Mirror To Damascus: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Colin Thubron

Described by the author as simply 'a work of love', Mirror to Damascus provides an enthralling and fascinating history of Damascus from the Amorites of the Bible to the revolution of 1966, as well a being a charming and witty personal record of a city well-loved.

In explaining how modern Damascus is rooted in immemoriable layers of culture and tradition, Colin Thubron explores the historical, artistic, social and religious inheritance of the Damascenes in an amusing and perceptive manner, whilst interspersing the narrative with innumerable anecdotes about travellers of bygone days.

Mirror to Damascus is a unique portrait of a city now obscured by recent upheavals, by one of the most indefatigable and popular of travel writers.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Middle East, Asia, Historical

356 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Sean Barrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damascus today is a monument to her past, to all the people and civilisations that helped shape her. In this enthusiastic piece of travel writing, Colin Thubron tells the tale of a city that has seen empires rise and fall, conquerors come and go and has lasted for over two thousand years. It's rich in impressive history and this book is very rich in impressive detail.

Originally published in 1967, this edition has a new forward by the author (penned fifty years later) in which he considers how far the city has changed since he originally wrote it. He walks the streets of the city once more and experiences the notions he puts forward in the writing. Nothing remains the same for long, and in just half a century the city is almost unrecognisable to one who found a second home behind her walls. The mood has changed, the people are less trusting of outsiders and the face of the city has been scared with conflict.

Thubron knows such change is nothing new, though he did not expect to see it so acutely within his own lifetime. The modern essence of Damascus is haunted by whispers of her history, of the changes she has witnessed over the centuries. The architecture of the city reflects it and is a constant reminder of what came before. Even now the remnants of Greek and Roman structures can be seen along with the much later changes Saladin wrought on the city after the crusades. The Ottomans left their mark too. The city as a structure is a hybridised place, a metropolis that reflects the turmoil it has experienced as it embraced new culture time and time again.





-Paintings by Walter S.S. Tyrwhitt (Early 1900s)

Damascus is described using vivid imagery. Thubron in his youth was clearly enamoured by it; he viewed it as a place of beauty and even described his own book as a work of love. It is hard not to be convinced by his perceptions of the city, a city he praised for her culture, tradition and ability to renew herself over the ages. Consequently, the recent horrors of Syria's civil war do not detract from the work. Although the city has been wounded, it can once again prosper as her history has shown. Despite numerous occupations and conflicts, Damascus has always recovered: history dictates that she shall once again.

The greatest strength of the writing resides in the way it relates the facts about Damascus' culture, history and architecture with Turbon's perceptions, the sights, the colours and the geography of what he is witnessing. Indeed, like all great travel writers Turbon has the ability to walk around the city and relate the present to the past. And not only that, he went beyond traveling and actually lived in Damascus for a time to gain a fuller picture of her essence. He did not just travel to Damascus as a sightseer, but he experienced the city and took everything in and as such I think it really adds to the writing.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

През 1967 г. един млад англичанин открива Сирия и нейната перла - Дамаск. Четвъртият най-свят град за мюсюлманите след Мека и Медина и Йерусалим оживява с всеки свой камък и разлистено клонче. Улиците шепнат стари предания за гърци, финикийци, византийци, араби, турци. Истории на градеж и разрушение, на смърт и вечно възраждащ се живот, на ужас и красота, се вихрят около уморения пътешественик, докато чаршията тъне в кротка следобедна дрямка, а наоколо се носи аромат на прясно изпечено кафе.

Този Дамаск е мираж, не само заради войната, чийто предвестници се мяркат още из страниците на 1967 г., но и защото промяната е втъкана в цялата му история. Но е все така неустоим. И дано винаги оцелява!

[Daren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another of those books about what a place was, before war and dictatorship changed it for ever.
I have fond memories of Syria and wandering the souks, visiting the sights and sites.
And clearly, so does Thubron - his wonderment and passion for Damascus are obvious in this book - perhaps even a little over the top. In what is Thubron's first publication (I believe?), he is clearly enamoured with the city.

