Syria

Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan

This culinary milestone has been hailed as a masterpiece, a classic, and the first and last word on eastern Mediterranean cooking. A welcome blend of scholarship and entertaining reading, this revelatory work features a wide range of authentic, clearly written recipes, many personal reminiscences, impressive culinary history, valuable information on ingredients, meals, and traditions, stunning period illustrations, and much more.

Syria: A Historical And Architectural Guide

revised & updated edition

With a wealth of historical splendors matched by few other countries, Syria has remained almost undiscovered by mass tourism. As a result, little has been spoiled, much is unknown, and there is much to discover.

It is a land of immense antiquity, boasting cities and archaeological remains that are among the oldest in the world. Hittites, Hurrians and Hebrews, Aramaeans, Assyrians and Arabs, Egyptians, Canaanites, Persians, Nabateans, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Turks and French have all come, leaving behind some of the most spectacular monuments that can be seen anywhere. Today, entire deserted cities such as Palmyra or Resafeh, immense castles like Crac des Chevaliers and a bewildering array of palaces, mosques, temples, theatres, churches and other ruins strewn across the country provides Syria with one of the richest and most diverse heritages in the world.

Syria's timeless monuments overawe the visitor. But they can enchant as well: to lose oneself in the back-streets and bazaars of old Damascus and Aleppo - still perhaps the most wholly satisfying traditional cities of the Arab world today - or to experience the sheer enchantment of the utterly haunting Dead Cities - probably the greatest concentration of ruins in the entire Mediterranean - is to experience travel at its very best. Most of all, the visitor to Syria meets with the characteristic courtesy and hospitality to outsiders that makes travel in the Arab world such a pleasure. Syria is still 'the best kept secret'.

The new completely revised and updated edition of this book is to keep pace both with the rapid increase in travel to Syria and the new material which has appeared on Syria itself.

With lucid and informative text, this book reconsiders the history and heritage of Syria and surveys the major sites, making a strong case for reassessing its importance in our perception of the growth of civilization out of the Middle East. With its many site plans and maps, readable text and 96 color plates, it makes available the immensely wealthy history, archaeology and architecture of Syria to the general reader and the interested traveler.

Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City

Damascus, reputed to be the world's oldest continually inhabited city, has enjoyed a history of immense grandeur, enormous political and mercantile power, and great cultural and artistic achievement. In addition to some of Islam's most magnificent architecture, such as the Umayyad Mosque, the city boasts a heritage of fairy-tale palaces and sumptuous private houses. Sadly, many of them are in urgent need of restoration. Brigid Keenan and Tim Beddow have set out to record these priceless architectural gems and to reveal them to the world at large. They were given unprecedented access to the inner, "hidden" city, which has resulted in a book that will be of immense importance to all concerned with the heritage of architecture in the Islamic world. The text first sets the historical scene, describing the growth and fortunes of Damascus through the ages. It continues with an account of its architecture and way of life, and concludes with descriptions of individual houses and of the people who built and lived in them. The superb photographs include façades, courtyards, alleyways, and fountains, and the breathtaking interiors that often lie behind the unassuming walls of the old town, with exquisite details in stone, wood, paint, marble, plaster, glass, and mother-of-pearl. The whole forms a convincing and elegiac plea for the preservation of the heart of this historic ancient capital. 214 illustrations, 171 in color.

Julia Domna Syrian Empress (Women of the Ancient World)

This book covers Julia’s life, and charts her travels throughout the Empire from Aswan to York during a period of profound upheaval, seeking the truth about this woman who inspired such extreme and contrasting views, exposing the instability of our sources about her, and characterizing a sympathetic, courageous, intelligent, and important woman.

This book contains a fresh reassessment of the one of the most significant figures of her time and questions:

• Was Julia more powerful than earlier empresses?
• Did she really promote despotism?
• How seriously is her literary circle to be taken?

As part of a dynasty which used force and violence to preserve its rule, she was distrusted by its subjects; as a Syrian, she was the object of prejudice; as a woman with power, she was resented. On the other hand, Domna was the centre of a literary circle considered highly significant by nineteenth-century admirers.

Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East

An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades

The life of Usâmah ibn-Munqidh epitomized the height of Arab civilization as it flourished in the period of the early Crusades. His memoirs present an uncommon non-European perspective and understanding of the military and cultural contact between East and West, Muslim and Christian. His writing is remarkable for its narrative clarity, its humanity, and its wealth of perceptive details.

The Third Crusade 1191: Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and the battle for Jerusalem (Campaign)

The clash between King Richard I ‘The Lionheart’ of England and Saladin has become legendary. Throughout the ages, military enthusiasts have been fascinated by the strategy of the resolute, heavily armed Anglo-Saxon army versus their more lightly armed opponents. Richard’s inability to recapture Jerusalem was disappointing, but it proved to the crusaders that Saladin was not invincible. This book describes the struggle that has evolved into a mythic campaign for the Holy City of Jerusalem, providing an in-depth look at the battle, the personalities involved and the tactics employed by each army.

