DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5073#0318
DAMASCUS.
307
renowned a city to look grand; indeed, I have heard
persons who have come back from a hurried visit to
Damascus, declaring that " the whole town was built of
mud -■- nothing but mud walls eveiywhere ! "—they had
only glanced at the exterior, and did not perceive that
there were well-built stone walls beneath the mud,— a
strange, anomalous taste in our eyes, but the invariable
Eastern custom : as soon as the stone wall is completed,
it is covered with a coating of mud, which hides all its
solid goodness, and which looks tattered and miserable as
soon as it begins to peel. The new houses are being
built with handsome projecting windows, opening on to
the streets, and the gaily painted and gilt lattices are
extremely pretty; but this is quite a modern and un-
usual innovation; in general, the long lanes wind about
between high or low walls, but all quite blind, except
for occasional insignificant doorways, topped with one
small bit of carving, and an apology for a window stuck
m here and there, seldom anything better than a rough
hole or a long slit closely covered over by a ragged
wooden lattice.
But stop at one of these miserable little doors (that
is, if you are fortunate enough to have so good an intro-
duction to the inmates as we found in the English
missionary Mr. Eobson), and let us see what is within-
side. A little room, or half dark passage, leads into a
small open court with a fountain and a leevjan (a recess
always on the north side of every court, furnished with a
divan, the salon used by the inhabitants of the sleeping
rooms which surround the three other sides of the court) :
this is occupied by the servants of the household; and
from this another passage admits you into a much larger
court, always paved with coloured marbles, and with
°ue or more fountains shaded by pomegranates, lemon,
X 2
307
renowned a city to look grand; indeed, I have heard
persons who have come back from a hurried visit to
Damascus, declaring that " the whole town was built of
mud -■- nothing but mud walls eveiywhere ! "—they had
only glanced at the exterior, and did not perceive that
there were well-built stone walls beneath the mud,— a
strange, anomalous taste in our eyes, but the invariable
Eastern custom : as soon as the stone wall is completed,
it is covered with a coating of mud, which hides all its
solid goodness, and which looks tattered and miserable as
soon as it begins to peel. The new houses are being
built with handsome projecting windows, opening on to
the streets, and the gaily painted and gilt lattices are
extremely pretty; but this is quite a modern and un-
usual innovation; in general, the long lanes wind about
between high or low walls, but all quite blind, except
for occasional insignificant doorways, topped with one
small bit of carving, and an apology for a window stuck
m here and there, seldom anything better than a rough
hole or a long slit closely covered over by a ragged
wooden lattice.
But stop at one of these miserable little doors (that
is, if you are fortunate enough to have so good an intro-
duction to the inmates as we found in the English
missionary Mr. Eobson), and let us see what is within-
side. A little room, or half dark passage, leads into a
small open court with a fountain and a leevjan (a recess
always on the north side of every court, furnished with a
divan, the salon used by the inhabitants of the sleeping
rooms which surround the three other sides of the court) :
this is occupied by the servants of the household; and
from this another passage admits you into a much larger
court, always paved with coloured marbles, and with
°ue or more fountains shaded by pomegranates, lemon,
X 2