THE NEW OLD CITY

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Nostalgia, representation and gentrification in

historic Damascus

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Christa Salamandra

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Twenty years ago, a sophisticated Damascene might never have ventured into the
Old City of Damascus, a place then associated with peasants, tourists and the
backwardness of the past. Today that same urbanite, whose parents or grandparents abandoned the Old City and all it stood for, spends long leisure hours in this
former backwater. The citys walled residential quarters have become an evening
destination for well-heeled classes. Damascenes and others experience the Old
City through a variety of expressive cultural forms and new leisure practices. Ties
to an elite Damascus, genuine or spurious, have become cultural capital in a
context of rapid social change and an emphasis on public image and display. The
Old City itself, two decades ago a nether-region, is now a source of local authenticity for Damascenes at home and abroad, who boast of its glory to foreigners
and Syrians alike. Against a global context with a high premium on local cultures,
this chapter demonstrates how Old Damascus has become a status marker, and
how heritage celebration and commodification, and the alternative modernity
they reflect and produce, serve as modes of an invidious social distinction.

The changing Old City

The walled Old City of Damascus is considered the worlds oldest continuously
inhabited urban structure, with textual mention appearing as early as the 11th
century bce . Damascus flourished as a major commercial centre under the
Romans and Byzantines, and a few centuries later served as seat of the Islamic
Umayyad Empire stretching across North Africa and encompassing the Iberian
Peninsula. The city retained its prominence even after the gravity of imperial
Islam shifted to Baghdad in the 8th century, remaining a key stopping point on
pilgrimage routes to Mecca, and later serving as an Ottoman provincial administrative centre. As the early 20th centurys beating heart of Arab nationalism

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(qalb al-uruba al-nabid ), the citys old quarters became wellsprings of anti-colonial
activism, and for Damascus distracters, the Ottoman and French Mandate eras
are remembered for Damascene collusion.
The 20th-century city forms a barometer of shifting identity. For elites of
newly independent Syria, a colonialist-inculcated taste for modern lifestyle spurred
a migration from the winding narrow lanes and inward-looking courtyard houses
enclosed within the Old City walls. Western-style apartment buildings sprang up
along wide new boulevards stretching towards Mount Qassiuns slopes. Elegant
shopping districts serviced these new neighbourhoods. For established urbanites,
Old Damascus became superfluous, left to waves of poor rural migrants. The elite
aesthetic compass pointed towards Europe.
Beginning in the late 1980s, a cultural reorientation, a return to the old
( awda li al-qadim ) brought restaurants to the Old Citys largely residential
Christian quarters. Set in refurbished merchant houses, these establishments
abandon the western or continental model that inspired generations of
Damascus restaurants. Instead, they aim to provide a dining experience that is
deliberately Eastern and beyond this, distinctively Damascene. These new
leisure sites join an outpouring of nostalgic memoirs, art exhibits and television
dramas in invoking an elite urban memory, representing a localism that had
been, during previous, nationalist-imbued generations, both intellectually
dclass and politically taboo.
The opening of restaurants in Old Damascus reflects the growth of modern
sensibilities through the embrace of new leisure practices. Once an integral part
of communal life, leisure activities are now privatized and commodified, with
dining out now the most popular pastime among the citys elite. Humbler places
have mushroomed as well, offering the dining out experience to families of
harried working women. Yet only two decades ago, restaurant going was largely
restricted to foreigners, travellers and students. Dining was a homebound,
family-centred activity, and dining out in Damascus, as in much of the Middle
East, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In just over a decade, Old City restaurants became central to the experience of past and present, near and far, seeing
and being seen, being and becoming.
One of the oldest and best-known of these is Le Piano Bar, serving alcohol,
grilled chicken and spaghetti to karaoke-singing patrons. It is an ironic hodgepodge of past and present, with jazz instruments and wrought iron musical notes
displayed alongside local handicrafts. A less self-conscious and more elaborate
reconstruction of the past is the Omayyad Palace Restaurant, in what is said to
be the vaulted basement of the long-destroyed Umayyad Palace in the Qaymariyya
quarter. The diner is ushered down a carpet-lined staircase into a cavern lavishly
decorated with numerous carpets, a bubbling fountain, plants hanging from
skylights, patterned marble floor, mother-of-pearl inlaid and brocade-upholstered chairs, low brass tables, locally blown glass, copper urns and glass cases
fi lled with pottery, scarves and old photographs. Waiters in baggy black trousers,
black and silver striped shirts made from local cloth, fezzes and imitation

