Houses of Old Damascus
A look inside a traditional home of Damascus, c. 1880.
From Damascus and Its People: Sketches of Modern Life in Syria, by Mrs. Mackintosh, 1883.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Into whatever part of the town we penetrate, we look in vain for broad, open streets, with rows of good substantial houses. Without exception, the streets are narrow, and the exterior of most of the houses impleasing, to say the least. The exclamation of most new-comers is, 'What a collection of hovels!’ The walls are of a drab colour; there seem to be no windows on the ground-floor, and the roofs are flat, so we can expect little outside beauty; but if we knock at the door of one of these gloomy-looking, prison-like abodes, and seek admittance, we shall be astonished as soon as the door is opened and we have reached the end of a little passage: then we shall find ourselves in a spacious quadrangle, with lemon-trees and perhaps vines and flowers in the centre.
Upon this court, which is paved with marble or some other stone, all the windows and doors open. The large houses have several courts and many fountains, indeed one house is said to contain three hundred rooms; but though some, both of the Moslems and Jews, can boast grand and almost palatial residences, there is in all a sad want of what we English consider comfort.
On entering a room in a Damascus house, we notice one peculiarity, and that is what is called the 'atabeh,' a strip of the floor on a level with the door-step from three to five feet wide; the rest of the floor of the room is raised about a foot and a half higher. In large houses this atabeh is paved with black and white marble, and has recesses, or niches, at each end, in which are often kept the nargilehs (water-pipes for smoking), or the lamps.
All the natives drop their shoes and 'kubkabs,' or wooden sandals, on the atabeh before stepping up on the mat which covers all the rest of the roof; and we poor Europeans are sometimes taken to task by well-conducted natives for our wasteful habit of treading on our mats with boots, which of course wear and soil them more quickly than the feet. My husband always removes his boots, or else remains in the atabeh, when he enters a native house; but happily for me, the native women know our custom, and generally beg me not to trouble myself, though occasionally I have had to do so in Moslem houses, and to walk in my stockings over cold marble floors.
The furniture of a native house, free from European innovations, is simply a raised divan round the three sides of a room, generally low along the two sides and high at the end, the place to which honoured guests are always invited. The divan is covered with silk or cloth, or a bright-coloured chintz with a strip of white calico, edged with lace or crochet, laid on it to keep it clean. The back is formed of hard stiff cushions; but directly a guest enters he is entreated to rest on the divan, and little soft pillows are placed at his side on which to rest his elbow. One or two Persian carpets are spread on the floor over the mat, or more if the people are wealthy. At one end of the atabeh generally stands the large wedding-box of Damascus-work, walnut-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, in which the mistress of the house brought her trousseau on the day of her marriage, and in which she now keeps most of her own and her children's clothes.
In many houses the sitting-room is also used for a sleeping-room, but most of the larger ones have upper rooms which are used for that purpose. The beds are spread on the floor, and rolled up and hidden behind a curtain in the day-time. But in many of the houses we now see a few European chairs arranged along the atabeh, and perhaps a little table and some showy gilt mirrors, hung so high on the walls that it is impossible for the tallest man to get a glimpse of his face in them. Bedsteads also are being gradually introduced; and occasionally a stove may be seen in the winter, instead of the pan of charcoal which is generally used to warm a room. We hardly ever see a bookcase in a native house, and we miss the pictures and flower-vases, and various knick-knacks, and cosy armchairs, and little tables, which give a home-feeling to our English sitting-rooms.
Of course in a city like Damascus we have many kinds of houses — that is, we have large, middle-sized, and small houses, to suit the different ranks of society; but all are built on the same plan, a number of rooms opening upon a central court, and with no doors or passages connecting one room with another: an arrangement pleasant enough in summer-time, but not so comfortable in winter, when we must leave the warm fireside, or rather stove-side, and go out into the open air, even when the ground is covered with snow, every time that we have to go from one room to another.
The houses of the poor are very miserable, each room perhaps inhabited by a whole family, and some are filthy in the extreme. One of the poorest quarters in the Christian part of the town is the Hananiya, the district which surrounds the supposed site of the house of Ananias. It is not necessary to describe many of the scenes of poverty and sickness and misery which are daily seen by those who visit among the poor in Damascus. Unhappily they are easily equalled in our own country; but with this difference, that in England constant efforts are being made of all kinds to minister to the sick, to help the poor, and to reclaim the fallen, while in Damascus we have no workhouses, no hospitals, and no reformatories.
Mackintosh. Damascus and Its People: Sketches of Modern Life in Syria. Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1883.
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