The olive tree is the most important symbol of life and peace in the Middle East. It has been so central to daily life for thousands of years that it has a symbolic and practical weight beyond all other trees. It is mentioned in the Koran, the Bible and the Torah and its myth of origin is shared among the faiths. Adam’s son, born after his parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden, was allowed back to retrieve three seeds from the Tree of Knowledge. From these seeds grew the olive, the cypress and the cedar.

Research by the French Centre National de la  Recherche Scientifique suggests that wild olive trees were domesticated and their fruits transformed into the larger, less bitter olives we know today around 8000 years ago in an area where now Syria and Turkey share their border.[1] Aleppo and its surrounding countryside was built on the back of the olive, which provided essential nutrition, a base for such products as soap and was a key source of revenue.

The fact that the area around Aleppo is the place of origin of the domesticated olive adds poignancy to what has emerged as yet another example of the heavy price Syrian civilians have paid in this war. The looting of olive orchards and the sale of wood of sometimes ancient trees has become commonplace outside the city. Theft has been part of the war from the start with abandoned houses often ransacked and stripped of all belongings. The Shabiha, the deeply violent and unfettered government militias that have done much of the fighting in the area, have become notorious among farmers in the northeastern Aleppo countryside for cutting down olive and pistachio orchards. It can take these trees decades to mature; a single blow of an axe represents a generation of loss. Not only can government militias make money selling the wood but they destroy the economic prospects of communities, forcing the remaining residents to flee. Assad’s plan to expel his enemies does not rely on barrel bombs alone. 

A.H. is a refugee from the area now living in Germany. He shared his story:

Summer always has a very special place in my memory. I used to spend the whole season in the beautiful northeastern countryside of Aleppo. These were the best times in my life because I spent it on our land, among its trees and with my family. These trees were the source of our winter food stocks, which we would get together before we left at the end of the season. As summer was the best season for us, winter was the best season for the trees because it was the season that would give life back to them and water them with enough energy to be productive again the next year.

After the war, winter has become a nightmare for the trees and for their owners. After the regime stopped the supply of diesel and stopped the electricity to areas outside its control, some farmers were forced to cut their trees and use them for heating.[2] The same trees that were their sole source of living.

It did not stop there actually. I started seeing some videos and some articles talking about how the Syrian regime is targeting and burning some fields and olive farms to force the population there to evacuate their towns and villages.[3] These farms were not only providing food for people but also they were shelters for internally displaced people who ran away from the bombing of their homes only to face another bombardment in those olive tree farms. There is a Youtube video showing part of the destruction on an olive farm in al-Atareb in the northern countryside of Aleppo.

I got some news lately from my relatives who still live in our village (Jub Ghabsha) that some Shabiha members came to our village and started cutting trees to sell them as wood for heating. My cousin said that they cut up to 3000 olive trees in our village alone. This also pushed my people out of our village as they started to realize that their trees are going to be either burned, cut and looted or left to die without getting the proper care.

Some people might criticize us for being sad about trees given all the lives that have been wasted and the infrastructure that has been lost. Reconstruction might provide me with a house that I lost to regime missiles and rockets but it can’t bring back a tree that was 30 when it was cut down and used as firewood, a tree that provided me with my winter food and a lot of great summer memories. 

Looting has always been part of war. It is a way to attract recruits, reward fighters and punish those who have stood up to you. The destruction of farmland of course also has a long history. Most recently the cutting of olive trees has been particularly controversial around illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Claiming that olive groves represent a risk to settlers because they could shelter snipers, Israeli forces have cut down B’TSelem, an Israeli human rights organization that has accused settlers of harassing and even shooting at Palestinians trying to tend their orchards.[4] Some 2.5 million trees, a third of them olive trees, have been uprooted in occupied areas since 1967.[5] 

In 5th century BCE Greece at the time of the ruler Solon, Athens rewrote its constitution to protect olive trees. Such was the value put on them that the punishment for cutting one down was death. There is a case to be made that the massive destruction of the livelihoods of those in Syria represents a war crime.  Article 8, Section 2a, No. IV states that “Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is a war crime.[6] The penalties today may not be as harsh as in ancient Greece but the crime is as great.

Jub Ghabsha Credit to A.H.

[1] Catherine Marie Breton, Peter Warnock and André Jean Berville (2012). Origin and History of the Olive, Olive Germplasm – The Olive Cultivation, Table Olive and Olive Oil Industry in Italy, Dr. Innocenzo Muzzalupo (Ed.), InTech, DOI: 10.5772/51933. Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/olive-germplasm-the-olive-cultivation-table-olive-and-olive-oil-industry-in-italy/origin-and-history-of-the-olive

[2]  علي الإبراهيم، أشجار سوريا في مقاومة البرد القارس تمدن الالكترونية، ٢٤\٠٢\٢٠١

Ali Al Ibrahim, Tamaddon News Website, 26/02/2016 goo.gl/dsWtDq

[3] نبيل طعمة، جريدة الأزمنة الالكترونية، الحطب مؤونة الشتاء ولصوص الليل يهربون الأحطاب إلى المناطق والقرى

للإتجار بها! والزيتون ضحية التدفئة، ٢٦\٠١\٢٠٠٦

Nabil Tu’me, Al Azminah News Website, 26/ 01/2016. http://www.alazmenah.com/new/?page=show_det&category_id=13&id=117590

عمران عزالدين، الأشجار التي أصبحت حطبا”، ألوان راديو اف ام، ٠١\٠٤\٢٠١٦

Umran Ezz Eddin, Alwan Radio FM, 01/04/2016

[4] Cesar Chelala. Palestinian Olive Trees: Destroying a Symbol of Life. Counterpunch. 3 November 2015.

Palestinian Olive Trees: Destroying a Symbol of Life

[5] Relief Web.Fact Sheet: Olive Trees – More than Just a Tree for Palestinians. 21 November 2012. http://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/fact-sheet-olive-trees-–-more-just-tree-palestine

[6] The Rome Statute. http://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm

The post The Fate of Olive Branches in Syria appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

We will be featuring monthly reposts of archived Saudi Aramco World articles on Aleppo as part of the 100 Aspects of Aleppo series. This article was featured in the March/April 2004 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

Written by Louis Werner

Photographs by Kevin Bubriski

Abdel Qadir Na‘aal

Spices, Perfumers’ Suq

Silva Jezdanian

Clothing, Aziziyah Quarter

Muhammad Waraaq and sons Fadil and Abdelrahman

Wedding dresses, Handkerchief Suq

Musbah Fansa with son Fuad

Soap, Bab al-Faraj (Gate of Deliverance)

Muhammad Sami Hakim and son Mamduh

Gold, Handkerchief Suq

Ayman Mehmeh

Drapery material, Khan al-Jumruk

Salih Ibn Mansour

Animal skins and “eastern goods,” Main Suq

Alaa al-Din Labban

Men’s clothing, Sharia Quwatli

Adnan Mustafa Qaliyet

Fine antiques, Main Suq

Ola Al Kassir

Benetton Clothing, Aziziyah

Abdelrahman Nahhas

Copper goods, Copper Market

Abdel Rizaq Bakir

Rope, Ropemakers’ Suq

Abdelrahman Qali

Tent cloth, Main Suq

Though shops in Aleppo’s Aziziyah district, above, and on Sharia Qawatli are more likely to resemble their western counterparts than those in the world’s oldest covered market, below, the suq is no timeless arcade: Fax machines whir, international magazines inspire dress design, and antiquarian bric-a-brac sells to tourists at a good profit.