As usual there is beautiful writing, there are amusing anecdotes involving the people he meets, but what runs heavily through this book are biblical references. There are just so many - page after pages tracking the history of things and people mentioned biblically. Far from having knowledge of the basics, the fine detail is completely lost on me, and frankly I have no interest in trying to piece it together. This unfortunately made it a very hard read for me, and it ranks right down there with Thubrons fiction, which I have also struggled with. Take nothing away from his more well known non-fiction, which has always been excellent until I got to this one.

Recommended for those with a biblical grounding, as they will probably take much from Thubron's careful analysis and detail around the events and places. Harder for others to pick out the gems which still exist in this book.

I pinched a quote from another review I liked (HERE)

Today I sent an inlaid box to England. The shop owner was convinced I was sending it to a girl-friend.
‘You will give me the address and I will post it to her’, he said. He gazed at the name. ‘Miss E. Horn. So she lives in Oxford. Is she a student there?’
No, she was not a student. In vain I told him she was my eighty-year old nanny.
‘How old is she really? Is she beautiful?’
‘Yes’, I said, ‘certainly my nanny is beautiful’.
‘Then I will send her a little souvenir in the box. Perhaps I will write something’. He stuck a pen between his teeth. ‘Miss E. Horn’ he repeated, and the words took on an added rapture through the Damascene accent. I left him humped behind his counter, wondering what sort of note he would enclose. A number of lavish Arab precedents have become standard. Nanny might smell like ambergris or have the eyes of a young gazelle. Perhaps she would rival the full moon or shine like anemones. It was all very satisfying.

Only 2 stars.

[Margarita Garova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Пътепис с много енциклопедичен характер, което на моменти ми дотежаваше, но към края ми стана истински интересно, а и е написан от автор, чиято широка култура и богат език са несъмнени. Ориентът слабо ме привлича, но за почитателте му тази книга би била добър избор.

[Desislava Filipova · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Огледалото на Дамаск" Колин Таброн е вълнуващо пътуване из миналото на Дамаск, по един красив и екзотичен начин, на моменти може би фактите ми тежаха, защото се опитвах да попия всеки малък детайл, да си представя града в различните епохи, с различните хора, но разказът тече увлекателно и е достатъчно информативен и подробен, за да може човек да придобие (разшири/затвърди) представата си за Дамаск като град, околния пейзаж, архитектурата, реката, овощните градини, пустинята.
Таброн се е опитал максимално стегнато да проследи дългата и сложна история на региона, в който са живели различни етноси, бил е завладяван от египтяни, гърци, римляни, монголи, турци, за да стигнем до настоящето, в което градът е разделен основно между араби, евреи, християни, но християнския и еврейски квартал са на все същите места от векове. В различните моменти от историята с различните преминаващи, градът е станал смесица от много култури, които са си взаимодействали във времето, всеки е оставил някакъв отпечатък. Винаги съм харесвала приемствеността в религиите, как на мястото на древен храм е построен друг, на друг Бог, но много сходен на първия, така до Голямата джамия е имало храм на Хадад, Бог на гръмотевиците, по-късно "наследен" от Юпитер.
Още от началото градът е представен като хаотичен, с малки улици лабиринти, а по-нататък в пътеписа картината постоянно се допълва с живи подробности, портите на стария град, предградията, които се разширяват и тръгват нагоре към планината, суковете и дюкяните, които са повече за туристи.
Колин Таброн едновременно търси следи от отдавна забравени и запуснати паметници и руини и в същото време увлекателно разказва истории за всяко място и епоха. Руините са се сляли с града, между сградите се виждат арки, римски колони.
Дамаск е един от най-старите градове в света, затова и началото е изпълнено с много библейски образи. А след това между миналото и настоящето се появява една пъстра картина, в която империи и цивилизации идват и си отиват, а някъде в периферията обикновените хора сякаш малко се променят.
По време на своите обиколки Таброн ще срещне много хора, ще говори с тях, ще види забравени места и ще чуе забравени истории, но ще види и техния живот сега.
Сякаш когато се говори за Изтока, винаги има една пъстрота, екзотика, пътуващи кервани, красиви и редки стоки, аромати на подправки, изкусно изработените предмети, приказките от "Хиляда и една нощи" оживяват толкова ярко с мъдростта, добродетелите, превратностите, интригите, страст и смърт. Всичко в мен бе изпълнено с копнеж към този непознат и някак неразбираем свят. Но той не е приказен или вълшебен, а жесток и противоречив, завоевателите са разрушавали, понякога и съграждали, но много пластове от миналото са изчезнали завинаги, а част от оцелелите са запуснати или забравени. Климатът е суров, единствено водата облагородява района. Има нещо красиво и първично.
Накрая не затварям книгата, а и аз си отивам като автора, той със своите спомени, аз с мъничко завист заради начинът, по който е преживял този град, опознал, описал, защото може би неговият Дамаск го няма вече.