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Docksider shoes serve drinks. The evening begins with a folklore troupe dancing
to taped music. The dancing continues for half an hour, then patrons are invited
to an extensive, almost exclusively oriental buffet. Tea, coffee and hubble
bubbles arrive after the meal, as a traditional band, dressed in jalabiya-s and
fezzes plays old songs. Whirling dervishes and Sufi music round off the evening.
A restaurant heavily frequented for the afternoon meal, ghada traditionally
Syrias heaviest is the Old Damascus. Located in the upper story of a building
in the Old City Muslim quarter of al-Amara, it serves the standard Syrian restaurant fare of mezza or muqabilat (an elaborate array of hot and cold starters) and
grilled meat, as well as the stews and grains that are the mainstay of Damascene
home cooking. It is decorated in the marbles, painted and carved wood and inlay
that would seem quintessentially Damascene. In Old City theme restaurants such
as the Old Damascus and the Omayyad Palace, objects once tied to a set of
kinship-based practices and religious rituals are aestheticized, set up as dcor
and sold as an experience of the imagined past. The modernity of such an experience is obvious; nothing could be less truly Old Damascene than a restaurant
meal. But through leisure practices such as restaurant-going, Syrians become
linked to a new community of fellow dinners, all sampling the authentic tastes,
sights and sounds of commodified heritage.
At the end of 1994, Le Piano Bar, Old Damascus and the Omayyad Palace
along with the oldest but overshadowed Abu al-Izz were the only restaurants
in Old Damascus. By early 1996, six more had opened, all in Christian areas. The
2000s saw many new additions to this burgeoning restaurant scene, and by 2011,
the Ministry of Tourism listed ninety Old City eateries. The tasteful Elissar,
named for the Phoenician queen of Carthage, remains a favourite. Leilas
Restaurant and Terrace offers spectacular night-time views of the cityscape from
the Umayyad Mosque. Bayt Jabri combines Damascene comfort food with an
Internet room (Figures 7.1 and 7.2). Al-Barjees is named after an old-fashioned
game played with shells on an embroidered cloth. In 2007 the glass-fronted
Naranj broke the courtyard model, serving a gentrified local cuisine and
becoming the hottest in-spot. A handful of nightclubs, such as the celebrity
haunt Marmar, extend revelry into the wee hours. On the heels of this nightlifedriven transformation, artists have recently opened galleries in the old Jewish
quarter (Harat al-Yahud). Old Damascus also hosts tourists in some twenty
boutique hotels, including Shahbandar Palace (Figure 7.3).
Such commercialized representations of Old Damascus are not limited to the
Old City itself. Over the two past decades Old Damascus theme restaurants and
cafs have sprung up in elite districts of the new city. These include the very
casual and inexpensive Shamiyyat, a basement eatery just off the elegant Abu
Rummana Boulevard. Old Damascus is evoked here by means of painted faux
wood panelling, brass coffee pots and baskets and other old-fashioned kitchen
implements that adorn its ceiling and walls. Serving hearty Damascene stews and
mezza 24 hours a day, Shamiyyat is a favourite of office workers and researchers
from the nearby French Institute. A few yards away is the more elegant

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78 Christa Salamandra

Entrance to Bayt Jabri Restaurant (photo by Laith Hajjo)