Ghassan al Hussein

Appliances, Sharia Qawatli

Hussam Dashirni

Internet cafe and pastry shop, Sharia Qawatli

Aleppo vies with Damascus for the title of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city. Both are mentioned in Eblaite tablets from the third millennium BC, where Aleppo goes by the name Hal-pa-pa, but fine neo-Hittite reliefs recently found in Aleppo’s towering citadel mound may give a slight edge in the antiquity contest to this more northerly of Syria’s two largest cities.

Since those earliest times, the long-distance trade in rare exotics and the face-to-face retailing of everyday essentials have been Aleppo’s sustenance. The clamor and calls emanating today from its suqs (markets) are the echoes of the same sounds that rang there four thousand years ago.

Today, some 15 kilometers (9 mi) of stall-lined streets, alleys and commercial cul-de-sacs wind off the suq’s 1.5-kilometer (1-mi) main thoroughfare, covered in places with stone and brick vaulting. It follows the route of the Decumanus, the city’s main east-west street that was laid out in Hellenic times, in Aleppo as in other cities of the Mediterranean world.

Aleppo in those times was the principal commercial entrepôt between East and West, where the riches of India and Mesopotamia met Mediterranean traders and middlemen who shipped the goods onward to the Greek mainland and, in later years, to Rome.

Starting up near the citadel, the Decumanus runs downhill through secondary suqs devoted to specific crafts or products, such as the Suq al-Attarine, the Perfumers’ Suq. At the bottom end is the dog-legged Antioch Gate, high enough that camels did not even have to duck as they marched out, bound for the port at Antioch, 80 kilometers (50 mi) to the west.

Today, traders new to Aleppo fly in—from Moscow most often—or they come by bus from Turkey. What were once “exotics” have largely given way to global-brand consumer products: The French Nafnaf clothing brand is today as common in the market as no-logo lamp oil once was.

Conversations with Aleppo’s salespeople, recorded here in the old suq and in the city’s urban shopping quarters, capture both what has changed in less than a lifetime and what never seems to vary from one millennium to the next.

Abdel Qadir Na‘aal, Spices, Perfumers’ Suq

Because I display everything I sell, like this za‘tar pyramid trimmed with red sumac and shaved coconut, I get plenty of tourists asking to take my picture. My family name means ‘farrier,’ but I don’t know to which of my ancestors that name was given. All I know is that my grandfather was a spiceman, named Abdel Qadir like me, and he sold spices in the days of the Ottoman Empire. I remember him selling spices in this very stall when I was small, dressed in Ottoman-style trousers.

I sell all the usual things you expect to find from a spiceman: cinnamon, sweet and black pepper, coriander, dried ginger; za‘tar [thyme] and cumin, and then there are the more unusual medicinal herbs. In fact, people think I’m a folk doctor. They rely on me to treat things no medical doctor can cure. They want me to give them medicines they’d never find in a clinic, like zayzafoon leaf for a cough, za’roor flowers for heart problems, anise seed for sleeplessness, chamomile for stomach aches, senna for constipation.

I mill most of the spices in front of my buyers so they will see that what should be bought fresh hasn’t been sitting and drying out on the shelf for ages. A spiceman must have everything in stock, even if it’s rarely requested, and he must carry something to cure everything.

My most unusual spice is kleejah. It looks like lichen. You use it to make kleejah biscuits. It’s very old-fashioned. Kashshar al-‘ajouz, “old man’s hair,” is something else that is rarely requested, but you can always find it in my stall. Anyway, I have no bugs here that might eat my stocks. With such strong herbs, they’d never last a minute here. Bugs don’t like spices, but people can’t seem to live without them.

Silva Jezdanian, Clothing, Aziziyah Quarter

Aziziyah is Aleppo’s most westernized neighborhood, home of many of the city’s international chain stores. Among them, Kickers is a British casual-clothing brand heavily advertised throughout the Middle East.

I’ve worked six months at Kickers, but I’ve been selling clothes since I turned 15. I’m a native Aleppine so I know what our people want to wear these days. Even kids have new ideas about fashion. Brands make a big difference to them. Here there are fewer customers than in the suq, but they are willing to pay big markups if they really want a brand name. Still, compared to Lebanon, Syrian markups are nothing. Businessmen come here from Beirut and load up on Nafnaf and Adidas and Polo and go home to make a profit selling piece by piece. Here European-label jeans cost almost half what they cost in Lebanon.

When small children come in with their mothers and get fussy, I know it’s best to make the baby happy. A happy baby is a quiet baby, and a quiet baby lets mother shop longer and buy more. Thursday and Friday are our busiest days. Since this is a largely Armenian quarter, we are closed Sunday, and Saturday is when everyone does household chores, not go shopping. Shopping for clothes like these is more entertainment than necessity. Everyone likes to shop, but only the rich can buy.

Muhammad Waraaq and sons Fadil and Abdelrahman, Wedding dresses, Handkerchief Suq

Together with my sons and a brother, we have two stalls across from each other in this suq. It’s called Suq al-Manadil because fancy items were always sold here. My great-great-grandfather was a paper dealer. In the 19th century, he traveled to Austria to buy and sell paper, so that is how we got our family name, Waraaq, which means ‘paper seller.’

We’ve got 15 boy tailors in our dressmaking shop. My brother Zein is the designer. He learned only through experience, not in school. We change the colors of our engagement dresses every year, because tastes in color change, but never, not ever, for wedding dresses. Brides must always wear white.

Brides usually come with their whole family, but it’s the father alone who pays! In Syria, we have a tradition that newly married women wear their wedding dresses every Thursday for the first three months. That way my dresses don’t stay in the closet after only one day.

I don’t care how long a woman takes to decide or how often she changes her mind; what is important is that in the end she buys, because then I have a customer for life. For life, you ask? Yes, because next year she will bring in her friend when it is her turn to marry, and her daughter 20 years later, and maybe even her granddaughter long after that. She will remember me whenever she thinks back on the good years, and think I brought them to her because of the dress she wore on that one day.

The most trouble is when a bride’s aunt or a sister comes in full of her own opinions. She tries to persuade the bride, and a salesman makes a big mistake if he tries to please the aunt and convince the bride of the aunt’s way of thinking, because the bride will eventually make up her own mind, and it will be something else.

Some brides can make up their minds in 10 minutes; others stay two hours and still walk out with nothing. I have seen brides scour the suq for days by themselves, and when they finally find the dress they like, they bring the groom along and pretend they just found it in the first store they’ve looked in, to show him they are decisive and practical. They want to please him, and even if I know different, I play along.

The day Fadil sold his first dress, the customer thought he was very experienced because he knew where each model and each size was kept. When he started out, he gave bigger discounts than I approved because he wanted to make many sales. Selling wedding dresses to women is much harder than selling cars to men, because here you have to sell a complete ensemble, outer and inner wear. With a car, it’s just the outside.

Fadil is now used to being around nervous women. My wife says he’ll make a good husband someday.

Musbah Fansa with son Fuad, Soap, Bab al-Faraj (Gate of Deliverance)

The Fansa family has been making and selling soap for generations. Aleppo has always been known not just for olive soap, which is common in many places, but laurel soap too, which only we Aleppines know how to make.

My father, named Fuad like my son, started this business in 1952 under his own name, Fuad Fansa and Sons. That name is still stamped on every bar of soap we make, and we make a lot—about 500 tons a year. Whether it’s a tiny hotel soap or the big 240-gram [half-pound] bar we sell to beauty shops, they all say Fuad Fansa, my father’s name and my son’s name.