[Viktor Stoyanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Жанр, смесица между пътепис, история и поема за един град. За един народ, образуван по-скоро в непрекъснато движение, с променливи контури. Един вид възхвала на дребните детайли, които се запомнят повече от големите дати в учебниците, или историите от мейнстрийма.

Авторът го е казал "огледало". Дали не е малко като огледалото, в което питаш "огледалце, огледалце, кой град е най-красивият в света?"

Текстът може да носи наслада с причудливите си форми, завойчета и багри. Откъм информативна стойност, не се наемам да държа застраховка за достоверност, но да кажем, че излизаш от книгата малко по-запознат с нравите по тия места.

[Suzannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really beautifully-written, descriptive book. Thubron takes us on a rather leisurely meander through the history, buildings, and culture of Damascus, the world's oldest continually-inhabited city. He's an incredible writer, with a romantic's zest for the colours, sights, sounds, and legends of the Levant, and an insightful cultural observer to boot: I was fascinated by his matter-of-fact observation that Islam, unlike Christianity, is not distinguished by imaginative pursuits.

An excellent read.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damascus has a lot of history. There are traces of settlements dating back to 6300bc and earlier in certain areas. By the time of the 11th-century bc, there was a city there, formed by the Aramaeans who stopped being nomads and formed larger tribes. It is possible to find the city mentioned in all the major historical periods, Greek, Roman, early Islam and all the way through to the Ottomans. It could rightly justify calling itself the oldest city in the world.

It is this city with its layers and layers of history that Thubron arrives at in the mid-1960s. The book opens with him climbing Mount Kaassioun, it afforded a good view of the city. He could see the streets that are contorted and crushed against each other, each betraying their age if you knew what to look for. He had been joined on the climb by a local who had many questions. Mostly he wanted to know where he was going after he had passed through the city. Thubron replies saying that he intends to stay several months and the man looks on in disbelief.

Sitting at a café planning where he wants to go he gets talking to two brothers. The local busses won’t take him to the orchard that he wants to see, so he suggests a horse to them, they recommend a bike which he tends to think is a better idea and they head off to a street with the strange name of Straight. With their help, he hires a bike for a tiny amount of money for a month. It is not a bad bike provided that you don’t worry about the brakes. Cycling around the city was going to be a frequently life-changing event.

He spends days moving around the city, passing along twisting passageways that he can touch both sides of. The ancient city is around fifteen feet below the surface, but if you know what you are looking for Roman pillars can be spotted as they have been absorbed into the modern city. The walls twist around places that are no longer there, just hints of what once was. It was an easy place to get lost in. Standing on a corner with various folded pages and maps of where to go would draw people to him to help. Everyone had an opinion on which direction the place he was looking for, was and he sometimes found it easier to slip away down the labyrinthine back streets.

This is not so much of a travel book, he, after all, stays in Damascus for an extended period of time. Rather this is a full immersion into the city. He reads stories and its histories, and there is a lot about the history of this ancient city and then heads out onto the streets to find where it happened to unpick the history from the myths. He grows to love the city, flaws and all and knows that it will continue to change as it has done over the past thousands of years. Thubron is one of my favourite travel writers who has a wonderful and evocative way of writing. Worth reading for a vivid image of a city that will never be this way again.

