{"id":1652,"date":"2012-10-10T15:03:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T15:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp-a_lawler\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2024-12-21T12:08:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T17:08:34","slug":"in-syrias-destruction-there-is-much-to-mourn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/in-syrias-destruction-there-is-much-to-mourn\/","title":{"rendered":"In Syria\u2019s destruction, there is much to mourn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s cosmopolitan past. When her great-grandfather \u2014 a Bohemian crystal merchant \u2014 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\u2019s souks.<\/p>\n

\n

In the midst of Syria\u2019s civil war<\/a>, more is being lost than lives. Aleppo may be the world\u2019s oldest continuously occupied city, dating to the era of the pyramids, and at the height of the Ottoman Empire, it was the world\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s commercial hub and one of the most tolerant, long-lasting and prosperous communities in the Middle East. \u201cWhat was sold in the souks of Cairo in a month was sold in Aleppo in a day,\u201d Madame Poche said, quoting a Syrian adage.<\/p>\n

As we sipped coffee the week that the civil war<\/a> began, this refined, prosperous world was already long in decline. \u201cThe situation is deplorable,\u201d 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\u2019s status as a World Heritage Site, many old buildings were in serious disrepair. And the once-vibrant Jewish community had vanished.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 an event unthinkable in dour Damascus.<\/p>\n

The growing recognition of Aleppo\u2019s importance in Middle Eastern history and culture makes the burning of the old city all the more tragic. In recent online videos<\/a>, 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<\/sup> \/ 2 <\/sub>miles of streets within the region\u2019s 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\u2019s huge wooden gates are gone. A car bomb last week blew out the windows of the Aleppo Museum, one of the world\u2019s best collections of Near Eastern artifacts. And the fighting continues.<\/p>\n

Amid the terrible human suffering \u2014 many remaining residents have no running water or electricity, and they lack food amid the nightmare of guerrilla warfare \u2014 concern about the destruction of material property can appear gratuitous. But the ancient urban fabric of Aleppo is more than an exotic tourist destination. \u201cThe Aleppo souks .\u2009.\u2009. stand as testimony to Aleppo\u2019s importance as a cultural crossroads since the second millennium B.C.,\u201d 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. \u201cThe situation is really catastrophic, as Aleppo is half destroyed,\u201d Michel Amalqdissi, director of the Syrian government\u2019s archaeology division, e-mailed me last week.<\/p>\n

\n

Nor is destruction limited to this commercial hub. Five of Syria\u2019s six most important ancient sites reportedly have been damaged, and massive looting of the country\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s hungry antiquities market.<\/p>\n

The day after our coffee, Madame Poche\u2019s son took me to lunch at a fashionable restaurant in a restored Ottoman palace in today\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t know about the arrest of several boys<\/a> 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\u2019s family, and thousands of other Christians, have fled to Lebanon, Turkey and the West. She, however, remains in her beloved city. \u201cI\u2019m worried about my old house,\u201d she e-mailed me Monday.<\/p>\n

Aleppo\u2019s remarkable history of diversity and tolerance \u2014 a model for a region in turmoil \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Lawler is author of three books, Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World\u2019s Most Contested City, The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, a national bestseller, and Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. As a journalist, he has written more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles from more than two dozen countries. His byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many others. He is contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology. Andrew\u2019s work has appeared several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AndrewLawlerAuthor","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/andrew-lawler-9b5a064a\/","https:\/\/x.com\/LawlerAndrew","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCsliIwdDC_wPYE01Se2zzAw"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18610,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/18610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}