My son is a mechanical engineer, trained in heating and cooling equipment, so he helped a lot to improve production in the factory. But there’s much we do the same as always: Pour the liquid soap straight onto the floor, then cut and stamp and stack by hand and air-dry it. And the caustic we use is still a natural ingredient. In the old days, we used a caustic made from a desert plant called qilliq, picked specially for the family by Bedouins near Palmyra, but it took five days to boil down. We don’t have time for that any longer, not with hundreds of tons of soap to make, and each batch made in a three-meter [10′] cauldron.

Now we export to France and America and Japan. We use new shapes and sizes to appeal to foreign demand, and new scents like jasmine and rose, and special packaging printed in Japanese and French for export. Our boxes have a drawing of the Aleppo citadel and a map of Syria. We want to be known all over as Aleppo’s best soapmaker. We even registered our trademark in Japan, because you never know—we might expand into other products once we are well established there with our soaps. Fuad is building a website in other languages.

We grade our soap depending on how much laurel oil it contains. We give either two or five stars depending on if we use two or five barrels of laurel oil per cauldron. We buy the laurel oil from Kassab, a town on the coast up near the Turkish border. I go there personally every fall to buy it. It’s expensive, about 400 Syrian pounds per kilo ($3.65/lb). We use second-pressing olive oil, which costs less than a tenth of that.

Aleppo’s fine soaps originated in our hammam tradition, when the old men would gather at the bathhouse, and each wanted to show the others that his soap was the best. These bathhouses are not as popular now, but soapmaking continues. Europeans and Japanese want fancy soaps even if they are alone in the bathroom and no one else can see the soap. They want high quality and all-natural products above everything. In Japan they sell our soap in pharmacies, and in Europe the Green parties use it—at least that is what people tell me who travel there.

Muhammad Sami Hakim and son Mamduh, Gold, Handkerchief Suq

My father had a clothes shop in the suq and set me up as a gold dealer when I was just starting out. He sent his steady customers to me, and I sent mine to him. That’s how it always works in any business, anywhere in the world—trust between buyers and sellers, and fathers giving special help to sons.

Syrians like to buy big pieces of jewelry, to show off to strangers, but foreigners buy smaller things. I don’t think they like gold so much. I sell French and English coins, Napoleon III, George V and Ottoman-period, too—all gold. Some people, those who don’t trust banks, like coins more than cash. My Bedouin customers prefer English and French coins to Ottoman. Don’t ask me why.

It’s forbidden to sell gold and silver from the same shop, so customers trust that the gold they buy from me is pure, nothing plated or mixed. The daily price of gold is published in national papers, so people know what to expect even before they come into my shop. Even the Bedouins have satellite dishes now.

July and August are my busiest months. When the harvests come in, the pockets of farmers and shepherds are full of money. The first thing they do is to buy gold, even if just as a temporary store of wealth. I think they like to see wheat and sheep turn to gold. When the rains are good, the gold market is good. You can see every year how one affects the other.

Ayman Mehmeh, Drapery material, Khan al-Jumruk

The Khan al-Jumruk is the customs caravanserai, where English, French and Dutch merchants stored their goods until they cleared Ottoman customs in the 17th century. It is the suq’s largest khan, its oversized, iron-studded wooden door opening onto an unroofed courtyard, its lower stalls meant for bulk storage and animal stabling, its upper story for merchant lodging. Some 150 stalls today surround the khan’s lower level, all of which belong to merchants of cloth, from fancies to bulk quantities of Syria’s ubiquitous blue school-uniform fabric.

My grandfather started out in this business with three looms in his house, weaving fabric on demand. As a young man, my father opened a stall here selling fine factory-made textiles. Thirty years ago he started his own factory, weaving floor mats. Now we have mechanical looms and 40 employees making fine brocaded fabrics and silk tassels and braided ropes. I also sell thread wholesale to market manufacturers. Our export orders come from all the Arab countries—Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Iraq.

In the old days, it was easy to start up a factory and buy equipment. Capital costs were low because it was all hand looming. Nowadays you need new machines of industrial quality. I am the first person to go to the bank to ask for a loan. If I cannot grow this business, we will soon shrink back to where my grandfather started. That is how it is selling textiles. You must sell what you yourself produce, and each year you must produce more.

Salih Ibn Mansour, Animal skins and “eastern goods,” Main Suq

My father died when I was one year old, so I had no easy way to enter business in the suq. I began by gathering what others had cast off—old skins and broken bits of brass and copper, worn carpet and cracked glass. I have a good eye; I can see what is still of value, so I was able to resell these things quickly and make a profit. I also know how to stitch the farwas [sheepskin vests] worn by the Bedouins. I made them until my fingers ached, and sold them stall to stall, piled on my back. But now I can sit back here and wait for customers to come to me. I’ve been in this stall for 26 years, watching people walk past, and because it is at the top of the market, near the citadel gate, I often get lucky.

I married at the age of 15 and now have many children. All have diplomas and none want to follow me in this work. They say it is not for them, that they cannot control their own destiny when they sit and wait for people to pass by and enter. But I say that destiny is in your own hands. Two years ago the stall across from me sold goat hides, a smelly business when the weather was damp and the hides had not been properly cured. But the owner changed his goods; now he sells fancy gold jewelry. I can do such a thing too—I can mend more than fleeces. I can repair all kinds of ‘eastern’ goods—water pipes needing refitting, copperware needing soldering, carpets needing patching. I can fix anything at all.

Alaa al-Din Labban, Men’s clothing, Sharia Quwatli

My family name means ‘yogurt-maker.’ Maybe 120 years ago, my family was in that business, but now it’s just clothes that we sell. I sell readymade clothes, all made in Syria, under the Reindeer trademark—that’s a British brand. I also sell custom suits, mostly to Russians—especially, it seems, to Russian pilots. There are so many direct flights to Moscow. I suppose someone has to fly all the Russian traders you see in Aleppo these days. I’ve worked in this store for 25 years, ever since I finished ninth grade. My father died and I had to take over his shop. I didn’t even have a minute to think it over. It was either that or have nothing in my life. So I took over, and I did well at my job. Only I soon switched from ladies’ to men’s clothes. Selling to ladies is much more difficult. They are so picky—too picky for me. But children’s clothes are even worse, because then you have to sell to picky kids and picky women at the same time.

Adnan Mustafa Qaliyet, Fine antiques, Main Suq

Qaliyet’s glass-enclosed shop is piled to the ceiling with global bric-a-brac: African ivories, Sèvres porcelain, Aleppine brass, English cigarette lighters, Persian lacquerware, Damascene glass, Bedouin jewelry, Indian beads, Isfahani enamels and, displayed most prominently, old console radios specially made for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern markets, with tuning indicators for stations in Nice, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Rabat, Omdurman, Damascus and Tehran—a virtual gazetteer of colonial outposts and stopovers from the 19th century.

For a hundred years, my family has had a shop right here. I remodeled it 13 years ago to appeal to tourists looking for souvenirs from all over the world. My father Mustafa died 20 years ago at the age of 105. He was a great family patriarch. He started this store back in the Ottoman period. At one time my father owned half the stalls in the entire suq. He was the landlord to spicemen and butchers, goldsmiths and ropemakers.

I see tourists from every country in the world come to Aleppo to look for their favorite things. Germans come for gold. Americans come for carpets and coins. The French come for silver and lapis, Greeks come for amber, and Japanese come for medicinal plants and soap. I know what to offer them as soon as I hear what language they speak.