[Alia Fares]

Thank Thubron for revealing so much more of the beauty of this city. If words can make a city overcome a war, then with the help of your sentences, it will.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read and enjoyed Colin Thubron’s most recent work, The Amur River: Between Russia and China, I figured I’d next take up Mirror to Damascus, his first travel book, from 1967. In comparison, Mirror to Damascus relies more on detailed descriptions, from markets to mosques, and skimming history - 314 pages doesn’t allow much more than a cursory overview when it comes to one of the planet’s oldest cities. As a result, there’s less of what he calls “incidental encounters and stray findings,” but it’s those personal experiences that made me like The Amur River so well. Also, his vocabulary here is often ornate to distraction, but maybe chalk that up to the “youthful excesses” the author mentions in the introduction to the book’s 2017 edition. And, unfortunately, it was impossible for me to put out of mind the specter of the country’s looming military dictatorship nor its current civil war (which, Thubron writes, is far exceeded by “the sieges and massacres inflicted by the Assyrians, Mongols and Turks”).

It’s noteworthy enough that Mirror to Damascus could well be the era’s sole travel book on this enduring city, but there’s also plenty of Thubron’s skill here to have me looking forward to digging deeper into his bibliography.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful biography of Damascus, written with the eloquence and panache characteristic of Thubron. In this age of facetiousness and cloying sentimentality, a work like this, challenging and abstruse, in refreshing.

[Christopher Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like your nonfiction slow and considered, full of erudition and intelligence, and generally dislike the showy and over-eager, Thubron is for you, and this book is definitely for you. It is a carefully paced examination of the Syrian capital, doubling as a travelogue and historical account of one of the world's oldest cities. While some might decry Thubron's style as boring or overly obtuse, others - myself included - see it as the perfect way to ensure that the book itself is still worth reading fifty years after its initial publication.

[Stephen Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Today I sent an inlaid box to England. The shop owner was convinced I was sending it to a girl-friend.
‘You will give me the address and I will post it to her’, he said. He gazed at the name. ‘Miss E. Horn. So she lives in Oxford. Is she a student there?’
No, she was not a student. In vain I told him she was my eighty-year old nanny.
‘How old is she really? Is she beautiful?’
‘Yes’, I said, ‘certainly my nanny is beautiful’.
‘Then I will send her a little souvenir in the box. Perhaps I will write something’. He stuck a pen between his teeth. ‘Miss E. Horn’ he repeated, and the words took on an added rapture through the Damascene accent. I left him humped behind his counter, wondering what sort of note he would enclose. A number of lavish Arab precedents have become standard. Nanny might smell like ambergris or have the eyes of a young gazelle. Perhaps she would rival the full moon or shine like anemones. It was all very satisfying”.

* * * * *

Syrian. To those stern old Roman Republicans an adjective synonymous with effeminate lassitude, pointless luxury, sensuality and vice, the influence of which would undermine and corrode, they warned, the moral fibre of the Empire. That too was the cautious backward view of Edward Gibbon seventeen hundred years later when he traced The Decline and Fall, but he was something of a magisterial prig himself. Lesley Blanch (my last read) observes the nineteenth century ‘sensuality’ in a vague feminine sort of way but without mention of anything in the way of ‘vices’. Perhaps she was too well brought up or perhaps in the meantime Islam had eradicated those disgraceful habits, whatever they were. A young Colin Thubron, a later arrival in that ancient city, "fascinated and obsessed” by it, implies a prevailing rigid moral conservatism. Fifty years later he returned and added a new brief introduction to his original 1967 account. Much had changed, not of course for the better. His book leaves two contradictory impressions: a bewitchingly personal elegy laying Biblical legend, pagan Greece, Imperial Rome, an outpost of Byzantium and the word of Mohammad over something too old to be known, and simultaneously the unpleasant reminder not only that the human race overall is barely a very worthy species but one not improving with time.