FIGURE 7.1

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Dimashqiyyah, with its white and gold faade, and its waiters in traditional
costume.
Bows to the past also appear in the citys older upscale establishments. The
Meridien Hotel created Caf Tric Trac, a mosaic-fi lled garden caf popular for
water-pipe smoking and backgammon and card playing on summer evenings.
The Damascus Sheraton, once the citys most elegant hotel, and favourite haunt
of local elites, has most fully exploited the Old Damascus theme. Al-Narabayn,
built on the hotel grounds, is an upscale version of al-Nawfara, the traditional
caf behind the Umayyad Mosque in the Old City. In the summer, al-Narabayn
moves outdoors, becoming al-Nawafi r, a name reminiscent of al-Nawfara. In

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Interior of Bayt Jabri Restaurant (photo by Laith Hajjo)

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FIGURE 7.2

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The new Old City: Historic Damascus

FIGURE 7.3

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The Shahbandar Palace Hotel (photo by Laith Hajjo)

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these establishments, families and teenagers pay exorbitant prices for coffee, tea
and simple foods long associated with the poor. Patrons pass long hours, buffed,
coiffed and glittering in gold, talking and playing backgammon. Tables are fi lled
with al-masulin, the officials, the powerful and well-connected. Unlike other
leisure activities, such as cinema or theatre, restaurant-going provides a prolonged
gaze of the other.1 It is an experience of heritage combining an authentic atmosphere with the creation and reaffi rmation of the status hierarchies and social
relations long central to Damascene life.
Old Damascus restaurants and cafs, both in the Old City itself and elite
neighbourhoods beyond its walls, are a distinctly local phenomena. Foreign
expatriates and tourists visit these eateries, but most frequent patrons are Syrian.
The countrys tourist industry alone would be far too small to sustain the large
number of successful Old City theme establishments that have sprung up in
Damascus since the 1990s. Yet the popularity of these restaurants among
Damascenes and other Syrians should not be seen as a rejection of the nonDamascene, the foreign and the western. Rather, constructions of local culture
are taking their place, self-consciously, among global cultures, with Caf Tric
Trac literally next to the Meridiens Mexican restaurant, and al-Narabayn next to
the Sheratons pizzeria. Such cosmopolitanism, involving a command of both
local and foreign idioms, has long been a mark of social distinction for Syrian
elites. What is new is its expression in public culture, in the development of
leisure sites, in the commodification of the local among global references.

The myth of return?

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Cultural expressions of nostalgia for the Old City involve an element of irony: all
prominent Old Damascus activists and aficionados live in elite districts of new
Damascus; few express any desire to move back to the Old City. The Damascene
house, for them, is unsuitable for modern living and expensive to maintain.
Some argue that they left the Old City forcibly and would return if they could,
others that it would be risky to relocate to Old Damascus because of plans to
destroy it. While most Damascenes do not want to live in the Old City themselves, they do want it inhabited. This attitude prompts criticism from those who
feel excluded by the old urban elitism.
While not a resettlement, Old Damascus revivalism marks an affective and
politically charged returning. It is linked to transformations in Syrian polity and
society during the second half of the 20th century. Until the early 1960s, a
number of notable Sunni Muslim Damascene families with long roots in the
city dominated social, economic and political life in much of the country. With
the rise of the Bath Party, political power largely shifted to a rural military elite
dominated by members of the Alawi sect, a distant offshoot of Shiite Islam,
who hail from the rural coast. They were joined by other rising classes whose
fortunes often exceeded those of the old notables. Damascenes were forced to do
business with this new ruling elite, dominated by their former subordinates.

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They now serve them in the very heart of elite urban culture: the Damascene
merchant house-turned-restaurant.

