It is in the horse market that men foregather to trade and gossip or to enjoy a cooling drink from such a bottle as is shown here
“O Allah, send customers,” cry the bread sellers in Damascus, as they squat in the street with their stock and scales
The beautiful rugs of the Orient are all hand-made, from carding and spinning the wool to the long months of weaving in the lovely patterns. But there is more time in the East than we hustling Westerners ever find
Damascus lies on the eastern side of the Lebanon Mountains about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Jerusalem, and, as the crow flies, about fifty-three miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It is an oasis city surrounded by deserts. It is fed by two cold, clear rivers flowing out of great springs in the mountains of Lebanon and making green this sandy plain in which they are lost. These rivers are the Abana and Pharpar of the Bible. You remember how Naaman, the leper, referred to them when Elisha told him to go and wash in the Jordan seven times and his flesh would be clean. Whereupon Naaman replied:
“Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage.
You remember also how one of his servants told Naaman that Elisha was asking a little thing of him and how he then went down and bathed in the murky Jordan, “and his flesh came again, like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”
As we stand on the hill of Mohammed at the northwest end of the city and look at Damascus we do not wonder at Naaman’s contempt of the Jordan. We have seen that the latter is a winding, rocky, semi-alkaline stream which flows through a desert, the great gorge or depression of Ghor. It has a scanty vegetation along its banks and flows through a valley of death to the great salt sea known as “The Dead.” The Abana, or Barada, as it is now called, and the Pharpar, now called Barber, are pure mountain streams. The former is one of the most beautiful of the whole world. I have travelled along it almost to its source. It is a rushing river of pure, clear green water which spreads life over all that it touches. Together with the Barber it makes green the great plain which lies below us and builds up the orchards of almonds, apricots, apples, and the rich crops which cover it, as well as the white city of Damascus rising in its centre.