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Damascus is the capital and largest city of Syria, the oldest current capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth holiest city in Islam. Damascus is a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world.

Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. First settled in the 3rd millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad. Damascus saw its importance decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the central government of Syria.

The vast majority of Damascenes are Syrian Arabs. The Kurds are the second largest ethnic minority, with a population of approximately 300,000. They reside primarily in the neighborhoods of Wadi al-Mashari ("Zorava" or "Zore Afa" in Kurdish) and Rukn al-Din. Other minorities include Palestinians, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians and a small Greek community.

There was a small Jewish community namely in what is called Harat al-Yahud the Jewish quarter. They are the remnants of an ancient and much larger Jewish presence in Syria, dating back at least to Roman times, if not before to the time of King David. As of 2023, no Jews remain.

Damascus is the main center of education in Syria. It is home to Damascus University, which is the oldest and largest university in Syria. After the enactment of legislation allowing private higher institutions, several new universities were established in the city and the surrounding area.

Damascus has a wealth of historical sites dating back to many different periods of the city's history. Since the city has been built up with every passing occupation, it has become almost impossible to excavate all the ruins of Damascus that lie up to 8 feet below the modern level. The Citadel of Damascus is located in the northwest corner of the Old City. The street called straight (referred to in the conversion of St. Paul in Acts 9:11), also known as the Via Recta, was one of the main streets of Roman Damascus, and extended for over 1500 meters.

Today, it consists of the street of Bab Sharqi and the Souk Medhat Pasha, a covered market. The Bab Sharqi street is filled with small shops and leads to the old Christian quarter of Bab Touma (St. Thomas's Gate). Souq Medhat Pasha is also a main market in Damascus and was named after Medhat Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Damascus who renovated the Souq. At the end of the Bab Sharqi street, one reaches the House of Ananias, an underground chapel that was the cellar of Ananias's house.

The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is one of the largest mosques in the world, and one of the oldest sites of continuous prayer since the rise of Islam. A shrine in the mosque is said to contain the head of John the Baptist.

The old city of Damascus is surrounded by ramparts on the northern and eastern sides and part of the southern side. There are 7 extant city gates, the oldest of which dates back to the Roman period. These are, clockwise from the north of the citadel:

Bab al-Faraj ("the gate of deliverance"),

Bab al-Faradis ("the gate of the orchards")

Bab al-Salam ("the gate of peace"), all on the north boundary of the old city

Bab Touma (the "Touma" or "Thomas gate") in the north-east corner, leading into the Christian quarter of the same name,

Bab Sharqi ("eastern gate") in the east wall, the only one to retain its Roman plan

Bab Kisan in the south-east, from which tradition holds that Saint Paul made his escape from Damascus, lowered from the ramparts in a basket; this gate is now closed and a chapel marking the event has been built into the structure,

al-Bab al-Saghir (the small gate) in the south.

In addition, the names of the two former gates in the east, Bab al-Jabiya at the entrance to Souq Midhat Pasha and Bab al-Barid near the entrance to Souq al-Hamidiyya, are still recalled by Damascenes, the former being used commonly to refer to the area at the entrance to the souq. Two other areas outside the walled city also bear the name "gate": Bab Mousalla and Bab Sreija , both to the south-west of the walled city.

Excavations at Tell Ramad on the outskirts of the city have demonstrated that Damascus has been inhabited as early as 8,000 to 10,000 BC. It is due to this that Damascus is considered to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. However, Damascus is not documented as an important city until the coming of the Aramaeans, Semitic nomads who arrived from the Arabian peninsula. It is known that it was the Aramaeans who first established the water distribution system of Damascus by constructing canals and tunnels which maximized the efficiency of the Barada river. The same network was later improved by the Romans and the Umayyads, and still forms the basis of the water system of the old part of Damascus today.

In 1100 BC, the city became the center of a powerful Aramaean state called Aram Damascus. The Kings of Aram Damascus were involved in many wars in the area against the Assyrians and the Israelites. One of the Kings, Ben-Hadad II, fought Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Karkar. The ruins of the Aramean town most probably lie under the eastern part of the old walled city.