Representing Old Damascus

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Images of the Old City abound in contemporary cultural imaginings. Today,

motifs of bygone splendour, contrasted with contemporary degradation, permeate
documentary exhibitions of Damascus. Annual photographic exhibits commemorating local historian Khalid Moaz are held at the Arab Cultural Centre in Abu
Rummaneh. The memorial of 1992 displayed photographs of the Suq Saruja
quarter by well-known Damascene artists. The 1994 exhibit was devoted to
Lanes and Alleyways. In 1993, Gardens and Orchards of Damascus featured
photographs taken by Moaz in the 1930s and 1940s, and the same sites photographed by his son, architectural historian Abd al-Razzaq, in the 1980s and
1990s. For example, an image of a sheikhs tomb surrounded by trees was juxtaposed with a photograph of the same tomb dwarfed by concrete construction,
vividly illustrating the citys aesthetic deterioration.
A more imaginary Old Damascus is a favourite theme for several visual artists.
Asma al-Fayumi has painted an impressionistic Old City of vivid shades of blue,
with stylized figures of large-eyed young women and white peace doves characteristic of contemporary Arab painting. Mahmud Jalal al-Asha has created bas
relief sculptures of Old Damascene scenes with layers of wood. These highcultural expressions of Old City nostalgia are the preserve of an urban intelligentsia. They are exceeded in popularity by television miniseries (musalsalat )
evoking an imaginary, idyllic Damascene past through dramas set in the early
20th century. The recent five-part blockbuster The Neighborhood Gate (Bab
al-Hara ), by Damascene director Bassam al-Malla, has introduced Arabicspeaking audiences to the citys courtyard houses, winding streets and lilting
dialect. The series romanticizes a bygone era with slice-of-life depictions of antiquated customs and traditions, and valiant acts of anti-colonial resistance. The
old quarter appears an idyll of social harmony and mutual assistance. The contrast
between this fanaticized past and the contemporary condition emerged in discussions of the series. Here nostalgia serves as tactic; criticism of the present, which
Damascenes do not control, need never be made explicit. While the Syrian state
may permit such programmes as national culture, their reception by audiences
differently placed within the nation reflects a divisive localism.2

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Conservation
The government agency established in 1986 to direct the Old Citys study,
preservation and conservation is the Committee for the Preservation of the Old
City of Damascus (Lajnat Himayat Madinat Dimashq al-Qadima), a division of
the Governorate of Damascus (Muhafazat Dimashq). This group of engineers
oversees additions and repairs to private houses as well as the protection and

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reconstruction of monuments. The committee is headquartered in the lavish

Maktab Anbar, once an exclusive school educating young men of the Damascene
elite. Twice a month the Committee meets with representatives from governmental foundations, ministries and the organization Friends of Damascus.
According to director Muhammad Bashar al-Jibban, the Committee does its best
to balance the stylistic integrity of Old Damascus with the demands of modernization. Yet Old City activists express frustration with the Committees failure to
protect large areas of Old Damascus. They note that while it has been somewhat
successful in protecting buildings within the Old City walls, much Old City
architecture, like the quarter of al-Qanawat and the largely destroyed Suq Saruja,
lies beyond the Committees jurisdiction.
For many Damascenes, celebrating the Old City is a form of resistance against
a political elite whom they blame for Damascus supposed deterioration. Such
group self-aggrandizement is a common feature of urban social confl ict. Many
Old Damascus supporters are not among the citys wealthiest citizens, and do not
represent marriages of new money and old status. Many are intellectually orientated upper-middle-class professionals lawyers, doctors and journalists with
comfortable, but in no way extravagant, lifestyles. Their families usually have
long-established roots in the city; their names are well known and often associated with Damascene exclusivity. Yet they are not always members of the old
notable families. Many feel no sense of identification with businessmen some
are themselves from old notable families whom they blame for working along
with the government to destroy the Old City.
This changed political affi liation is often pointed to by critics of the Old
Damascus trend as evidence of typical Damascene weakness of character. As Elias
and Scotson note, once the power differentials between groups diminish, stigmatized outsiders retaliate.3 Non-Damascenes hold that the Damascenes have
always had a mercantile mentality, backing whoever was in power as long as they
were left to conduct business peacefully. Alawis in particular like to point out
that they themselves comprise much of the opposition, and the political prison
population. While they take on the dirty and dangerous business of politics, they
argue, the Damascenes focus on making money. Although they no longer hold
the reins of political power, Damascenes remain associated with control over
resources. For non-Damascenes, these merchant princes of Damascus, as an
Alawi professor put it, still control the commercial sector. Among these enterprises are those that, like Old Damascus theme restaurants, commodify and celebrate the city, its people and its heritage, forming a symbolic economy that
creates an experience of place,4 and evokes an imagined past, available to some
but inaccessible to many.