ALEPPO THROUGH TRAVELERS’ EYES

IBN AL-SHIHNA (LATE 15TH CENTURY):

Sales of a single day in Aleppo are often greater than those of a month in other cities…. Ten loads of silk, for instance, brought to Aleppo, are sold that very day for ready money, whereas ten loads taken to Cairo, though the largest of cities, are not sold there till the end of the month.

GERTRUDE BELL, AMURATH TO AMURATH (1911):

A virile population, a splendid architecture, the quickening sense of a fine Arab tradition have combined to give the town an individuality sharply cut, and more than any Syrian city she seems instinct with an inherent vitality.

JOHN HATT, “SYRIA,” WWW.TRAVELINTELLIGENCE.NET (2004):

This souk must be the most enticing in the Middle East…. You are safe everywhere, probably several hundred times safer than in New York. You aren’t hassled by shopkeepers or cheated by taxi-drivers. And so many people invite you for coffee or tea that after a few days you start to suffer from severe caffeine poisoning.

Ola Al Kassir, Benetton clothing, Aziziyah

I graduated from a commercial-training institute and now work in the children’s department. I can move to any other department as needed. I have no plans for the future. I just like selling and wearing clothes. Benetton is the most expensive brand you can buy in Syria. Even if I cannot afford to buy a lot, at least I can see them all here every day.

Abdelrahman Qali, Tent cloth, Main Suq

Qali, like Adnan Mustafa, belongs to the Qaliyet family, which holds a place of distinction in the suq as one of the major landlords in days gone by. His shop is filled with huge spools of woven white cotton rag, 1.5 meters (5′) wide, similar in weight and quality to a heavy Indian dhurry rug and here called shaqqa. The shaqqa is unspooled and then cut to a tent’s desired width, normally either 15 or 30 meters (50 or 100′). Either four or 10 panels are then sewn together side-to-side to make the tent, either six or 15 meters (20 or 50′) deep.

We sell tenting for both winter and summer: white cotton for summer, black goat-hair for winter. Even the white cotton tents we call bayt sha‘r, ‘house of hair.’ All Syrian tribes use the same shape tent, but they decorate the interior according to their own customs and designs. The goat-hair panels we have made specially for us in the village of Jisr al-Shughur. They have to work on hand looms. Mechanical looms can work in cotton but not with hair.

There are only two tent shops left in the Aleppo suq. Business is dying. Ten years ago we could sell 100 tents in a year to individual buyers. Now it’s down to 40. I sold one to a German man who was opening an Arabian coffeehouse in Aachen and wanted a tent in the courtyard as a fantasy place. Maybe that is the future for our tents, as curiosities for foreigners.

We keep up the wholesale business by selling to smaller shops in tribal areas, near al-Raqqa and Deir al-Zawr, al-Hazzakiah and Mayadin and Qamishli. We sell maybe 300 tents a year there. Look at a map of Syria—the tribal regions are east of here, along the Euphrates, and north along the Turkish border. That is our market, and as long as people continue to live in those areas, they will continue to live in tents, and they will have to do business with me.

Abdel Rizaq Bakir, Rope, Ropemakers’ Suq

I open my stall at 8:30 every morning and have done since 1952, when I first came to the suq. In those days the other stallkeepers called me ‘son,’ but now everyone calls me ‘grandfather.’ I guess it’s true that I have changed over the years. Before, I wore country clothes, and now I dress like anyone else in the city. But I still sell just rope and cording, some made of plastic and some that I make myself of hemp.

Rope is less useful today than it was before. For automobiles you need chains, not ropes—that much I know, even though I don’t drive. But people still come here to buy it. They have not changed the name of this suq, after all. Most of my cotton ropes I sell to Bedouins for tentmaking, to stitch panels together or to trim tent pillows. I also sell ropes they use to draw water from wells.

My sons are not ropemakers. One is a goldsmith; another, a plumber; others a mechanic and a tailor. They tell me—and I tell them—there is no future here for ropemakers, so I am glad they are somewhere else. Even though I pay only 5000 Syrian pounds ($100) a year to rent this stall, I do not always turn a profit. The suq fire of 1980 almost finished me. I lost all my stock, worth 40,000 pounds ($800), and only with God’s help was I able to collect my outstanding debts and get back to selling.

Abdelrahman Nahhas, Copper goods, Copper Market

My grandfather, who also had my name, started out 70 years ago in this business making small pieces. He was the family’s first real coppersmith, so he gave us our name. My father began exporting old copper, mostly covered trays and table lamps, to Europe, but to satisfy demand there, he had to manufacture new pieces that looked old. Most of my own business is custom work, one-of-a-kind pieces ordered by interior designers and architects, sized as big as you can imagine. I sent an 11-meter (35′) hanging chandelier to the [Arabian] Gulf. It looked like the bottom of a flying saucer. It took 10 men a month to make it, working nonstop. I have an order now for 200 pierced-sheet sconces to hang in a new hotel’s corridors. It seems that every hotel and restaurant in every Arab country is hung with lamps from Aleppo.

Hussam Dashirni, Internet cafe and pastry shop, Sharia Qawatli

We opened this shop three years ago, my seven brothers and I. I’m the baker and my brother Ziyyad is the Internet manager. The others fill in as needed. My brother thought up the name for the shop, ‘Concorde.’ He said people would think of speed and quiet at the same time, just like traveling on the supersonic airplane. We serve a lot of milk cake, ice cream and basbousa. For Ramadan, we make the Syrian specialties ma‘rouk and ghazal al-banat, several kilos a day of each. Many young couples come here to eat pastry together. The Internet customers are mostly men; they drink black coffee and sit at the keyboards for hours.

Ghassan al Hussein, Appliances, Sharia Qawatli

I’ve had this shop for 10 years. I sell microwaves and vacuum cleaners, water coolers and purifiers, washers and driers and space heaters. Most of my customers are men. I have no idea if the things they buy for their wives are given as gifts or as necessities, but I am sure their wives are glad to see something new come through the door. Modern appliances make their lives much easier, and they run more quietly, so the man is never bothered. He hardly even knows that his wife is working.

Louis Werner is a free-lance writer and contributing editor to Americas magazine. He lives in New York.

Free-lance photographer Kevin Bubriski recently published Pilgrimage: Looking at Ground Zero (2002, Powerhouse). His photographs are in numerous museum collections worldwide.

This article appeared on pages 24-35 of the March/April 2004 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

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Five million Syrians — one quarter of whom are from Aleppo — have been forced to live abroad since 2011. To Aleppians like me, places from Amman to Oslo now have more of home than we are aware of. This never felt truer to me than when I was in Berlin last April to participate in an important conference about rebuilding Aleppo organized by the Association of the Friends of the Old City of Aleppo.

Getting from my Aleppian friend Hassan Oneizan’s place in Steglitz to the conference venue at the Association of German Architects in downtown Berlin involved one bus and two trains. As a newbie, I missed my first bus. Although the next one was coming in ten minutes, I couldn’t afford to be late. The fastest alternative was now to take a bus and a long taxi ride. Even though it was going to be quite expensive, I thought I would definitely get there on time. As a bonus, the fare would trickle through a country that has paid so much for refugees, including fellow Syrians.

I got off my bus at a taxi rank. I now had to figure out how to explain to my 60-something-year-old taxi driver where I needed to go so he could get me there on time. He spoke a bit of English and was using a tablet fixed in front of him and a smartphone next to him to navigate. That reminded me of what my Aleppian friend Malek Kassar once mentioned about his 70-year-old landlord in Sweden doing all transactions from collecting rent to paying bills using his phone. My taxi driver thought he knew the location. But, because I didn’t give him the postal code, he wanted to confirm that he was taking me to the right place.