After Tiglath-Pileser III captured and destroyed the city in 732 BC, it lost its independence for hundreds of years, and it fell under the Neo-Babylonian rule of Nebuchadnezzar starting in 572 BC. The Babylonian rule of the city came to an end in 538 BC when the Persians under Cyrus captured the city and made it the capital of the Persian province of Syria.

Damascus first came under western control with the giant campaign of Alexander the Great that swept through the near east. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. The control of the city passed frequently from one empire to the other. Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's generals, had made Antioch the capital of his vast empire. This led to the importance of Damascus declining as compared with the newly founded Seleucid cities such as Latakia in the north.

In 64 BC, Pompey and the Romans annexed the western part of Syria. They occupied Damascus and subsequently incorporated it into the league of ten cities known as the Decapolis because it was considered such an important center of Greco-Roman culture. According to the New Testament, St. Paul was on the road to Damascus when he received a vision, was struck blind and as a result converted to Christianity. In the year 37 AD, Roman Emperor Caligula transferred Damascus into Nabataean control by decree. The Nabataean king Aretas IV Philopatris ruled Damascus from his capital Petra. However, around the year 106, Nabataea was conquered by the Romans, and Damascus returned to Roman control.

Damascus became a metropolis by the beginning of the second century and in 222 it was upgraded to a colonia by the Emperor Septimius Severus. With the coming of the Pax Romana, Damascus and the Roman province of Syria in general began to prosper. Damascus's importance as a caravan city was evident with the trade routes from southern Arabia, Palmyra, Petra, and the silk routes from China all converging on it. The city satisfied the Roman demands for eastern luxuries.

Little remains of the architecture of the Romans, but the town planning of the old city did have a lasting effect. The Roman architects brought together the Greek and Aramaean foundations of the city and fused them into a new layout measuring approximately 1500 by 750 meters, surrounded by a city wall. The city wall contained seven gates, but only the eastern gate (Bab Sharqi) remains from the Roman period. Roman Damascus lies mostly at depths of up to five meters below the modern city.

Damascus was conquered by the Caliph Umar I in AD 636. Immediately thereafter, the city's power and prestige reached its peak when it became the capital of the Umayyad Empire, which extended from Spain to India from AD 661 to AD 750.

In AD 744, the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, moved the capital to Harran in the Jazira (Hugh Kennedy, "The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates"), and Damascus was never to regain the political prominence it had held in that period.

After the fall of the Umayyads and the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in AD 750, Damascus was ruled from Baghdad, although in AD 858 al-Mutawakkil briefly established his residence there with the intention of transferring his capital there from Samarra. However, he soon abandoned the idea. As the Abbasid caliphate declined, Damascus suffered from the prevailing instability, and came under the control of local dynasties. In 875 the ruler of Egypt, Ahmad ibn Tulun, took the city, with Abbasid control being re-established only in 905. In 945 the Hamdanids took Damascus, and not long after it passed into the hands of Muhammad bin Tughj, founder of the Ikhshidid dynasty. In 968 and again in 971 the city was briefly captured by the Qaramita.

In 970 AD the Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo gained control of Damascus. This was to usher in a turbulent period in the city's history, as the Berber troops who formed the backbone of the Fatimid forces became deeply unpopular among its citizens. The presence in Syria of the Qaramita and occasionally of Turkish military bands added to the constant pressure from the Bedouin.

For a brief period from 978, Damascus was self-governing, under the leadership of a certain Qassam and protected by a citizen militia. However, the Ghouta was ravaged by the Bedouin and after a Turkish-led campaign the city once again surrendered to Fatimid rule.

