Damascus

A sweeping history of Islamic Damascus across eight centuries, following the itineraries of generations of Damascenes as they walked through their city describing it in text.

Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was a capital of the first Islamic empire, and it grew as a center of global trade, a celebrated producer of artisanal goods, a setting for magnificent architecture and monuments, a leafy landscape of outdoor diversions, and a hub of knowledge and scholarly exchange. Damascus inspired generations of its learned elite to write about their city, sustaining a continuous textual conversation and citation among them, from the twelfth through the twentieth century. With this book, Dana Sajdi carries forward that tradition of prose descriptions of Damascus, guiding readers through both the texts and the city they portray.

Organized around literary walking tours through the built and natural environments of Damascus, this book explores eight hundred years of the Islamic city. With the authors of prose topographies as companions and their texts as guides, each chapter is a visit to a building or a part of the city, exploring the conditions of its emergence and development. The stories about these Damascene spaces also reveal the politics of the authors who described them, showing the scholars' roles as the city's representatives, guardians, and ultimately, defenders.

Damascus: A City in Words is the first book in English that explores all the major features of the city from its central landmark, the Umayyad Mosque, to its verdant hinterland, al-Ghuta, while listening to how its inhabitants, over the centuries, wished us to remember their beloved city.