He seemed to struggle with the two gadgets. When we stopped at traffic lights, which to my frustration happened a lot, he would pick up the smartphone, unlock the keypad, go to maps, and then start to type the street name. Invariably, before he could find the location, he had to put his phone back next to him because the light had turned green. I started to grow anxious that I would miss the opening remarks of the conference. As with many things in my expat life, I started to imagine how my ride would have been if it had been in Aleppo.

No driver in Aleppo relied on GPS for navigation. For security reasons, phone producers were requested by the Syrian authorities to disable GPS features before they could export gadgets to Syria. And because Syrian public life and administration relied heavily on informality, no reliable paper or online maps of Aleppo existed anyway. House numbers didn’t exist, except in theory, and formal street names often didn’t match with locations in the mental map of the Aleppians. To explain your destination, you had to mention the nearest landmarks: “Coming from the Espresso Street, turn right after the mosque. Then it’s the second on the left.” With a seat belt only pseudo-fastened, as if doing it properly would suppress the adrenaline emanating in response to the time challenge, my driver in Aleppo would maneuver through cars, constantly shifting between lanes, and get me to my destination in very good time. But then again, even in Aleppo, there were slow taxi drivers too.

We finally got to the street, and it was only two minutes past the conference start time. Now which building was it? Ah, by the entrance there was a small sign that read “Aleppo” with an arrow.

“We should follow the sign that reads ‘Aleppo,’” I said to him.

“Aleppo!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Aleppo!” he said again.

“Yes!”

“Are you from Aleppo?”

“Yes, but please I don’t want to be even more late.”

“ليش ما حكيت من قبل! Why didn’t say before? I am from Aleppo, too. And don’t worry – look; people are just going in. You’re not late.”

The post Aleppo in Berlin appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Our descent was fast and sudden when it came to both war and football. The 2010-2011 season was called off in its entirety. Civil war leaves little untouched. You more or less have to take a side or you leave. Footballers did all those things, leaving diminished teams struggling with their third string players. Firas al-Khatib, one of the best players ever in Syria, declined to play for the national team again and left the country in 2012, first for Iraq, then China and now Kuwait. Players for al-Wathbah, the Homs club, were killed in a mortar attack outside their hotel in Damascus while getting ready for training.

When war blazed across the country in 2011, Syrian soccer was on the verge of its greatest triumph ever – a possible spot at the London Olympics.[i] At that level, it is youth teams that compete and Syria’s Under 23s looked promising. Among its best players was the goalkeeper, Abdelbasset Saroot, who played for the Homs team al-Karameh. In April 2011, he joined the demonstrations in Homs, prompting the government to accuse him of being a Salafi extremist and offering a two million Syrian pounds reward for his arrest. The National Sports Association issued a decree banning him from playing for life. In July 2011, a video appeared on Youtube of him standing before a Syrian national flag. “I am now wanted by the security agencies which are trying to arrest me. I declare with sound mind and of my own volition that we, the free people of Syria, will not back down until our own and only demand is met: the toppling of the regime. I hold the Syrian regime responsible for anything that happens to me.”

By the time of the last qualifying rounds in early 2012, FIFA had decided it was too dangerous to play in Syria so the national team was abroad, surrounded by bullying minders and missing their talented and charismatic goalie. The team beat the Asian Champions Japan 2-1. They then wiped out Malaysia 3-0 in an empty stadium in Jordan. Japan fought back by beating Bahrain, meaning that there would be no automatic qualification for Syria. The next stop was Vietnam and two more games.

Meanwhile Saroot had been forced underground. Assassination attempts by the regime had killed two brothers and best friend. After the first attempt, he had appeared in another Youtube video, seriously injured but defiant. Known also for his voice, he appeared in front of enormous crowds in Homs to sing revolutionary songs.[ii] Young, handsome, articulate and possessed of a defiant charisma, he emerged as an icon of the revolution, carried overhead by adoring crowds. The documentary “The Return to Homs” by the filmmaker Talal Derki portrayed him as a young symbol of a leaderless revolution who only resorted to violence when nonviolent resistance seemed futile.

Saroot’s trajectory mirrors that of so many young Syrians. The government’s murder of his siblings and friends pushing him to a probably reluctant association with violent extremists. He was said to have joined Jabhet An-Nusra, the now renamed group that was once allied with Al Qaeda. He then was said to have moved further along the path of extremism, signing up for ISIS, although it is unclear how much he supported them. Apparently disgusted by their violence, he is still in Homs but part of a less religious, more nationalist group, still protesting the regime during rare moments of peace. With soccer, singing and an easy manner with fans, he never would have been a good fit with ISIS.

***

To read the full story, please download the PDF here

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Qashani ceramic tile

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

Winter Iwān (2013)

Source: HalabNews.net.

Winter Iwān (2011)

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

Eastern side of palace (2011)

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

Room interior (2011)

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

Iwān and fountain (2011)

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

Palace sketch (1950)

Jean Claude David

Large Iwān (2011)

Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi

When I lived in Syria, I hadn’t even heard about the Janbolad (Junblatt) Palace until 2011, my third year as an archaeology student. I was very surprised that a palace like this existed in my city. I did not expect its beauty, because just a few people even knew the palace’s name and location.

The large Iwān at Janbolad palace. Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

The first time I went to visit Dar Janbolad it was closed and there were no signs. I climbed up the northern external wall. The magnificent Iwān appeared and I immediately fell in love with it.

I knocked on the door of the adjacent house, which originally was part of the palace. It was renovated and a family lived there. A man opened the door and told me that although the Dar wasn’t always open to the public, its watchman, Abu Rami, came frequently to check on it. He gave me Abu Rami’s phone number. I called him and he promised to come the next day to open the house. The neighbour and his wife invited me in to see their well-cared for home.

The next day Abu Rami came. He was mellow. I introduced myself as an archaeology student, and he allowed me into the house. He had a few belongings there, a set of chairs and a Primus stove to make his coffee.

The Iwān and fountain (2011). Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

I passed through the small door into a narrow corridor and reached the courtyard. I had turned left to see the Iwān. The surprise and awe I felt at that first glance! Its height grips you with its grandeur. I felt like an ant next to it. Where did this little door lead me?!

I’ve loved blue since my early childhood, and the qashani tiles covering Janbolad’s Iwān enchanted me with their colour and motifs. I talked a bit with Abu Rami and asked him about his feelings when he comes to this beautiful house as if he were its owner. He told me that he liked to come water the plants and enjoyed the serenity of the place as he drank his coffee before heading back home. He told me there was talk of selling the palace, which, according to him, would fetch about 1 billion Syrian Lira, or 20 million dollars. “It would break my heart not to be able to visit it anymore.”

As Abu Rami guided me through every room and nook, I imagined being able to buy this palace, living in it and sitting by its fountain.

The last photo in this piece is of a qashani tile I had cleaned and photographed to show the beauty of the shade of blue that filled the palace.

Sketch of the whole palace in 1950. Jean Claude David.

Dar Janbolad, or Janbolad House/Palace, is located near Bāb an-Nasr, one of Old Aleppo’s historical gates. Built in the 16^th century, the palace’s area was approximately 5000m².

It was owned by the Al-Isbaʽ family before Janbolad Bey, an emir close to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, acquired it. The name Jānbolād means the spirit of steel. The house was later owned by Sheikh Hasan Afandi Al-Kawākbi, a Mufti of Aleppo.