Damascus has seen plenty of misfortunes – frequent changes of sometimes brutal government, plague, fire, massacres, wars - after its ‘golden era’ when perhaps for a while it was as near as can be got to the Garden of Eden if the tombs of both Adam and Abel are really believed to be genuine. In any case it was here that Christianity began. St Paul had his conversion on the road to Damascus. In a convent nearby is said to be the casket containing the first picture of the Virgin and Child painted by St Luke. “Medieval travellers wrote the kisses and caresses of pilgrims had worn away all but the symptoms of the paint … Once the Virgin wept and the Knights Templars sent back the tears to Europe, believing them to be magically possessed …. In the shadows the nuns were crying and kissing the icons. Two of the paintings were streaming fluids. On one the them the water rose directly from the eyes of the Virgin, which looked away, abstracted and languorous. I accepted these tears without surprise. Syria is the country of miracles.” Such places lingered on in spite of everything, the final refuges of the Delphic Mysteries as a distant heritage from Alexander, but it was the appearance of Islam in 634 that dispelled the lugubrious pieties and brings out the lyricism in the writer, as it seems to in any fervent Orientalist. After an initial clash “the Arabs settled in Damascus with awe, delight and suspicion”, leaving as was their wont the existing machinery of local government and religion undisturbed – a large part of the phenomenal speed of their progress across half the world has to be attributed to the popular preference for their administration in favour of those it supplanted – and rapidly acquired ‘Greek’ habits themselves, including some not exactly condoned by the Koran. “Muffled music floated out under the stars. There was a swish of ostrich-feather fans, and the odours of Hadramut rose in the night balm. A lute player, brought from Medinah at great expense, might excite the company into sudden applause, or a story-teller recount the deeds of south Arabian heroes, stressing their passions with the eloquence of his hands. As the night paled, the aesthetic sense gave way to drunken rapture, the incense stagnant, the goblets dry. Then the nobles would grope back to their harems, surrounded by slaves and preceded by lantern bearers, and assume their duties next morning like solemnities incarnate.” Also, as usually happened, the Muslims were soon split by schisms of their own, but it was one temporary victor, Caliph Walid I who in 705 started construction of the Great Mosque, incorporating – according to some legends – the tomb of John the Baptist, the wonder of Asia and still Damascus’ major monument. The glory of the city ran to her head like the forbidden wine: “Walid received homage from four hundred of the captive Visigothic royalty of Spain, their crowns still fixed in their flaxen hair, who laid at his feet the gem-encrusted altar of Toledo Cathedral.” The glory, inevitably, was brief, and in a few years the Damascus Caliphate and the spirit of an older Arabia, the muses of poetry and singing, the gods of love and wine, the arts of astronomy, medicine and philosophy, had passed to Persia-orientated Baghdad to survive in Andalucia against the second dawn of Europe, “the paradise which Adam had sold for an apple resurrected with the riches of half the world.” Walid aroused the usual enemies and was dispatched without ceremony by them.

