Damascus

DAMASCUS. - Chief city of Syria, since 1946 the capital of the independent Syrian Republic. It currently has 346,000 inhabitants.

I. HISTORY

The name is Ti-mas-qu or Di-mas-qu in the temple of Karnak, Dimalq in an inscription of Shalmaneser II (A. Amiaud and V. Scheil, Les inscriptions de Salmanassar II, Paris 1890, p. 6), Di-ma-af-qa or Di-maf-qa in the Amarna letters; in biblical Hebrew it is Dammééq, but the Aramaic form is Darmééq in I Chron. 18, 5 and II Chron. 16, 2; 24, 23; 28, 5, 23; the Talmudic Darmééq, Darmééq; the Greek Δαμασκός. In Arabic it is Dimaq or af-Sam. According to the tradition recorded by Flavius Josephus, D. would have been founded by Uz (Gen. 10, 23), son of Aram (Antiq. Iud., I, 6, 4). It was conquered in the 16th century B.C. by Tuthmosis III. Abraham pursued Amraphel and his allies as far as the north of D.; his steward Eliezer was from D. (Gen. 14, 15; 15, 2).

According to letters 197 and 53 of el-'Amārnah, in the violent contest that was taking place between Egypt and the Hittites for influence over the intermediate countries, Ettaqma, prince of Qadeš on the Orontes and Hittite chief, attacked the region of D. But Egypt reestablished its influence. The power of the Hittites, however, grew until Ramses II won the battle of Qadeš (1294). D. is included in a list of Ramses III (1200-1163) among the cities he subdued. But the weakening of Egypt became more pronounced, as, on the other hand, happened with the Hittites. As a consequence of this, D. was able to enjoy a certain independence. David subdued the Aram (v.) of D.; however, under the reign of Solomon D., through the agency of Rezon, became independent again (II Sam. 8, 5-9; I Kings 11, 23-26). Asa, king of Judah, sought and obtained an alliance against Baasha (v.), king of Israel, with Ben-hadad, son of Tabrimmon, son of Hezion (in the Septuagint: Εὐρῶμ), who then incorporated the northern provinces of Israel into his Damascene kingdom (I Kings 15, 18-20), and had a quarter in Samaria (I Kings 20, 34). Ben-hadad II (Adad-idri of the cuneiform texts), defeated by Ahab king of Israel, restored the provinces that his father had taken from Baasha and granted a quarter or emporium to D. (I Kings 20).

Shalmaneser II (860-825) resumed the campaign against D. that his father Aššur-nāšir-apli had begun and found several forces allied against him, among them Adad-idri or Ben-hadad, king of D., and Ahab, king of Israel. These forces are enumerated on the monolith of Shalmaneser II; from which it appears (line 96 ff.) that victory fell to the Assyrians. Once the coalition was dissolved, Ahab with Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, attacked the king of D. Ben-hadad at Ramoth of Gilead, but fared worse (I Kings 22). Ben-hadad, however, remained defeated in Shalmaneser II's campaign against Syria that took place in 849, and whose events are narrated on the obelisk of Nimrūd. Also in the campaign of 846, Shalmaneser II inflicted on the king of D. and his allies a disastrous defeat.

During the reign of Joram (853-842) Ben-hadad II made war on Israel, but, through a miracle of Elisha, had to beat a retreat. Later he laid siege to Samaria, but this time too a miraculous intervention put him to flight (II Kings 6 and 7). The change of dynasty at D. carried out by Hazael (II Kings 8, 7-15) is attested by inscriptions of Shalmaneser II and by an inscription carved on an ivory plaque. Against Hazael, Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah made war, but were defeated (II Kings 8, 28, 29). Hazael in 842 and 839 withstood the shock of two Assyrian expeditions, which spread terror and devastation.

Under Jehu of Israel, Hazael attacked the kingdom of Israel on all its frontiers (II Kings 10, 32 ff.), and attacked the kingdom of Judah under Joash, who, to propitiate him, sent him all the treasures accumulated by himself and his ancestors in the Temple and the palace (II Kings 12, 17 ff.). Once the Assyrian campaigns against Syria had ceased, Zakir, who had organized the kingdom of Ḥamāh, was attacked by Ben-hadad III, son of Hazael, and by his allies, who were beaten. Then Joash, son of Jehoahaz of Israel, recovered from D. the cities that Hazael had taken from his father (II Kings 13, 25). Toward the end of the 9th century B.C. the Assyrian Adad-nirāri III defeated Mari king of D. and made him a vassal.

