There are real merchant-princes in this busy trading-center, and some of them live in royal splendor. The houses of the Damascus rich are truly palatial; but the stranger would never guess it from their exteriors, for the Syrian home has no elaborate façade and pretentious approach, such as the Franks delight to build. The prime object of the architect is to achieve the most absolute retirement for his patron. No window ever looks into that of a neighboring residence; no passer-by ever glimpses through an opened door the interior of a private dwelling. If the Englishman’s house is his castle, the Syrian’s is his retreat.
You pass along a dirty alley to an insignificant wooden door in a high stone wall. Just inside is the porter’s cell; then comes a dark, vaulted passageway, which either has a sharp bend in it or else is screened at the farther end; then—
The open court which you enter may be three hundred feet across. Its tessellated pavement is of white marble inlaid with arabesques of darker stone. In the center is a fountain with designs of colored limestone set into its marble walls. Potted flowers bloom luxuriantly in the warm sunlight, and birds sing to the accompaniment of the splashing water. In the grateful shade of small fruit trees are placed bright rugs and soft cushions and tabarets made of rare woods inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The many lofty windows in the red and yellow striped walls of the surrounding dwelling are curtained with gorgeous silks.
At one side, usually the south, a spacious alcove reaches to the height of the second-story ceiling. This liwân, or drawing-room, is entirely open to the court; but its floor is raised a foot or two above the pavement outside, and its decorations are as rich and elaborate as if it were a huge, glittering jewel-box. No figures of men or animals are seen, for Moslems are forbidden to make representations of any living creature in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth;[34] yet it is astonishing what splendid effects are evolved by their architects from the limited elements of Arabic script, geometric designs, foliage, fruits and flowers. In the liwân this arabesque ornamentation is profuse and elegant. The lower walls are built of alternate layers of differently colored stones, into which are set mosaic panels as intricate in design as the priceless rugs which lie upon the marble pavement. The woodwork of the room is all minutely carved, and inlaid with bits of glass and mother-of-pearl and sometimes even with jewels. The upper walls are frescoed in blue and green and gold, and from the gilded beams of the ceiling hang chandeliers of silver and beaten brass.
Court and Liwân of a Damascus residence
Cemetery where members of Mohammed’s family are buried
This half out-of-doors alcove gives access to the rooms which we should think of as being really in the house. Some of these may be even more lavishly decorated than the liwân, and all are comfortably furnished—according to the Syrian idea of comfort. Into the apartments of the ladies, however, no male guest may enter. These are hareem—“forbidden.” Indeed, it is very likely that they are in a separate building, which opens on an inner court whose existence the casual visitor does not even suspect. No men save her nearest relatives are supposed ever to look upon the unveiled face of a Moslem woman. This prohibition, however, is of necessity little observed among the poor, hard-working peasants and the desert Bedouins; and in the cities the universal characteristics of the female sex have not been entirely obliterated by the law of Islam. An unusually thin gauze almost always reveals a remarkably beautiful face, and I have seen veils coquettishly dropped—of course by accident—even in the bazaars of fanatical Damascus. Yet among the upper classes the thought of social intercourse between the sexes is so repellent that no good Moslem ever willingly alludes to his wife. If he is absolutely forced to speak of her, he apologizes by saying Ajallak!—“May God lift you up!”—that is, from the degradation of having to hear such a thing mentioned. He uses the identical expression when he refers to anything else unfit to be spoken of in conversation between gentlemen. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted the one above the other,” said the Prophet.[35] There is no place for female suffrage in the world of Islam!