From 1029 to 1041 the Turkish military leader Anushtakin was governor of Damascus under the Fatimid caliph al-Zahir, and did much to restore the city's prosperity.It appears that during this period the slow transformation of Damascus from a Graeco-Roman city layout - characterised by blocks of insulae - to a more familiar Islamic pattern took place: the grid of straight streets changed to a pattern of narrow streets, with most residents living inside harat closed off at night by heavy wooden gates to protect against criminals and the exactions of the soldiery.With the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the late 11th Century, Damascus again became the capital of independent states. It was ruled by a Seljuk dynasty from 1079 to 1104, and then by another Turkish dynasty - the Burid Emirs, who withstood a siege of the city during the Second Crusade in 1148.

In 1154 Damascus was conquered from the Burids by the famous Zengid Atabeg Nur ad-Din of Aleppo, the great foe of the Crusaders. He made it his capital, and following his death, it was acquired by Saladin, the ruler of Egypt, who also made it his capital. Saladin rebuilt the citadel, and it is reported that under his rule the suburbs were as extensive as the city itself. It is reported by Ibn Jubayr that during the time of Saladin, Damascus welcomed seekers of knowledge and industrious youth from around the world, who arrived for the sake of "undistracted study and seclusion" in Damascus' many colleges.

In the years following Saladin's death, there were frequent conflicts between different Ayyubid sultans ruling in Damascus and Cairo. Damascus steel gained a legendary reputation among the Crusaders, and patterned steel is still "damascened". The patterned Byzantine and Chinese silks available through Damascus, one of the Western termini of the Silk Road, gave the English language damask.

Ayyubid rule (and independence) came to an end with the Mongol invasion of Syria in 1260, and Damascus became a provincial capital of the Mamluk Empire, ruled from Egypt, following the Mongol withdrawal.

In 1400 by Timurlank, the Mongol conqueror, besieged Damascus. The Mamluk sultahn dispatched a deputation from Cairo, including Ibn Khaldun, who negotiated with him, but after their withdrawal he put the city to sack. The Umayyad Mosque was burnt and men and women taken into slavery. A huge number of the city's artisans were taken to Timur's capital at Samarkand. These were the luckier citizens: many were slaughtered and their heads piled up in a field outside the north-east corner of the walls, where a city square still bears the name burj al-ruus, originally "the tower of heads".Rebuilt, Damascus continued to serve as a Mamluk provincial capital until 1516.

In early 1516, the Ottoman Turks, wary of the danger of an alliance between the Mamluks and the Persian Safavids, started a campaign of conquest against the Mamluk sultanate. On 21 September, the Mamluk governor of Damascus fled the city, and on 2 October the khutba in the Umayyad mosque was pronounced in the name of Selim I. The day after, the victorious sultan entered the city, staying for three months. On 15 December, he left Damascus by Bab al-Jabiya, intent on the conquest of Egypt. Little appeared to have changed in the city: one army had simply replaced another. However, on his return in October 1517, the sultan ordered the construction of a mosque, taqiyya and mausoleum at the shrine of Shaikh Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi in Salihiyya. This was to be the first of Damascus' great Ottoman monuments.

The Ottomans remained for the next 400 years, except for a brief occupation by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt from 1832 to 1840. Because of its importance as the point of departure for one of the two great Hajj caravans to Mecca, Damascus was treated with more attention by the Porte than its size might have warranted - for most of this period, Aleppo was more populous and commercially more important. In 1560 the Taqiyya al-Sulaimaniyya, a mosque and khan for pilgrims on the road to Mecca, was completed to a design by the famous Ottoman architect Sinan, and soon afterwards a madrasa was built adjoining it.

Perhaps the most notorious incident of these centuries was the massacre of Christians in 1860, when fighting between Druze and Maronites in Mount Lebanon spilled over into the city. Some thousands of Christians were killed, with many more being saved through the intervention of the Algerian exile Abd al-Qadir and his soldiers, who brought them to safety in Abd al-Qadir's residence and the citadel. The Christian quarter of the old city, including a number of churches, was burnt down. The Christian inhabitants of the notoriously poor and refractory Midan district outside the walls were, however, protected by their Muslim neighbors.