During the French Occupation, the palace was used as a gathering place for the National Bloc, because the owner, Father Hasan Bey, was a member. Fifteen per cent of the palace was donated to the Awqāf and was used as al-Ghāfiqiya school. After that, the palace fell out of use.

The eastern side of the palace (2011). Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

The architectural elements of the palace evolved as it transitioned from the Mamluk period to the Ottoman period.

When I first entered the palace’s small door, it was a very simple entrance, similar to other Arabic courtyard houses in Aleppo. The corridor leads to a big courtyard and a huge, 30-metre-high, blue Iwān. The Iwān is considered the biggest not only in Aleppo, but in Syria as well. Only one palace Iwān located in Isfahan is said to match its size. The walls are covered with fine qashani ceramic-tiled mosaics. The room on the western side of the Iwān was the room of the Syrian progressive thinker ʽAbd ar-Rahmān Al-Kawākibi.

Before the war (2011): The Small Winter Iwān on the northern side and the fountain. Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

The Winter Iwān during the war (2013). Source: HalabNews.net.

In the centre of the courtyard is Aleppo’s largest water fountain, measuring 10.5m*16.30m*65cm. Opposite the Iwān on the northern side lies a small Winter Iwān. Its outer façade was built with black and yellow stones, in an alternating style called “Ablaq.” The Iwān has been partly damaged during the current war in Syria.

Some parts of the palace were separated from it and used for different purposes, such as a khan – or caravanserai – a soap factory and houses. Some of the elements date back to the end of the Mamluk period and not to the Ottoman period.

The urban fabric of the neighbourhood changed significantly and was re-organized during the important social and economic changes in the Ottoman era.

The interior of a room on the eastern side (2011). Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

The condition of the palace was unfortunate in 2011, but it could be restored and used for different purposes. Its most important purpose would be as an archaeological and touristic monument, because it is a very unique palace in the Arab world and it is our duty to save our heritage.

Fine qashani ceramic-tiled mosaic from the palace (2011). Photo: Tiffany Ftaimi.

When I return to Syria one day, visiting Dar Janbolad will be among my first stops, because of how much I cherish it and the beautiful memories it evokes.

Tiffany Ftaimi is a Syrian-Hungarian archaeologist. She graduated with highest distinction from the University of Aleppo’s Archaeology Department. She has worked with prominent experts on Syrian and European sites and is currently completing her Master’s degree in Near Eastern Archaeology at Heidelberg University in Germany.

This article draws, in part, on the following books: Jean Claude David, translated by Mahmoud Heritani (2010) Awābed Sweqet ʽAli; Lamia Jasser and others (2010) Taqaṣṣi Ḫuṭā ad-Dawle Al-ʽUṯmāniya fi Ḥalab; Abd Allah Hajjar (2010) Maʽālem Ḥalab Al-aṯariya.

Both English and Arabic versions of the article are by the author.

The post Dar Janbolad – Aleppo’s Finest Palace appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

“I am the mourning mother, and who comforts her,” a deep rhyme echoes in the sky of Aleppo every year.

It is the heavenly voice of the Levantine singer Fairuz that awakens Christian neighborhoods of the city. Mothers are awake earlier than usual; they open the doors to their balconies and the contest begins on whose Fairuz is loudest. It is Good Friday, one of the most important days in the Aleppian Christian calendar. Shop keepers and hair dressers are packed; working in harmony with the rhymes that mix with the fragrance of the Bakhur incense. In the afternoon, tens of thousands of Christians join a pilgrimage to the nearly forty churches of Aleppo. The old town, however, gets the largest number of pilgrims. Farhat Square in al-Jdaydeh quarter puts on its special attire. The sounds of people, peddlers and boy scout brass bands are a symphony embedded in the memory of Aleppians. The four churches that overlook the square remind Christians of their ancient roots in the city. The medieval limestone holds the memory of surviving the Mongol slaughter when Timur Lank invaded Aleppo six hundred years ago.

The ceremonies start at four in the afternoon and each church—Armenian, Melkite, Maronite and Syriac—waits its turn to stage its Easter funeral procession. Afterwards, friends, families and groups roam the quarter with the aim of visiting at least seven churches. All are crowded, some hand out flowers, but every church has its boy scout members giving everyone cotton with blessed oil. On the periphery of this scene that might continue after midnight, you see a child asking his mom, “what are these people doing?” The mother replies, “it is a Christian celebration like our Eid al-Adha” (Feast of the Sacrifice for Muslims). In fact, it is not only a special day for Christians of the city, but also for some of its Muslim dwellers who have added a special tradition to this day by providing food. The day would not be special without the thyme sandwich food carts peddling around the churches. When you ask Abu Mouhamad for this Aleppian special grilled sandwich, he asks “thyme or white cheese?” Certainly, it would not be as delicious without the red pepper paste he spreads on the fresh pita. For some youngsters, mainly Christians and to a lesser extent Muslims, it is a perfect day to see the pretty girls dressed to impress. You often hear the boys whispering, “Who is she? Where was she hiding all that time?” Of course, this event is almost problem free, since the police officers are on every corner to make sure the boys do not get out of hand. Sadly after five years of war, this scene is almost gone, as are the crowds, exiled to the heavens or to Europe and Canada.

For decades, this scenery was a mark of Aleppo’s cosmopolitanism and a sign of the coexistence among its Christian, Jewish and Muslim dwellers. It was a coexistence that had endured since the seventh century and was based on deep symbiotic relationships. Much of it was shaped by the geopolitics of Aleppo as a capital for trade on the Silk Road.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European consuls and merchants arrived in the city. Still influenced by the crusades, they deemed Muslims “infidels” and preferred to deal with Christian Arabs. Ironically, this brought the city dwellers closer—Sunni merchants invested with their Christian counterparts and the role of Christian agents grew over the centuries. Meanwhile, amidst Sunni-Shi’ite hostilities between the Ottomans and the Iranians, Sunni merchants and investors preferred business over sectarianism, thus relying on Armenians to buy Iranian silk. Not long after, Anatolian and Julfan Iranian Armenians were welcomed to settle in the city. Christians then made up nearly half the town’s inhabitants; exporting with their Sunni countrymen two thirds of the Iranian “Shi’ite” silk to Europe.

The ebbs and flows of the history of this coexistence was not always gentle to Christians. As a result, their numbers fluctuated depending on the political and economic situation. Many fled Ottoman rule in the second half of the nineteenth century to find a better future in the Americas. Their numbers rose again after WWI when Aleppians welcomed thousands of Syriac Christians and Armenians who survived the genocide in Turkey. Urban Aleppians found a promising future in the craftsmanship of the newcomers, and allowed these refugees to become primary contributors to modernity in the city.

Until the 1940s, Christians made nearly forty per cent of the inhabitants of the city. This number dwindled to twenty per cent after Jamal Abdul Nasser brought in his socialist policies in the late 1950s and then to ten percent since the arrival of the Baath party in the 1960s.

Since 2011, Christians and Sunni urbanites have fled the war in a massive exodus. Today, out of nearly 200,000 Christians, church officials publicly estimate there are only 40,000 left in Aleppo. However, if you press them in private, they would tell you that the number might not exceed 25,000.

In 2015, the last Jewish family left Aleppo. Will Aleppo’s Christians and Sunni urbanites be next? We hear the question every day in the voice of desperate Aleppians in Syria and abroad. All of whom share one wish: “Bring our old Aleppo back!” Today, Fairuz is singing her rhymes, but it is the voice of Aleppo that echoes to the heavens saying: “I am the mourning mother, and who comforts her”.