Conclusion
Damascenes who decades ago left their traditional homes for European-style flats
outside its walls are returning to Old Damascus in quintessentially modern ways.

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Notes

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They are reclaiming the Old City, physically, by promoting the preservation and
conservation of its quarters and establishing and frequenting leisure sites such as the
Piano Bar. They are also recreating an idealized Old Damascus and the social
connections it once supposedly embodied, through forms of public culture. Old
City-themed art exhibits and other events of reimagining provide narratives of
social identity that run counter to the nominally inclusive constructions of the state.
Unlike Beirut, where excluded groups lobbied for their own versions of heritage in
the post-war reconstruction,5 contestation over Damascus remains a muted, oblique
discourse in the Syrian police state. Nostalgia practices, and excluded groups reactions to them, become modes of contestation, as various social actors vie over prestige and recognition in a context of shifting values. Old Damascus, as both physical
space and imagined ideal, forms a significant cleavage dividing the different groups
sharing the city and the nation. Selective consumption and rejection of Old
Damascus is the stuff of boundary construction and reconstruction.
The case of Old Damascus revivalism reminds us that heritage celebration and
preservation, often undertaken in the guise of the national good, can become
powerful forms of social exclusion. Urbanrural fault lines, and the class and
sectarian identifications that inform them, are becoming ever more salient, as
elites of Damascus and Aleppo largely fail to join their provincial brethren in
anti-regime demonstrations. The lessons of Old Damascus and its representations
for heritage movements in sister Asian cities are clear: attention must be paid to
socio-political interests served, and those neglected.

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This chapter is drawn from A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban
Syria, Indiana University Press, 2004.

1 J. Finkelstein, Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, New York: New York
University Press, 1989, p. 17.
2 C. Salamandra, Moustache hairs lost: Ramadan television serials and the construction
of identity in Damascus, Syria, Visual Anthropology, vol. 10, nos 24, 1998, pp 22746;
C. Salamandra, A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Arab television drama production in the
satellite era, in D. I. Rios and M. Castaneda (eds) Soap Operas and Telenovelas in the
Digital Age: Global Industries, Hybrid Content, and New Audiences, New York: Peter Lang,
2011, pp. 27590.
3 N. Elias and J. L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders, London: Sage, 1994, p. xvi.
4 . Potuo lu-Cook, Beyond the glitter: Belly dance and neoliberal gentrification in
Istanbul, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 4, 2006, pp 63360; S. Zukin, The Cultures
of Cities, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
5 A. Sawalha, Reconstructing Beirut: Memory and Space in a Postwar Arab City, Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2010.

Further reading
Bianco, S., Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, London : Thames and Hudson,
2000

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Elsheshtawy, Y., The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development,
London : Routledge, 2011
Isenstadt, S. and Kishwar, R. (eds), Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics
in the Twentieth Century, Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2008
Kanna, A., Dubai: The City as Corporation, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press,
2011
Mills, A., Streets of Memory: Landscape, Memory and National Identity in Istanbul, Athens :
University of Georgia Press, 2010
Slyomovics, S. (ed.), The Walled Arab City in Literature, Architecture and History: The Living
Medina in the Maghrib, London : Routledge, 2001
Weber, S., Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation (18081918), 2 Vols.
Aarhus : Aarhus University Press, 2010

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