After that, long ago, the story of Damascus is a series of lurches, with occasional brief heights, generally down-hill. Thubron knows his history and never shies away from the violence and horror of it, combining to an exceptional level an admirable dispassionateness with a poetic sense of the necessarily rose-tinted past of those who prefer to look rather than judge. “Nemesis came out of the East” in the shape of the last and most terrible of the Mongols: “Thirty thousand men, women and children were bolted into the Great Mosque, and convulsed in flames. Every surviving male of over five years was carried away to Samarkand and Damascus lay among her orchards like the carcass of a mountain, peopled by tiny children”. But “there is a notion that after Tamarlane’s sack Damascus lay waste for half a century. Damascus has never lain waste for more than half a year. The Egyptian Marmalukes restored her, but did so like men uncertain of their time, as if they wished to grave their memory on a disintegrating world. They engendered a bluster of mosques and tombs tricked out with incrustations.” Commerce quickened into life again when the Ottoman Turks took over. “Damascus brass and iron work, saddles and confectionary sold in all the markets of the Empire. Chinese and Indian silk, which entered the city in bales of formless thread, left her in intricately worked brocades.” Damascus was supervised from Istanbul and the Ottomans were notorious for both casual assassination and decadently-shoddy ostentation. “The city houses, bordering dirt-filled streets, threw up crumbling and anonymous facades. From their doors emerged merchants plumed and robed like Brazilian birds, or Ottoman civil servants who rode robust and beautiful horses. The Janissaries, grown incompetent by the end of the eighteenth century, stuck their sashes with pistols and curvilinear daggers, and trailed elegant swords through the dust …. The governor or Damascus kept great state. He moved in the midst of a Moorish or Kurdish bodyguard and was attended by a host of pompously titled attendants, puffed out by gigantic turbans sprayed with jewels and egret feathers. In a year or two he would be promoted through a covert bribe, or recalled to the capital to face some trumped-up charge and execution.” In any case, all too late, the ancient overland routes along which the city had flourished for so long were drying up as commerce took the longer but cheaper way around the Cape. “The khans have become markets of silence. They deal in local fabrics and sheepskins and have fragmented into dingy shops. If their roofs crash in no-one will build them up again …. In winter a group of porters, puny as church mice, crouches over a fire by a pool. In summer a rare tourist gazes up perplexed by the interplay of arches, and goes away.”

The Crusades had filled Syria with intruding holy warriors whose behaviour often shocked and appalled the hard-bitten inhabitants. When they had finally been ejected by Saladin for several centuries only the rare European ventured to Damascus, recording his experiences in stories that were so fanciful they could only believed, if at all, because no-one was likely to check. But by the nineteenth century and its craze for Byronic romanticism The Levant was attracting a certain sort of ‘tourist’ of the day (“parcels of giddy boys” – and girls) , though a lot stauncher and often more wildly eccentric – Lady Chester Stanhope most famously - than ‘adventure weekenders’ on Tripadviser because Syria could be really dangerous even after the French and the English had set up consulates less for any friendly purposes than in an attempt to woo Turkey as an ally against the imaginary threat, Russia. Richard Burton was a brief British consul until he failed to be ‘rigorous’ enough. Isabel Burton was in ecstasies over dashing desert gallants who saw her only as a figure of fun, whereupon she took up ladylike airs dispensing charity to the deserving poor and so was largely responsible for losing her husband his job. Jane Digby was infatuated enough to marry a sheik, learn to milk camels and accompany raiding parties, but she was an exception to every standard and rich enough to buy a large house outside the city and fill it with ormolu and buhl furniture. Other accounts from less favoured temporary residents were less enthusiast and few of them lingered. By the end of the nineteenth century, Romanticism being past, Thomas Cook was at work. “Files of immaculate men and bonneted women – Cookiyeh, as the Arabs called them – could be seen tripping along the street called straight”. Americans were quick to follow. Mark Twain, equipped with a towel and a bar of soap to inspire respect in the Arabs, thought “the Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest-looking villains we have seen.” Then he caught cholera which didn’t help, allegedly introduced from Istanbul in clothes ransacked from corpses when the local textile manufactories for which Damascus had been famous simply stopped operating. A French family arrived on a carpet-buying expedition. During a trip to the desert they were stripped of all their belongings except for the carpets, which the Arabs recognised as worthless imitations, and wrapped in those made their way back as well as they could. A railway line from Beirut opened the way to an even commoner horde. “The town is interesting but I wish we were in Chipping Candover all the same”. After 1914 tenement flats already overlooked the rivers of paradise.. “The Damascus markets are sadder than most, because the beauties of the past have degenerated rather than vanished. In the sickly contours of brass and coppers sit the ghosts of the handsome inlaid work from past centuries and the long-remembered damascene blades; and the souls of hundreds of old glaziers must be looking down dismayed at modern glass-work. For two hundred years, change has meant the ebb of artistry, changelessness a stagnant clinging to the past. At best the work of the old masters is slavishly reproduced. The crafts themselves, no longer utilitarian, dwindle into tourist trade.”

