel and fought the Assyrians, until Sargon II destroyed it in 720 BC. The Seleucids renamed the town Epiphaneia after Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and it passed through Roman and Byzantine hands before the Arab conquest of the 630s, after which the old name returned in the form Hamah.

Medieval Hama was fought over by Byzantines, Crusaders and the rulers of Aleppo and Damascus. Nur al-Din strengthened it in the 12th century, and under the Ayyubids it was a small princely state whose ruler Abu al-Fida, a prince who wrote a geography and a history still used by scholars, governed in the early 14th century. The Mamluks and then the Ottomans absorbed it, and it became a market town for the grain of the Orontes valley, with the great waterwheels lifting river water into aqueducts for the gardens, baths and mosques. The Azm family, governors in the 18th century, built the courtyard palace that survives near the souks.

Hama remained a landlord and market city into the 20th century, and its large estates made it a centre of both conservative politics and land reform disputes after independence. In February 1982 the army suppressed an uprising in the city, destroying much of the old quarters and killing thousands; the Great Mosque was largely destroyed and later rebuilt, and whole districts were replaced with new streets. Hama saw large protests in 2011 and was again a centre of conflict, with fighting in its countryside for years afterwards.

The norias define the city's image of itself. Wooden wheels up to 21 metres across stand in the current, filling pots as they turn and tipping the water into aqueducts running to the gardens; their creaking is part of the sound of the city, and the largest of them have been a symbol of Hama for centuries. Children swim and dive from the barrages beside them in summer, and the surrounding gardens are the city's shared public space.

Hama is a Sunni city with a reputation for religious conservatism and strong family networks, in a province that also includes Ismaili Salamiyah, Alawite villages in the hills and Christian communities in the valley, so the wider region is more mixed than the city itself. The memory of 1982 sits under everything — families who lost relatives, quarters that no longer exist, and a subject handled carefully in conversation.

Craft and trade traditions continue in the souks: copper, textiles, inlaid wood and the sweet-making that Hama shares with Homs. Weddings bring out drums and the dabke line dance, and pilgrimage, Ramadan gatherings and the Eids structure the year. Hama's people are known across Syria for their formality with strangers, which gives way quickly to insistent hospitality once a guest is inside the house.

Hama is a city of several hundred thousand people, one of the four largest in Syria, in a province of farms and small towns. Its economy rests on agriculture in the Orontes valley and the Ghab plain — wheat, cotton, sugar beet, vegetables and pistachios — along with food processing, small industry, government employment and the hospitals and schools that serve the province. Money sent home by relatives working abroad matters to many households.

People live mainly in apartment blocks in the districts around the old centre, with the wealthier families in the newer western quarters and the villages of the province supplying much of the city's daily population of traders and workers. Power cuts, fuel prices and the cost of bread shape the day, as they do across the country, and generators and solar panels are common on the roofs.

Mornings start early, the souks fill before the heat, and the middle of the day is quiet; shops open again in the late afternoon and the riverside fills in the evening, when families walk in the gardens and men sit over tea and water pipes. Friday is the day of rest. The state of the countryside after years of fighting, the return of displaced families and the price of everything are the recurring conversations.

Hama's kitchen is that of the Orontes towns: kibbeh in many forms, from fried stuffed ovals of bulgur and lamb to trays baked with pine nuts and versions cooked in yoghurt or with quince; sfiha, open pies of minced meat with tomato and pomegranate molasses; and stews of vegetables and lamb served over rice. Bread from the valley's wheat comes with everything, and breakfast is foul, labneh, olives, olive oil and za'atar.

The city is best known for its sweets. Halawet el-jibn, a speciality shared with Homs, is a warm dough of semolina and stretched sweet cheese rolled around clotted cream, cut into lengths and finished with syrup, rose water and crushed pistachio; it is eaten fresh from the shop rather than kept. Shops in the souks also sell baklava, semolina cakes and sugared almonds, and Hama's pistachios are a local point of pride.

Vegetables and dairy from the province fill the rest of the table: aubergines smoked for moutabal, courgettes and vine leaves stuffed with rice and meat, mulukhiyah stewed from jute leaves, and yoghurt drained into labneh or dried into shanklish, a spiced cheese ball rolled in thyme that the surrounding hills supply. Coffee is bitter and scented with cardamom, tea is drunk very sweet, and street sellers pour tamarind and liquorice drinks in the summer heat.