Early Islamic Syria: An Archaeological Appraisal (Duckworth Debates in Archaeolo) (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology)

After more than a century of neglect, a profound revolution is occurring in the way archaeology interprets developments in the social history of early Islamic Syria. These changes and their fundamental implications for understanding an ever-growing body of archaeological evidence, are central to this book. It sets out to offer, in one accessible volume, an innovative interpretation from an archaeological perspective of social and economic developments in Syria shortly before and during the two centuries after the Islamic expansion (roughly the later 6th to the early 9th century AD). Drawing on a wide range of new evidence from recent archaeological work, some of it unpublished, the book challenges conventional explanations for social change before and after the Islamic expansion, and argues for considerable cultural and economic continuity.

The Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader's War On the Golan

In October 1973, the State of Israel was invaded by Egyptian and Syrian forces. Despite early losses, Israel managed to outfight its opponents. The brief and bloody Yom Kippur War stands as a unique chapter in modern military history. Fought primarily by tank units, the war became a story not only of battle strategy and tactics, but also one of human discipline, endurance and sacrifice. While many historians have chronicled the events of the Yom Kippur War, few have been seasoned by actual combat. Avigdor Kahalani, commander of a tank battalion on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War, describes this experience in The Heights of Courage. Beginning with a description of the initial Syrian offensive, he recounts the personal endeavors of his men, their fears and their ambitions, as well as their emotional and physical hardships. His stark account traces the efforts of the Israel Armored Corps as they struggle to overcome extreme difficulties and setbacks. The author describes their ultimate penetration into enemy territory and their approach to within forty kilometers of Damascus.

Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade

Throughout the medieval era, the Holy Land was a fiercely contested battlefield, fought over by huge Muslim and Christian armies, by zealots and assassins. The Third Crusade, spanning five years at the end of the 12th century, was, writes James Reston Jr. in this absorbing account, "Holy War at its most virulent," overseen by two great leaders, the Kurdish sultan Salah ad-Din, or Saladin, and the English king Richard, forevermore known as Lionheart.

Writing with a keen sense of historical detail and drama, Reston traces the complex path by which Saladin and Richard came to face each other on the field of battle. The Crusades, he observes, began "as a measure to redirect the energies of warring European barons from their bloody, local disputes into a 'noble' quest to reclaim the Holy Land from the 'infidel'." Of the five Crusades over 200 years, only the first was successful, to the extent that the Christian armies were able to conquer their objective of Jerusalem. The Third Crusade, as Reston ably shows, was complicated by fierce rivalries among the Christian leaders, by a chain of military disasters that led to the destruction of an invading German army and its emperor, and by the dedication of an opposing Islamic army that shared both a goal and a language.

Saladin, Reston writes, was a brilliant leader and a merciful victor, but capable of costly errors; Richard was extraordinarily skilled at combat, but his lack of resolve cost him many battles, and, ultimately, Jerusalem. Richard returned to Europe, Saladin to Damascus. Neither leader has long to live, and the peace they made would soon be broken. James Reston's splendid book does them both honor while examining a conflict that has never really ended. --Gregory McNamee

The epic story of the battle for the Holy Land and the two larger-than-life figures at its center.

James Reston, Jr., the author of Galileo: A Life (called "masterful" and "brilliant" by the Washington Post) and the critically lauded The Last Apocalypse, a stunningly original portrait of the Christian world at the turn of first millennium, now re-creates the collision of the Christian holy wars and the Muslim jihad at the end of the twelfth century. A dual biography of the legendary Richard the Lionheart and the Sultan Saladin, iconic hero of the Islamic world, Warriors of God recounts the life of each man and reveals the passions of the times that brought them face-to-face in the final battle of the Third Crusade.

Richard the Lionheart, commonly depicted as the romantic personification of chivalry, here emerges in his full complexity and contradictions as Reston examines the dark side of Richard's role as the leader of the blood-soaked Crusades and breaks new ground by openly discussing Richard's homosexuality. Reston's compelling portrait of Saladin brings to life the wise, highly cultured leader who realized an enduring Arab dream by uniting Egypt and Syria and whose conquest of Jerusalem not only sparked the Third Crusade but ignited the first jihad and turned Saladin into a hero of epic proportions. In riveting descriptions, Reston captures the fascinating clash of the two armies as they battled their way to the outskirts of Jerusalem. There, Saladin's brilliant maneuvers and Richard's sudden failure of nerve turned the tide. Sweeping readers into a mesmerizing period of history, Warriors of God is a provocative look at two towering leaders and the not always noble causes for which they fought.