Palmyra

Palmyra appears in cuneiform records of the second millennium BC as Tadmur, a watering place on the route across the Syrian steppe, and the Arabic name has never changed. Its wealth came later, when caravans linking the Mediterranean ports with the Euphrates and, beyond it, the Gulf and India passed through the oasis and paid its merchants to guard and supply them. Rome brought the city into its orbit in the first century AD. The city built itself a colonnaded avenue, temples to Bel and Baalshamin, a theatre and an agora, in a style mixing Greek and Roman forms with Mesopotamian and Arabian dress, gods and funerary portraits.

In the 260s the Palmyrene leader Odaenathus defended Rome's eastern frontier against Persia and was rewarded with sweeping authority. After his murder his widow Zenobia ruled in the name of their son, extended Palmyrene control over Egypt and much of Anatolia and broke with Rome. The emperor Aurelian defeated her in 272, took her to Rome, and sacked the city after a further revolt; Diocletian later turned it into a garrison town. It declined under Byzantine and then Islamic rule into a village, whose houses stood inside the temple enclosure of Bel until the 1930s, when the French administration moved them into a new town.

Palmyra became Syria's best-known archaeological site and was listed by UNESCO in 1980. Its modern name also carried darker associations, as Tadmur prison stood nearby. The ancient city was occupied twice by the Islamic State between 2015 and 2017; the Temple of Bel, the Temple of Baalshamin and the monumental arch were destroyed, the theatre and the tetrapylon were damaged, the museum was looted, and the archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, who had cared for the site for decades, was killed. Documentation and recovery work has continued since.

Ancient Palmyra was a meeting of cultures, and its remains show it: inscriptions in Palmyrene Aramaic beside Greek, a caravan aristocracy that dressed in Parthian trousers and had itself carved in Roman poses, and gods drawn from Babylonian, Canaanite and Arab traditions worshipped in classical temples. The funerary busts that fill museum collections around the world, each labelled with a name and a family, are the clearest surviving expression of that mixed identity, and Zenobia has become a figure of national pride in modern Syria, on banknotes and in school books.

The living town is a different world. Tadmur's people are largely of Bedouin descent, with tribal affiliation still an important part of identity, and the customs of the steppe govern social life: elaborate greetings, coffee poured for guests from a long-spouted dallah, and hospitality offered as a matter of honour. Camels and sheep are herded in the surrounding desert, and a cultural festival was held among the ruins before 2011.

Before the war a large share of the town worked in or around tourism as guides, drivers, hotel staff and shopkeepers, and the ruins were the centre of local life as well as its livelihood. Many families were displaced during the occupations and the fighting, and the return has been partial, so custom here is now also shaped by absence and by the slow work of clearing and repairing.

Tadmur counted roughly 50,000 people at the 2004 census, but the population is far smaller now: the town was captured, retaken and largely emptied between 2015 and 2017, and many residents remain displaced elsewhere in Syria or abroad. Returning families face damaged housing, mines and unexploded ordnance, and interrupted water and power.

Work, where it exists, is in the oasis gardens, herding in the steppe, the phosphate and gas installations of the desert, public service, and the clearance and conservation work at the archaeological site. The tourism economy that once supported hotels, restaurants and guides has not returned. Supplies come by road from Homs, and prices are higher than in the cities because of the distance.

The day is shaped by the heat: work early, a long quiet afternoon, and social life after sunset, when the temperature drops sharply and families sit outside. Water is the constant concern, as it has been for three thousand years, with the springs and wells of the oasis supplemented by tankers. Reconstruction, the security of the desert roads and whether the site will be restored are the questions that matter locally.

Palmyra eats the food of the Syrian steppe rather than that of the coast or the Damascus kitchen. Bread is the base of every meal, baked flat and eaten with labneh, olives, olive oil and za'atar in the morning. Rice with lamb is the meal for guests: mansaf-style dishes of meat cooked in yoghurt, or lamb simmered and served on rice with fried nuts. Bulgur cooked with tomato or with lentils as mujaddara, and soups of red lentils, carry ordinary days.

The oasis supplies what fresh food there is. Date palms, olives, figs, pomegranates and vegetables grow in the irrigated plots south of the ruins, and dates are eaten fresh in late summer, dried for the rest of the year and served with coffee. Sheep and goats give milk that becomes yoghurt, drained labneh and hard dried balls of jameed for winter cooking.

Drink is more ceremonious than food. Bitter coffee flavoured heavily with cardamom is poured in small quantities from a long-spouted dallah, refilled until the guest tilts the cup, and tea is served very sweet in small glasses through the day. Alcohol has no place in local life here. Sweets are brought from Homs or Damascus rather than made in the town, and a guest is likely to be given dates, nuts and coffee before anything else.