In the early years of the twentieth century, nationalist sentiment in Damascus, initially cultural in its interest, began to take a political colouring, largely in reaction to the turkicisation programme of the Committee of Union and Progress government established in Istanbul in 1908. The hanging of a number of patriotic intellectuals by Jamal Pasha, governor of Damascus, in Beirut and Damascus in 1915 and 1916 further stoked nationalist feeling, and in 1918, as the forces of the Arab Revolt and the British army approached, residents fired on the retreating Turkish troops.

On 1 October 1918, Arab forces led by Nuri al-Sa'id entered Damascus, and a military government under Shukri Pasha was named. British forces followed the day after, and Faisal ibn Abd Allah was proclaimed king of Syria. Political tension rose in November 1917, when the new Bolshevik government in Russia revealed the Sykes-Picot Agreement whereby Britain and France had arranged to partition the Arab east between them. A new Franco-British proclamation on 17 November promised the "complete and definitive freeing of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks."

The Syrian Congress in March adopted a democratic constitution. However, the Versailles Conference had granted France a mandate over Syria, and in 1920 a French army crossed the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, defeated a small Syrian defensive expedition at the Battle of Maysalun and entered Damascus. The French made Damascus capital of their League of Nations Mandate of Syria.

When in 1925 the Druze revolt in the Hauran spread to Damascus, the French repressed it brutally, bombing and shelling the city. The area of the old city between Souq al-Hamidiyya and Souq Midhat Pasha was burned to the ground, with many deaths, and has since then been known as al-Hariqa ("the fire"). The old city was surrounded with barbed wire to prevent rebels infiltrating from the Ghouta, and a new road was built outside the northern ramparts to facilitate the movement of armored cars.

In 1945 the French once more bombed Damascus, but on this occasion British forces intervened and the French agreed to withdraw, thus leading to the full independence of Syria in 1946. Damascus remained the capital.

March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by the government's security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the insurgency had escalated into a full-blown civil war.

In 2014, the Islamic State won many battles against both the rebel factions and the Syrian government. Combined with simultaneous success in Iraq, the group was able to seize control of large parts of Eastern Syria and Western Iraq, prompting the U.S.-led CJTF coalition to launch an aerial bombing campaign against it, while providing ground support and supplies to the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces. Culminating in the Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor offensives, the Islamic State was territorially defeated by late 2017.

In August 2016, Turkey launched a multi-pronged invasion of northern Syria, in response to the creation of Rojava, while also fighting the Islamic State and government forces in the process.

Between the March 2020 Idlib ceasefire and late 2024, frontline fighting mostly subsided, but was characterized by regular skirmishes.

Heavy fighting renewed with a major rebel offensive in the northwest led by Tahrir al-Sham and supported by allied groups in the Syrian National Army in November 2024, during which Aleppo, Hama and Homs were seized. Southern rebels who had previously reconciled with the government subsequently launched their own offensive, capturing Daraa and Suwayda. The Syrian Free Army and the Syrian Democratic Forces launched their own offensives in Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor, respectively.

By 8 December, rebel forces had seized the capital, Damascus. Following this, the Ba'athist regime collapsed, with al-Assad fleeing to Moscow. On the same day, Israel launched an invasion of Syria's Quneitra Governorate, aiming to seize the UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights. Read more ...

On December 8, 2024, the Syrian Arab Republic under Bashar al-Assad collapsed amid major offensives by the Syrian opposition (led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and supported by other rebel groups, including the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army) as part of the Syrian civil war which began in 2011.

The fall of Damascus marked the end of the Assad family regime, which had ruled Syria as a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship since Hafez al-Assad assumed the presidency in 1971 as a result of the Corrective Revolution. Read more ...

To all my clients, neighbors, and Crystalinks' readers of Syrian heritage - you are finally turning the page on a ruthless regime. Let's hope another doesn't emerge. The end of Assad regime will reshape the region's balance of power and is a blow to Russia, Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Syrian-based Palestinian group PFLP-GC, among other terrorist groups who supported Assad.