Aleppo is waiting to be resurrected on the third day, and only her daughters and sons can respond to her cry.

Rami Aboud is a Syrian researcher from Aleppo. He holds an M.A.in Politics and International Relations of the Middle East from the University of Exeter, where he also worked as a Research Associate and a Research Assistant to Professor Michael Dumper. Rami’s research focuses on the power of narratives in violent conflicts, conflict management and post conflict violence. His main research analyses the urban conflict in Aleppo, political Islam in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

The post A Mother Mourns the Last Exodus appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Lovers of Arab music know Aleppo by the name Em el-Tarab – the “mother of tarab.”  Tarab roughly translates as “ecstasy” and refers to a state of spiritual up-lifting and enchantment that is induced by this type of music.  Although today the term is often loosely applied to any type of traditional Arab music, Tarab actually refers to a particular musical culture that was popular from the 19^th until the first half of the 20^th century.

At that time, Aleppo was the centre of Tarab culture and home to many famous singers, musicians and composers.  One of the most unique elements of the city’s musical life was a group of people known as the sammīʿah.  Literally “those who listen well,” the sammīʿah were a cultivated musical audience, a cadre of educated and professional listeners, and they were famous across the entire Arab world for their connoisseurship and expertise.  Together with the musicians, they formed the Ahl el-Tarab, the Tarab community.

Aleppians are very proud of their legacy of good listeners.  One will often hear that many of the major Arab musicians rose to fame only after having gained the approval of the city’s sammi’ah.  One example is a story that circulates around the famous Egyptian singer Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.  At the beginning of his career, in the 1930s, he came to perform in Aleppo.  During his first concert, he was astonished when the udience consisted of only a handful of listeners, but decided to perform anyway. During the second night and after the sammīʿah had spread the news about his great musicianship, the concert hall overflowed with the more than two thousand people who wanted to hear him.

Aleppo’s professional listeners not only functioned as what today would be the role of a jury or musical critic; during a musical performance, singers and musicians would rely on them to help create the right atmosphere of Tarab:  The sammīʿah had to be “with” the performer, they had to feel and be attuned to her emotions and have trained their ears to register every single musical and melodic movement.  At especially uplifting moments, they would react ecstatically, praising the singer through shouting exclamations such as Āh! Allāh! Yā ʿaynī! Yā rūḥī! (“God!” and “Oh, my eye!”, “Oh, my soul!”), encouraging him to enchant the audience even further.

One great example of the distinct vocal texture produced by the sammīʿah is the following recording of the Aleppo-born singer Adeeb ad-Dayekh (1938-2001).  He performs a mawwal, one of the poetic vocal genres typical to Aleppo and is accompanied by a Nay flute.  At times, the reactions of the community of listeners gathered around him resemble the echoing sound of the nay, imitating the singer’s voice in the exact same pitch (e.g 25:00).  At others, the singer himself becomes part of the sammi’ah, animating the nay player through exclaiming Allāh and rūḥī, rūḥī yā Muḥammed (“Go, go Muhammed”) (e.g. 28:01; 32:00).

A wonderful and rather amusing passage occurs around minute 52:00, when Adeeb ad-Dayekh sings in praise of Leyla, a dark woman.  Leyla was the love of the Umayyad poet Qais al-Mulawwah.  When she was forced to marry someone else and then died from illness, Mulawwah is said to have wandered off into the desert, where he remained until the end of his life, reciting love poems.  Because he was so obsessed with Leyla, people called him Majnūn, Arabic for crazy or mad.  Their tragic love story became well known throughout the Arab and Persian world as Leyla and Majnun.  In the passage here, Adeeb ad-Dayekh sings a poem about Mulawwah as a young boy having fallen in love with Leyla and about seeking to cure her when she was ill.  He then sings in praise of her darkness, comparing it to black musk.  At this last verse, the crowd bursts into cheers, with one particularly assertive sammīʿe shouting “the ears of those who have a dark one have perked up [upon hearing this]! … He who has a brunette shall stand up!” The rest of the audience affirms him, shouting “Of course!”  After over one minute of cheers and light hearted comments, Adeeb ad-Dayekh praises his audience with the following words: “By God, the good deed is yours. If it weren’t for your beautiful souls, I wouldn’t be able to perform.”  From the distance, one hears a member of the audience responding “the favour is yours, Adeeb!” to whom the former sammīʿe retorts, “Seems like you have a brunette! That’s why you raise your voice.”  Finally, the singer ends this bawdy chatter by resuming his mawwal to be followed by another round of cheers, praise and joyful exclamations.

As important as a good audience is at secular performances, it is most valued within the realm of religion.  As it is said in the Qur’an, for those who listen in faith, focused hearing is required to memorise the message of the Qur’an and gain the mercy of God: Wa idha quri’a-l-Qur’anu fastamiʿū lahu w-anṣitū laʿallakum turḥamūn. (“And when the Qur’an is recited, listen to it attentively and hearken, so that you may receive mercy.”) (The Qur’an, al-A‘rāf 7.204).

Although some Muslim scholars prescribe silence when listening to the Qur’an, within the Aleppian tradition, the listener is allowed to respond, as long as this shows his engagement with the recitation and is not a distraction from it.  Listen, for example, to the following recording

of the famous Egyptian Qur’an reciter ‘Abdul-Basit ‘Abdus-Samad taken at the Grand Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo in 1958.  One can hear that his voice resonates in a cacophony of ecstatic sighs and voices of encouragement and approval throughout the entire recital.  Several times (e.g. at minute 14.30, 16:10) one sammīʿe exclaims in the unmistakably heavy accent of Aleppo: “Allāh! Allāh yʿaṭīk min faḍlo wa iḥsāno (“Allah! May God give you his grace and kindness”!)  Compared to the silence of a classical concert hall, there is indeed something magical and enchanting in this intimate and shared appreciation of melodic beauty, where the audience’s voice becomes part of the musical performance itself.

The Egyptian musician and musicologist Kamil al-Khulaʿī (1881-1931) described the good listener as a person of high spirits and good will, as someone who is genuinely and sincerely affected by music and teaches the rest of the audience how to listen closely.  There is no doubt that we can learn something from Aleppo’s legacy of professional listeners.  They remind us of the importance of a good audience.  They also teach us that listening is a creative act and that interaction should be cultivated.  Today, we can preserve Aleppo’s musical heritage and train ourselves not to foreground the ever-present stream of media images depicting the city’s physical destruction but instead to focus on what remains unheard.

This article was written in collaboration with AlHakam Shaar and draws in part on the two following books: Jonathan Shannon (2009) “Among the Jasmine Trees” and Ali Jihad Racy (2004) “Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab”. Both are excellent sources for the study of Syrian Music and Tarab music respectively.

Clara Wenz first visited Aleppo in 2008. After graduating from the Munich School of Philosophy in 2010, she worked and lived for several years in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Clara is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she conducts research on the musical heritage of Aleppo.