Thubron, evidently, was already chasing a dream. On Mezze, once beyond the city walls: “Families used to squat under the trees in summer, poring over the Koran and sipping tiny cups of coffee. Palaces and villas once looked down on the waters, and the gardens were heavy with fruit trees and famous for their roses. The perfumes of Mezze found their way to all Asia ……” Even half a century ago “the Beirut road crushed the river with noise. Willow trees grew dusty along its banks and the water flowed along a bed sprinkled with refuse. The ghost of the former village was harboured by a single grove of poplars and willow trees, where old men in tarboushes knelt at the hour of prayer among pots and coffee-cups. They were surrounded by transistor radios and children’s swings. If they sat too near the edge of the trees a passing lorry drenched them in fumes.” If Google-Earth is to be believed, Mezze now appears to be an ugly soulless suburb on the way to the airport with no sign of a river. It’s hard to resist an indignant rage at humanity’s blasphemy against the world given, as Muslims say, by God to Adam for his consolation and delight, against which afflicted catastrophes since seem as minor. If Damascene any longer means anything it’s only distantly for an association with fine steel, ‘elegant’ napery and a special kind of apricot

Well into his seventies Thubron says of this first work that it was “written with the passion of first love …hence, perhaps, (its) sense of first discovery, its delight in unfamiliar history, and the youthful excesses that occasionally make me blush now”. There’s nothing in it to give anyone any reason to blush, quite the contrary, it’s a prodigious piece of writing for a twenty-two year old, but it’s true that real ‘style’ takes a long time to develop and compared to his later books this one betrays the impressions of a very young man without quite revealing the reason for the ‘love’ – though that of course can be said of the raptures of any lover over any source to which they are directed. Here there’s a very interesting comparison with a similar work, William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns, the love affair from an even younger man with another great Asiatic city, Delhi, as old or older, one of the sites of the texts that make up the equivalent of the Hindu Bible and likewise an Islamic prize to be taken, sufficient to tempt me to visit (and return six times) that now vast metropolis in a way which is not aroused by reading about Damascus nor indeed about Samarkand or Bukhara. Dalrymple’s writing is not so beautiful, it’s more matter-of-fact and less studied, less distanced from its subject, equally scholarly and ‘patrician’ but not so ‘Etonian’, and it’s also more comical and sometimes affectionately mocking. The chief difference perhaps is that although Delhi too has had more of its share of catastrophes and degradation over many centuries it’s never been afflicted by wars on the Syrian scale, more of its past has continued alive and well, and also its more prosaic love ode was written over a much longer time and after subsequent visits, finally published when the author was no longer a boy. But Thubron’s rank as a magician of the invisible aesthetics of history remains unchallenged.

“In time a distressing logic will creep into the streets. The summers will be purged of fever. Each of Rahda’s children will have a room of his own. And the traveller will not wake again in a jasmine-scented night, to hear the sherbet-seller calling him to refresh his heart.”

[Graham Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timeless classic. Very elegant, eloquent and inspiring book that captured the essence of the city of Damascus in a moment in history. This book is very beautiful in its prose and style. I really enjoyed it.

[Gurpreet Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This by far is my all time favourite travelogue .
The book is extremely well written in fluid writing one that set me on to discover the Holy Land armed with this book travelling for 2 weeks all over Syria before the anarchists devastated it for ever .
Walking into monasteries high up in the mountains far away from road into deserts crumbling blocks from Roman times even finding mirrors when handled falling to pieces .
All wanderers need to lay their hands on this No1 . travelogue of recent decades .
Every word worth gold ..beautiful beautiful if only we could read such works more often

[Svetla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Изключително интересна книга, беше повече като история на цяла Сирия, а не само Дамаск. Беше любопитно да се научат всички факти и истории за развитието на града, както и личните преживявания на автора. Имаше доста исторически факти, които може да се окажат натоварващи за хора, незаинтересовани чак толкова от историческата гледна точка, но според мен така се придава пълна картина. Книгата е написана много хубаво и слушателят/читателят има чувството, че се е пренесъл на мястото. Като приказка е! Хареса ми много!

