‘Listen, for more than 1,300 years it was the Muslims who ensured peace and prosperity in Jerusalem,’ Mohammed Haroun of Amman University told O’Connelly as they left Gerash thirty five kilometres to the north of Amman and headed towards the Syrain border.
‘What about the Crusades?’
‘When the Christians arrived they brought war and bloodshed with them, which lasted for almost a century when they founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem that went from the Aqaba in the south to Sidon in the north.’
‘Then the Muslims conquered the city.’
‘Yes, the city was taken over without any bloodshed, the Caliph Omar ibn El-Khattab travelled from Medina and entered the Jerusalem, on foot as a sign of respect, receiving the keys of the city from the Archbishop and promised safety to the Christians and Jews.’
‘In any case the city came under Muslim domination.’
‘Domination, I don’t know if that is the word, about half of what we know as the Old City was given to the Christians, a quarter to the Jews, and the rest was for Muslims, where they built two mosques.’
‘For Muslims, Jerusalem is a holy place, the third most important for Islam. As a matter of fact it was the first place where they turned to for prayer, but more important it was where the Prophet was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem on his horse Buraq and then to Heaven by an angel.’
‘So the Arabs arrived with Islam?’
‘No, my friend,’ he smiled condescendingly to one who was so ignorant, ‘Palestine was already a home to the Arabs, more than one thousand five hundred years before Arab tribes had entered this land from the Arabian Peninsular in the second millennium BC. These included Jebusites who lived in what is now Jerusalem. There were also the Canaanites, another tribe of nomadic herders from Arabia who settled throughout Palestine. These were the forefathers of our people today.’
‘So the original inhabitants were not Jews?’
‘It depends what you call Jews. In those ancient times the people who were later to become Jews were just another nomadic and animist tribe, speaking one of the many languages belonging to the Semitic family, from which ancient Egyptian Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew had sprung.’
That seemed reasonable to O’Connelly, but he continued with his explanation.
‘Jerusalem was founded by the Jebusite priest-king Melchizadek who was called King of Salem, the King of Peace, he was a very pious man. That’s how the city got its name Joro Salem, which means City of Peace that then became Jerusalem.’
After the border formalities the crossed into Syria and after a couple of hours of easy driving reached Damascus. They visited the city where they stayed overnight eating in an area on the outskirts of the city famous for its traditional restaurants. They were attending the Syrian Archaeological Society’s annual conference, which was to take place in the coastal city of Latakia. It was known to the Phoenicians as Ramitha and to the Greeks as Leuke Akte, its present name was a corruption of Laodicea, who was the mother of Alexander the Great's general Seleucus I Nicator in 3rd century BC.
The next day they covered the 350 kilometre journey from Damascus by road, passing through Homs with a stop to visit the Krak Crusaders Castle before continuing to the coast and Tartous.
CNN had reported a dispute concerning an Israeli soldier captured in Gaza. It was the same story with threats and counter threats. It looked no worse than usual and did not deter them from going ahead with their plan to visit the Lebanon and Syria. O'Connelly wanted to visit the Crusaders castles and if things went well Palmyra in Syria.
It seemed that the Lebanese government and the opposition were building up to a confrontation since the opposition pulled out of the coalition, a strike is paralysing the country and street fighting between mobs from both factions are spreading.
The country’s debt could be counted in tens of billions. The Hezbollah was increasing its pressure on the governmental coalition made up of Druze and Christian warlords supported by the Sunnis who fear the Shias.
In Tartous they visited the remains of the Crusader castle in centre of the old city, where in the 12th century Saladin had besieged the Templar Knights protected by its concentric fortifications, laying waste to the surrounding city. During the centuries that followed the tower at the northern extremity of the castle overlooking the harbour had been transformed into dwellings places with windows and balconies built into its enormous stone walls. The once proud battlements of the castle were decorated with long lines of washing.
Inside the Templars’ old walled city was a somewhat shabby market square surrounded by rather shops and cafés, the square, as the nearby narrow streets were unkempt like many cities in the Middle East filled with plastic bags, rotting vegetables and rubbish.
They pressed on to Latakia, the principal sea port of Syria hoping for something more wholesome, the city itself was modern where the visitors were mostly Syrians day-trippers and holiday-makers who filled the terraces of the sea front cafés and restaurants; there were also a few foreigners, businessmen or tourists taking a well earned rest from their hectic visits to castles and Roman ruins. The nearby beaches were covered with the usual sprinkling of detritus the covers the shore of the southern Mediterranean from Algiers to the Turkish frontier with Syria, the only exception being that of certain areas of Beirut and the coast line of Israel in the region of Tel-Aviv. The locals seemed to oblivious to the filth
From a distance the ancient city, founded in the 3rd century BC, seemed an excellent choice for the venue with its beaches, mountains, archaeological sites and relics from the Crusader time. The only problem was the hotel was ten kilometres from the city centre though the beaches were better where bikinis replaced the veils, and tourists enjoyed the sun on chaise longues under well kept palm trees. The conference also coincided with the 60th anniversary of Syria's independence from France, and the authorities had made an effort to smarten up the appearance of the town in preparation for the festivities, almost every shop window bore a picture of their beloved President Bashar al-Assad, who had succeeded his equally beloved father six years previously.
The Syrians claimed that the Blue Beach of Latakia was the most popular beach on the Eastern Mediterranean. They were booked into the five star Meridien Latakia Hotel, a huge modern truncated pyramid like building that faced the beach.
They walked past a huge poster of Assad, whose personality cult was comparable to that of Gaddafi in Tripoli and in so many other countries ruled by such dictators.
The main shopping street in Latakia was lined with cheap hotels, teahouses and numerous small shops selling souvenirs, jewellery, clothes and music cassettes. In several of the shop windows were portraits of the surrounded by ribbons of cheap coloured flashing lights, probably imported from China.
For the average Syrian politics was a subject well left alone, any public criticism of him or opposition to the regime was a short cut to a prison cell; government spies and informers were listening everywhere. The former Vice-President of the country, Abdel-Halim Khaddam, was a victim of the dictatorial regime, denounced as a traitor for criticising Assad and was forced to flee the country.
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A Secret Site