The post Aleppo’s Good Listeners – The Sammīʿah appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Arabs are considered a high context culture, meaning that due to a long history of intense contact in their communities, they can use short cuts, allusions and proverbs easily in their conversation and expect to be understood. Much can go unexplained in discussions as people are deeply familiar with each other and their common culture. Languages that exist in these cultures can have a richness of allusions that others may lack. For example, in Aleppo, if you want to point out that someone is stupid, you have a range of options, not all of them particularly politically correct:  

Words: teshem (dumb), tashoum (dummy), baheem (ignorant [as an animal]), ghabi (stupid), Ahbal (foolish), mukhtal (mentally-disturbed), jadbeh (idiot), mastool / msattel (being thick), darkh (torpid), loh ([thick as a] board), stameh ([thick as a] heavy log), satlameh (blend of msattel and stameh), latah (thick as a stone), danglawi (referring to people from Dangala, a Nubian town in Sudan,  whom old Aleppians thought were intellectually slow), deb (bear), tor (bull), tes (billy goat), jahsh (ass), baghel (mule), gdeesh (gelded horse), msayyef (his senses are on summer vacation), weshesh (spaced out), mhabheb (drugged), masroue (epileptic), fahmando (smart-ass [said sarcastically]), sayeh (he’s beyond help), darweesh (simple-minded).

Phrases: the board has no nails, he’s renting out the upper floor, he’s out of [mobile phone] range, his fuses are broken (reference to the brain), his head is a shoe polish box, his head is a wall, his head is two walnuts in a saddlebag, he doesn’t know where God placed him, may God curse him with blindness how ass-like (stupid) he is, [he’s an] unmountable French mule, well-fed bull, bull who only eats fodder, Cyprus ass, baby bear, bull tied by his tail, a donkey in pants (or a donkey packed into pants), he’s not here, his understanding is limited to its size (small), a regular customer of Dwerineh or a regular visitor to Dwerineh (the location of a well-known psychiatric hospital), he’s lost his aunt’s / uncle’s ass, “bless him”, naivety is killing him (= naivety is taking over him), his mum (while pregnant) yearned for a donkey, he neither shakes nor sizzles (he’s very inactive), he’s to his intentions (he’s naive), he can’t tell five from a blotch (five in Hindi numerals has the shape of an empty circle), he doesn’t read but what’s in his notebook, he can’t see further than his nose, he has a nerve (he has a short temper), his nerve came out, he was dropped on his head as a child, his head is a drum, he can’t tell his head from his tail / feet, he’s an extra wheel (similar to “a third wheel”), his mind is on its own, he makes your heart explode and die (his stupidity annoys you to the bone), his brain is quarter to six, his understanding / his brain is twofold, his mind gives and takes (unstable), he’s a thick bear who cannot tell Friday from Thursday, thick brain, his understanding is sore, his brain is insufficient material to make a toilet door, he can’t tell Taha (a common male name) from Takeh, his head is filled with hay, his head is a wall, it’s as if he’s never lived with people, [he’s an] ass-donkey blend, he’s with a rattle, his head is a drum, put him with three donkeys and you won’t be able to tell him out, he drowns in a drop of water, you tell him it’s a billy-goat (or a bull), he asks you to milk it, he gives your heart crackles and kills it, when God created wit and decorum he was up there, his mind is saddlebag tassels, he can’t tell the number 1 from a stick, his mind is doolally, his mind changes shape all the time, his brain bobs in his head, his brain is shaken, his brain crackles, he slobbers, he has snot for a brain, his brain is as big as the sparrow’s, may God help him with his mind, he’s a semi dolt, he has a thick head, he can’t tell a hamza (the letter for glottal stop in Arabic) from Aleph (A), he’s someone you can’t blame, he’s as tall as a palm tree but his mind is the size of a lamb’s, there’s no quintal (a unit of weight) in his saddlebag.

Phrases for stupidity or mental incapacity are ubiquitous in the Aleppian vocabulary. Why is that? Do Aleppians believe they are more intelligent than others? Or do they believe they have to classify every person and hence the proliferation of adjectives and expressions. Or is the number of slow or dim-witted so high in the city that they needed more terms? Or are some of them a code used when people from outside the city come to it – it is known that in the Souq there are expressions that merchants used to classify customers. Please tell us what you think.

With thanks to Mr Abdul Khaleq Qalaji who compiled a shorter list.

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In Aleppo one is not awakened early in the morning by the cheerful chirp of a robin or a wren, nor by the clear call of a cardinal, but rather by a penetrating voice crying in Arabic under the window, “Hellu Haleeb”.  This syncopated wail persevering on the interval of a minor third defies all sleep.  Eventually it lures one to come outside and buy “nice sweet milk” direct from cow to consumer, for the gentle jersey waits at the door bedecked in her blue glass beads.

Breakfast is complete when the little old hunchback man comes along carrying twisted bread rings on a long stick.  He sings a chromatic tune from “d” to “f” in dotted eighth and sixteenth notes, “ka-ka-ka-kaak”.

A very few minutes later, a donkey passes by laden with luscious ripe tomatoes.  The donkey boy shouts his produce, “banadura, banadura,” just as we would sing “Hallelujah, Hallelujah” from Handel’s Messiah.

Another ambitious merchant with a voice like a sliding trombone does his best to attract the attention of the Syrian housewife to the saddle bags on his donkey.  They bulge with shiny black eggplant.  His cry begins with a pianissimo effect, makes a steady crescendo, and ends with a soft echo, “Aswad beidenjan, aswad.”

Here is the scissors grinder.  He might play the oboe in our street symphony.  His private theme is a major second from “D” to “C”, just two long whole notes.  He never varies the slightest from this pitch.

The garbage man rings a huge dinner bell.  A little boy sitting on the back of the garbage wagon thumps his knuckles against an old tin oil can in a haunting rhythm.  If one could be temporarily deprived of smell and eyesight this weird garbage drum would suggest to the imagination a beautiful setting on a stage with kings and princesses marching in stately oriental splendor.

Down in the old copper “suk” or market, there are cymbals enough for all of the symphony orchestras in the world.  The cacophony is deafening as the coppersmiths beat out plangent chords upon the huge cooking utensils which they are modelling.  The alluring jingle of castanets is nothing more than the lemonade vendor rattling tiny brass saucers in his hand.  In the heat of noon day, this percussion rises to a climax when mobs of people fight for a turn at the public wells, old women, young children, and picturesque Bedouin women dressed in gay gypsy rags.

Sleigh bells?  Santa Claus?  Donner and Blitzen?  No, only a dozen or more donkeys prancing down the street in an “allegro” movement.  The mood changes suddenly to “andante” when we hear the soft tinkle of camel bells.

Our symphony is not finished at sunset.  In the quiet of the evening, out under the stars, the shepherd boy pipes as he guards his sheep.  Surely it is the music of the “Magic Flute”!  An Armenian boy struggles with his violin far into the night.  Sleep, sleep, there is no sleep.  The night watchman strikes his club against the pavement, a reverberating “clunk, clunk” to warn all would-be burglars that he is imminent.  Then the steady swish of the street sweeper’s broom clears the air for the opening theme of a new day, “Hellu haleeb”.

Rebecca Decherd. 1935. Aleppo, Syria.

“My mother found music in the everyday sounds around her,” Betsy Decherd Lane told The Aleppo Project about this letter in which Rebecca describes the sounds of the street in musical terms.  Ms. Lane lived with her parents and siblings in Aleppo in the early 1930s and with her husband and children in the 1960s. She added, “given the destruction taking place in Aleppo, I hesitated to send this gentle piece, but perhaps we need reminders of what that city was – and what it could be again.”

Aleppo College American School, “al-Amerkan.” Photo: Aleppo College.

Rebecca Decherd was a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, with a Master’s Degree in organ. Rebecca and her husband Douglas were missionaries, educators and musicians in Aleppo, Syria and Tripoli, Lebanon from 1930 to 1966.  In the 1930s, Douglas was the principal at the Aleppo High School which developed into Aleppo College. He later served as principal at the boys and girls schools in Tripoli.  Music was an important part of life in the three schools the Decherds served.

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