[Frank Jacobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fears that the ravages of Syria's civil war would have subtracted relevance from Thubron's 1960s love letter to Damascus proved unfounded; if anything, the recurring cycle of pomp and tragedy animating the history of the oldest city in the world is surprisingly instructive of the current conflict – but one shudders to think how many of the temples, monuments and mosques so lovingly described in this book will have been reduced to rubble when the fighting stops.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive history of Damascus up to the mid 1960s. Beautifully written, and poignant today in the light of the war in Syria.

[Ivelina Petleshkova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Един от най добрите разказвачи!

[Mariana · Rating 3 out of 5]

По-малко пътепис и повече разказ за историята на Дамаск, книгата остави в мен усет за хаос. И въпреки това онзи невидим дух на приказките от 1001 нощи те обгръща и омайва през цялото време.

[Scrooge McDuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought a 1990 edition not long after it was published and my leather book marker was still there - about a third of the way through - when I picked the book up again several days ago. I have the perseverance now to finish the book today which I did not possess over thirty years ago. What stopped me then and remains my issue with the book is that it is a history book masquerading as a travel book. Not having footnotes hobbles it as a work of history and his choice of words - "malicent" instead of "thin" to describe a cat - makes the narrative still more hobbled. Thubron lacks the easy familiarity that someone like, say, Paul Theroux has with his characters. His interactions seems almost third-person. The result is that it fails both as history and travel book. So while it's not a great book it's a very decent book - and given the author's high regard, I'm guessing his later works found a balance that this early work is lacking.

[Tracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book, and i will seek out more Colin Thubron books. The history of Damascus is amazing, and it is beautifully structured.
I abandoned it because i realised it was written in 1967, not 1996 as i thought when i bought it. The history is fascinating, but i was interested in the life of the city. When i realised it was written over 40 years ago, and with everything that has happened in Syria since, i realised it could no longer be a true Mirror to Damascus. Plus, my mind wandered to other books i have on my shelf that people have lent me and probably want back at some time so this one has to go.
This is a personal.prioritisation and absolutely no reflection on the beauty of this book

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Colin Thubron's 1st travel book and ties in well with his two other books written in the same time period on Lebanon and Cyprus. However, while those books integrate history and walking more, this book seems bogged down in history. It is easy to see how it would happen when visiting the oldest city in the world. The book is strong when when he tries to find the many layers of its history and how it shows up in the current built or social landscape of the city. Still, far too often, his history lessons take over and the current city fades from view. The book includes no map, only a timeline, so maybe it was meant to be more of a history than a geography/travel book.

[Rrlgrrl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating travelogue -- the copy I purchased was the 50th anniversary edition, and the author provided a separate preface with an update of what is happening in Damascus now. The history of the city is well summarized up to the 1950s, and provides a unique look into the lives of the peoples living there.

[Chris F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably one of the best travel books, when in storytelling mode I find Thubron compelling, when you're 5 pages into his description of the brickwork on a historical site, less so. for those that enjoy both it's a 5* and it's nearly that for me, Thubron is able to effortlessly transport you into almost any story of any period within the city.

[JoeB · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical piece of travel writing intertwined with an accessible introduction to the history of Damascus--from mythical foundation to the late 60s. The historical sections are almost always engaging and the inclusion of local characters etc drives the whole narrative forward.

[Neil Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Thubron’s earlier books. It’s apparent to me his style of writing was still developing, and it’s a little staccato at times, but there are numerous lyrical passages that leap off the page and transport you to Damascus!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with all of his books it gets bogged down in obscure annals of history that I am not interested enough to wage through. However, when he’s writing from experience it’s wonderful and his skills as a writer are extraordinary

[Alex Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ok book. Listened to the audio book and it wasn't the easiest listen - probably better as a read.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top travel writer who takes you there and great history lesson as well