Abstract
In the eighteenth century local elites had developed considerable political independence and a new self-confidence, which is clearly shown in a number of prestigious building projects, among them the madrasas of Ismāʿīl Bāshā, Fatḥ ī Afandī, and ʿAbdallāh Bāshā, and the trade buildings Khān al-Ruzz, Khān Sulaymān Bāshā, and Khān Asʿad Bāshā. A prestigious hybrid building style was developed, using and processing local traditions from the Ayyūbīd and Mamlūk period, occasionally involving “Ottoman” elements that were already developed from the mid-sixteenth century on. By the mid-eighteenth century, in 1171 A.H./1757 A.D., the dismissal of the powerful governor Asʿad Bāshā al-ʿAẓm had already triggered political and social unrest for which two earthquakes in 1173/1759 became a catalyst and absolute low point. Reconstruction works after the earthquakes show that modern elements from the Ottoman heartland were introduced only rarely at the Jesus Minaret of the Umayyad Mosque , one of three buildings that were restored by aid of the Sublime Porte. Further building activity also shows a strong continuation of a local architectural style, reviving very few features of “modern” Ottoman architecture , among them wide domes on low pendentives or domed porticos in front of the madrasa prayer halls.
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Notes
- 1.
For a correlation of the magnitudes on the Modified Mercalli Scale ranging from I (only measurable with instruments and corresponding to Richter 2.2–2.5) to XII (wave formation on earth’s surface and total destruction = Richter 8.1 and higher) see David H. K. Amiran, E. Arieh, and T. Turcotte, “Earthquakes in Israel and Adjacent Areas: Macroseismic Oberservations since 100 B.C.E.,” Israel Exploration Journal 44 (1994): 292–293.
- 2.
Nicholas Ambraseys and Muawia Barazangi were the first to do extensive historical seismological research on the 1759 earthquake . Nicholas N. Ambraseys and Muawia Barazangi, “The 1759 Earthquake in the Bekaa Valley: Implications for Earthquake Hazard Assessment in the Eastern Mediterranean Region,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 94, no. B4 (1989): 4007–4013.
- 3.
Francisco Gomez et al., “Holocene Faulting and Earthquake Recurrence Along the Serghaya Branch of the Dead Sea Fault System in Syria and Lebanon”, Geophysical Journal International 153, no. 3 (2003): 659–660, Fig. 1.
- 4.
Bailey Willis, “Earthquakes in the Holy Land,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 18 (1928): 73–103; Reinhard Wolfart, Geologie von Syrien und dem Libanon (Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1967); Jean-Paul Poirier and Mustafa Anouar Taher, “Historical Seismicity of the Near and Middle East, North Africa, and Spain from Arabic Documents,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 70, no. 6 (1980): 2185–2201; Amiran, Arieh, and Turcotte, “Earthquakes in Israel and Adjacent Areas,” 260–305; Nicholas N. Ambraseys, Charles P. Melville, and Robin D. Adams, The Seismicity of Egypt , Arabia and the Red Sea: A Historical Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Nicholas N. Ambraseys and Caroline F. Finkel, The Seismicity of Turkey and Adjacent Areas: A Historical Review, 1500–1800 (Istanbul : Muhittin Salih Eren, 1995), 23–32 contains an annotated bibliography on catalogues published so far; Mohammed Reda Sbeinati, Ryad Darawcheh, and Mickhail Mouty, “The Historical Earthquakes of Syria: An Analysis of Large and Moderate Earthquakes from 1365 BC to 190 CE,” Annals of Geophysics 48, no. 3 (2005): 347–435.
- 5.
Gomez, “Holocene Faulting,” 669–671, Fig. 11.
- 6.
Ibid., 660, Table 1.
- 7.
For a map with historical earthquakes generated in the northern Dead Sea Fault System in Islamic times see Mustapha Meghraoui et al., “Evidence for 830 Years of Seismic Quiescence from Palaeoseismology, Archaeoseismology, and Historical Seismicity Along the Dead Sea Fault in Syria,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 210 (2003): 36, Fig. 1.
- 8.
