Essay: Damascus literature review

1. Zeitlian Watenpaugh, Heghnar. “The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries”. Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill (2004), p 1-23.
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. Her research concerns urban and architectural history in the Middle East, gender and space. In her book, Watenpaugh discusses the impact of the Ottoman rules on Aleppo’s architecture in the 16th and 17th century in a way that it transformed and reshaped Aleppo to have an Ottoman appearance especially that the Ottoman Pasha in that time had great dominance over the political, social, and cultural history of the whole Middle East region. She discusses how the Ottomans Ottomanized Aleppo which was previously a Mamluk territory and how variable both forces affected the city’s pattern. The later had the greater effect since it was more powerful than the Mamluks. She further argues that Ottomans intentionally aimed to expand their empire through the reshaping of Aleppo’s urban architecture basing her counterargument on previous sources of Ottoman architectural and urban studies and urban histories. She traces the transformation of Aleppo in that manner all along the 16th and 17th century focusing as well on the adaptation of the people of Aleppo to this massive change.
2. Grehan, James. “Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth-Century Damascus”. 1st ed. Seattle, Wash: University of Washington Press (2007), 156-190
James Grehan is a professor of social and cultural history of the early modern and modern Middle East popular culture and popular religion+ Ottoman Empire at Portland State University. In this book, Grehan discusses the different consumption patterns of ottoman Damascus or as he refers to it; the premodern middle east in the 18th century. He describes and analyses the daily activities of people and the detailed materials used in ottoman Damascus in an attempt to discover their histories that summed up to the premodern Middle East with its operating regional and imperial forces. He thus provides a depiction of history of city, survival, diet, furniture, fashion, and architecture, providing a description of the ottoman Damascene consumer behaviors and standards of living. Domestic architecture and space lies in 5th chapter of this book. In this chapter, Grehan discusses home ownership, the architecture, materials and density of residential arrangements, and the crowding that they created. He also provides several images of domestic architecture in Damascus to support his descriptions.
3. Wilson, John. Lands of the Bible, Visited and Described in an Extensive Journey. Vol. 1. Edinburgh: W. Whyte, 1847
John Wilson (1804–1875) was a Christian missionary and orientalist, president of He established Wilson College, Mumbai and a University of Mumbai for the people of Bombay, India. Wilson’s journey was undertaken with special reference to the promotion of Biblical research and the advancement of the cause of philanthropy. He started his journey from Bombay-India. As Wilson moves along the Middle East he traces his progression and offers as well a detailed description of his observations and interactions with the cities he passes through. He provided maps and included Arabic alphabet and terms in order to present a precise description and evidence. One of the aspects he describes is the houses of Farhi (Muallim Farhi, Raphael Farhi, and Mourad Farhi houses) in Damascus. Farhi’s homes are of the largest houses of Damascus, they all belonged to Raphael el Muallim Farhi. Wilson described the architecture of those homes (their yards, roofs, walls…) which reflects the architecture of the city in that time. He also describes the people and culture he encountered there which provided a vivid depiction of Damascus in the 19th century.
4. Salamandra, Christa. “A new old Damascus: Authenticity and distinction in urban Syria”. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2004), 1-50.
Christa Salamandra is a Syrian media specialist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In her book that was drawn from a conducted research in Damascus, she highlights the difference between “Damascus” and “Old Damascus”. The difference is mainly based on the perception of people belonging to different social statuses. Syrian elites used to reassure their high class status through the preservation of the ‘Old Damascus”.  Those elites, or “Damascenes” as Salamandra calls them, considered the Old City as a setting of benefits rather than one of residence and that is because they aimed to maintain and preserve their high social status through the city’s traditional Arab style that was dominant in the 19th century. That’s why they restored the Old City constructions as their identity in theme restaurants and nightclubs that play on images of Syrian tradition, in television programs, nostalgic literature, and visual art. Salamandra notes that Damascenes are actually not necessarily actual residents of Damascus; they are people who used to live in the Old city where they held great political power in that time. However, soon after the Syrian independence which is in the early 20th century, they left as the comforts and promises of the western-styled homes of the newer areas of Damascus attracted them which consequently lead to the influx of residents from smaller villages in the countryside into the Old City. Those new residents of the Old City are mainly middle class people and skilled laborers. Salamandra continues to analyse the elite’s efforts to return and revalue the domestic architectural heritage as a great resource for its great historical, geographical, religious, and demographic importance. She also provides several images of Damascus map and domestic architecture of the Old City of Damascus.
5. Hudson, Leila. “Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City”. 1st ed. London: Tauris Academic Studies (2008).
Leila Hudson is an associate professor of Modern Middle East Culture and Political Economy, Associate Director. Her research interest includes Syria, Iraq, late Ottoman Arab provinces, conflict dynamics, political history, and media. In her book, Hudson discusses the transformation of Damascus in the mid-19th century from the provincial center of the Ottoman Empire to the capital city of a nation-state. She describes this manifold transformation as a radical liberty from the Ottoman religious traditions into secular values and behavior. This granted the west to confirm its fingerprint within the city’s new aspects. Hudson further discusses the changes that accompanied modernization during the new phase of western colonialism until Damascus became the capital of a new nation state. These changes range from secular values of national identity to new technologies and flow of ideas from the west that impacted the whole city (properties, money, power, politics, family, values, landscapes, space…).