Criterion ii : Damascus, as capital of the Umayyad caliphate - the first Islamic caliphate - was of key importance in the development of subsequent Arab cities. With its Great Mosque at the heart of an urban plan deriving from the Graeco-Roman grid, the city provided the exemplary model for the Arab Muslim world. Criterion iii : Historical and archaeological sources testify to origins in the third millennium BC, and Damascus is widely known as among the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.
The incomparable Great Mosque is a rare and extremely significant monument of the Umayyads. The present city walls, the Citadel, some mosques and tombs survive from the Medieval period, and a large part of the built heritage of the city including palaces and private houses dates from after the Ottoman conquest of the early 16th century.
Criterion iv : The Umayyad Great Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is one of the largest mosques in the world, and one of the oldest sites of continuous prayer since the rise of Islam. As such it constitutes an important cultural, social and artistic development. Criterion vi : The city is closely linked with important historical events, ideas, traditions, especially from the Islamic period.
These have helped to shape the image of the city and impact of Islamic history and culture. The line of the walls of the old city forms the boundary of the property. Although areas outside the walls that represent the expansion of the city from the 13th century, are considered related to the old city in terms of historical significance, and provide its setting and context, the key attributes of Outstanding Universal Value lie within the boundary.
These include the plan of the city and its dense urban fabric, city walls and gates, as well as its protected monuments including the Umayyad Mosque , madrasas, khans, the Citadel and private houses. The attributes are vulnerable to erosion from a lack of traditional approaches to maintenance and conservation, and use of traditional materials, while its setting and context are threatened by lack of conservation policy for the historical zones outside the walled city and by regional planning projects.
Since the inscription of the property, the morphological layout and the spatial pattern of the historic fabric have remained basically unchanged and the key discrete attributes survive.
However commercial and semi-industrial activities are spreading into the residential area of the walled city and its suburbs, in places eroding the value of the attributes relating to the urban fabric and their inter-relationships.
Responsibilities for planning control over the old city and its management are in the hands of two government departments the Commission for Safeguarding the Old Town and the General Directorate for Antiquities and Museums DGAM. Technical Cooperation for projects and programmes to enhance the city is undertaken by the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment with support from international organizations. Crocodilopolis was established on the Nile, southwest of Memphis, about 4,BC.
It is now part of the modern city of Faiyum — which makes Faiyum possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. But only possibly. There is a mess of claim and counterclaim, myth and legend, architectural digs and disputed evidence.
One reason for the stickiness of this subject is the whole matter of deciding when a settlement becomes a city at all — some argue when it abandons simple self-sufficiency and establishes trade, others when it develops plumbing. There is also a long-running spat in academic circles about whether cities could predate agriculture. But even among places that are undisputedly cities, the claimants stretch from Varanasi, India to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Plovdiv, meanwhile, has a far stronger case, with evidence of continuous settlement dating back to 6,BC. But it is the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent that is the most, well, fertile area for antique urbanity.
Even in a land as ancient as the Middle East the city of Damascus stands out. Founded in the third millennium B. The city has changed hands countless times over the centuries. The city itself, though, thrived as it does today at the heart of an independent Syria. The Arab conquest of Damascus eventually precipitated construction of the mosque, which dates to the early eighth century.
A shrine reported to house the head of John the Baptist lies inside the mosque walls. A modern by Damascene standards piece of history can be found in Souq al-Hamidiyya, where an ancient street was converted into a lively covered market during the lateth-century Ottoman era. Traditional Damascene homes are often unassuming from the street, but their interiors, built around lush courtyard gardens, are artistic and architectural treasures often filled with fine things.
Some outstanding examples are open to the public, such as the midth-century Azem Palace, built for the governor of Damascus but now home to the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions.
The ancient section of Damascus has seen populations decrease in recent years as residents seek more modern housing. All rights reserved. Several traditional masterpieces were burned or damaged, and hundreds of lives were lost.
The district was remodelled in by the French, this time according to modern European characteristics. This rebuilt area has a peculiar character. The orthogonal road network and the heights of the buildings differ from the organic urban fabric of Old Damascus, and the new structures do little to reflect what was lost.
Today, Damascenes are once again confronted with the task of rebuilding — and this time, they control the outcome. Yet the loss of Al-Asruniyeh raises critical questions about what should rise in its place. The history of Damascus shows that when ruins are rebuilt by the local community, the new layer is imbued with the soul of the city.
For that reason, community input is needed now more than ever before. The heritage of Syria has been a source of pride and dignity for the Syrians, despite differences in religion and political opinion. Their built heritage has been always a source of shared memory and history, as we all enjoy its authentic and aesthetic character.
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