Later, Jeroboam II of Israel (785-745) took other lands from D. (II Kings 14, 24-28). Rezin (Hebr. Rēšīn), king of D., allied himself with Pekah (Peqah), king of Israel, ca. 734 and made war on Ahaz (v.) of Judah, who asked help from Tiglath-pileser III. The latter devastated D. and deported its citizens (II Kings 16, 5-9).

Under the Persians, D. was one of the most illustrious cities of Syria, as Strabo attests (XVI); Darius, before the battle of Issus (333 B.C.), sent his family and his treasure to D. to put them in safety. Once Syria was occupied by the Macedonians, D. was governed by Parmenion, after whom it belonged to the Seleucids, who, however, took Antioch as their capital. Antiochus XII Dionysus, brother of Demetrius Eucaerus, was defeated by Aretas III, king of the Arabs, who in 85 B.C. became king of D. and of all Coele-Syria (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XIII, 15, 1-2;

Bell. Ind., I, 4, 7-8). For the Romans, D. was conquered by Metellus (Antiq. Ind., XIV, 2, 3; Bell. Ind., I, 6, 2); in 64 B.C. Pompey received there the sumptuous gifts of the Egyptians, the Jews and the Syrians (Antiq. Ind., XIV, 3, 1) and in 63 B.C. Syria was made a Roman province.

The Persians of Khosrow II occupied D. in 614 A.D. and afflicted it with sackings and deportations. But Heraclius, in the campaign of 622-29, took it from them. In 635 D. fell a first time into the hands of the Arabs, then definitively in 638. Unable to replace the Byzantine officials, the Muslim conquerors left them in their posts and Manṣūr b. Sarǧān, grandfather of St. John Damascene, continued to administer the finances. Muṣāwjah I was governor of D. from 638 to 660, the year in which he was elected caliph and transferred the capital of the caliphate to D. Under al-Walīd I (705-15), the removal of Christians from the public administration began, and under Marwān II D. ceased to be the capital.

From the philosophical-theological school of D. came St. Sophronius, St. Andrew of Crete, and, under the Arabs, St. John Damascene and his great disciple James of Edessa.

This school influenced Muslim culture and many Syrian Christians were at the court of the Umayyads. At the court of the 'Abbāsids, who had almost exterminated the Umayyads and scattered even the bones of all their dead, the Persians succeeded the Syrians. The revolt of an Umayyad (809-13), who occupied D. and a great part of Syria, was unsuccessful. Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn occupied Syria in 868 and died in 884. His dynasty died out in 905. After it, the dynasty of the Iḥāḍids (935-69) established itself at D. These were succeeded by the Fāṭimids of Egypt, who remained at D. until 1075, when the Turkish emir Atsīc conquered it for the Selǧūqids. The Crusaders besieged D. in 1148 for 5 days, but without success. In 1154 Nūr ad-dīn installed himself at D. without encountering resistance. He established schools and mosques there and made it a bulwark against the Crusaders. After his death (1174), Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-dīn), founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, who administered Egypt, also occupied D. The Christian Mongol Kitboghā then took D. for a short time, which in 1260 was taken from him by Bajbars, who began the series of the Mamluks, who, to prevent the return of the Crusaders, devastated the coastal cities. The Mamluks divided the country into twelve kingdoms or nijābāb (vicariates), of which D. was the center. The Mongol Tamerlane (1400-1401) occupied D.; after plundering it, and after deporting to Samarkand the greater part of the population, especially the artisans, he set fire to it and abandoned it.

In the midst of so many upheavals, intellectual activity was not lacking in D. There flourished Abū'l-Fidā' (d. 1331), Sama ad-dīn ad-Dimašqī (1327), Ṣafadī (1296), Ṣāliḥ b. Jahjā (1436), etc.

The Ottomans occupied D. in 1516. The territories of Syria were then divided into pāšālik or vilājet, subdivided into sanjaks. From 1832 to 1840 D. was under Egyptian rule. After the massacre of the Christians that occurred in 1860 and the European intervention that followed, Syria was in 1864 divided into two vilājet, subdivided into mutasarrifāt or prefectures, and these into qā'immaqāmāt or sub-prefectures. After the First World War, D. was under a French mandate.

Pietro Sfair

II. ARCHAEOLOGY. - Le memorie e i monumenti

The Christians of Damascus, as far as the apostolic age is concerned, are connected with the events of the conversion of St. Paul and his flight from the city (Acts 9:3-25). The "Straight Street" (ῥύμη εὐθεῖα, vicus rectus, in Arabic Darḥ al-mustaqīm), which crossed the city from east to west in accordance with the Roman grid plan of division into blocks, is still visible today in its course. Considerable remains survive of the double colonnade that flanked it, as in analogous cases at Palmyra and Gerasa. Along this street was the house of Judas, perhaps an inn, where Saul was taken after the blinding flash. The locations that learned tradition assigns to this house, in the western part of the street, and to that of Ananias, in which Saul was healed and received Baptism, on the north-eastern outskirts of the city, are not supported by direct evidence. Such evidence is likewise lacking with regard to the tower of the walls from which the Apostle's escape is said to have taken place, in the south-eastern sector of the circuit, and with regard to the supposed tomb of St. George, the soldier martyred for having aided the escape, situated opposite that same tower.

Clear archaeological evidence, including epigraphic, exists instead for the church of St. John the Baptist, situated in the northern part of the city and in which the relic of the Saint's head was preserved; in Roman times the building had been the sanctuary of Jupiter Damascenus, of a purely Eastern plan, consisting of two rectangular enclosures, of which the larger delimited a vast open square and the smaller enclosed the altar of sacrifices and the cella; it was transformed into a church under Theodosius I (379-95); according to an inscription now lost and considered false by H. Dussaud, it would have been restored by Arcadius (395-408). At the end of the 4th century there was a first transformation of the temple into a three-aisled church, of basilical type, built along the length of the southern wall of the small enclosure, whose three-bayed door became one of the entrances. There was then a definitive arrangement in the 5th century with a transept that divides the interior into two parts and brings about the closing of two bays of the southern door. This door was dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity, as appears from the two surviving Greek inscriptions carved on the first and second bay, taken from the Psalms and exalting the Father and the Son. Of interest is the fragment of a granite column, found at about 380 m. from the eastern door of the mosque, with a Greek inscription that establishes the limits of the right of asylum, formerly a privilege of the ancient pagan temples. The dedication of the Basilica to the Baptist probably dates back to the 5th century, but Dussaud considers it late and only slightly earlier than the Muslim conquest. In 705 the basilica was transformed into a mosque by the caliph al-Walid I. Notable are the wall mosaics, certainly the work of Byzantine artists of the period.

Luigi Maria Catteruccia

III. THE MARTYRS OF DAMASCUS

A group of eight Franciscans and three lay Maronites, killed for the faith at D. on the night between 9 and 10 July 1860. When the Mohammedan Druses, risen against the Christians, swept through the city, carrying out merciless massacres, they shut themselves up in their convent, barring the doors, trusting in the solidity of the walls. But a traitor let the persecutors in through a small door, which no one had thought of. Faced with the alternative of embracing Mohammed or losing their lives, all preferred death.

Their names are: Emanuel Ruiz, superior; the fathers: Carmelo Volta, Engelbert Kolland, Nicanor Ascanio, Peter Soler, Nicholas Alberca; the lay brothers: Francis Pinazo, John James Fernandez; the three lay Maronites, who remained with them and who were brothers: Francis, Abd-el-mooti, Raphael Massabki. They were beatified by Pius XI on 10 Oct. 1926. Feast on 10 July.

Celestino Testore

IV. DAMASCUS OF THE MARONITES

The series of Maronite bishops begins in 1527. In 1848 the archbishopric was restored. The archbishop of Damascus resides at 'Ašqut in Lebanon. The faithful, who constitute the most numerous group of Christians, number 32,000; the churches are 80; the parishes 57; the priests 107; the religious houses 22; the schools and institutes 38, besides several confraternities.

V. DAMASCUS OF THE MELKITES

According to a tradition which is not easy to verify, Ananias would have been the first bishop of D. The existence of an episcopal see is certain at least from the beginning of the 4th century. D. was the birthplace of the patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem, of St. Andrew of Crete and of St. John Damascene. Conquered by the Arabs in 635, it experienced persecutions against Christians and the destruction of the churches in 962.

In the 16th century the dissident patriarchs of Antioch came to reside in D., which had become the political center of Syria after the Turkish conquest. The Melkite Catholic patriarchs have resided in D. since 1834, although they often also live in Egypt. In D. there are 8,000 faithful, 13 parishes, 15 schools and institutes and several religious works.

VI. DAMASCUS OF THE SYRIANS

There has been a Syrian Catholic bishop in D. since 1633. Today the faithful number 2,000, distributed among 5 parishes and instructed in 4 schools.

Guglielmo de Vries