These are mentioned, for example, by Mīkhāʾīl Burayk, Tārīkh al-Shām, ed. Aḥmad Ghassān Sabānū (Damascus : Dār Qutayba, 1982), 78, Fig. 1. Burayk mentions earthquakes of similar magnitude that had occurred about 600 years ago. Indeed, in the sixth/twelfth century a number of earthquakes hit the region between Damascus and Hama: in 552 AH/1157 CE, Shayzar was hit most severely; in 565 AH/1170 CE, Baalbek was the worst affected. The damaged buildings were restored by Nūr al-Dīn Zengi. Poirier, “Historical Seismicity,” 2187–2197; Ambraseys and Barazangi, “The 1759 Earthquake in the Bekaa Valley;” Gomez, “Holocene Faulting,” 663. The 598/1202 earthquake was the last of these heavy earthquakes . Sbeinati, Darawcheh, and Mouty, “The Historical Earthquakes of Syria ,” 389.
- 9.
Budayrī, Ḥawādith Dimashq al-yawmīya 1154–1175 AH/1741–1762 CE, ed. Aḥmad ʿIzzat ʿAbd al-Karīm (Damascus: Dār Saʿd al-Dīn, 1997), cf. Fig. 1.
- 10.
On developments in eighteenth-century historiography in Damascus see Bruce Masters, “The View from the Province: Syrian Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114, no. 3 (1994): 353–362; for Budayrī see Dana Sajdi, “A Room of His Own: The History of the Barber of Damascus (fl. 1762),” The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (Fall 2003): 19–35.
- 11.
Three manuscripts of this text have survived, some parts considerably differing in each text. Muḥammad Aḥmad Dahmān edited short excerpts: Fī riḥāb Dimashq (Damaskus: Dār al-Fikr, 1982). Another manuscript (MS no. 2013, Tārīkh, al-Maktaba al-Taymurīya, Cairo) was edited by Mustafa Anouar Taher, “Textes d’historiens damascènes sur les tremblements de terre du XIIe siècle de l’hégire (XVIIe−XVIIIe s.),” Bulletin d’Études Orientales 27 (1974): 55–108. An urtext edition (to be published in Verena Daiber, Damaskus: Bautradition und Notablenpolitik in der öffentlichen Architektur im 18. Jahrhundert (1708–1808). Öffentliche Architektur als Spiegel von Lokalpolitik, Diss. Universität Bamberg, 2013, [cf. Fig. 1]) was created using another as-yet-unknown manuscript from the Daiber Collection I. MS no. 123, Daiber Collection I, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. The MS is available online at http://ricasdb.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/daiber/fra_daiber_I.php?vol=1&ms=123&txtno=1370
- 12.
After the anonymous report that deals exclusively with the earthquakes of 1173 AH/1759 CE, Budayrī’s Ḥawādith is the second most extensive resource.
- 13.
This and further references refer to the Tokyo manuscript (see footnote 11).
- 14.
All Qurʾān translations are taken from Richard Bell, The Qur’an: Translated, with a Critical Re-arrangement of the Surahs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1937–1939).
- 15.
MS no. 123, fol. 6v–7r, Daiber Collection I, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. These details are also described in Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān. Wadie Jwaideh, The Introductory Chapters of Yāqūt’s “Muʿjam al-buldān” (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 35n1.
- 16.
Budayrī, Ḥawādith, 260.
- 17.
The western gate of the Mosque.
- 18.
Daniel Panzac, La peste dans L’Empire Ottoman (Leuven: Peeters, 1985), 37.
- 19.
Ambraseys and Barazangi, “The 1759 Earthquake in the Bekaa Valley,” 4011.
- 20.
Jalqāq, Risāla ilā bnihī al-rūḥī al-qass Athanāsiyūs Dabbās 1759, published in the appendix of: Ighnāṭiyūs ʿAbduh Khalīfa/Khalifé, ed., “Risāla fī Ḥudūth al-zalāzil (li-)Aghābiyūs al-Ḥannāwī’,” al-Machriq 51 (1957): 393–394. Also published in al-Risāla al-mukhalliṣīya 24 (1957): 286–287. (cf. Fig. 1).
- 21.
Budayrī, Ḥawādith and Fahmī Ghazzī, ed., al-Tadhkira al-kamālīya, vol. 7 [extract entitled “al-Zalzala al-ʿuẓmā’m”], al-Muqtabas 6 (1911): 569–573 (references given in Fig. 1) are more detailed and mention a few more well-known public and private structures in the city.
- 22.
Abdulkarim Rafeq, The Province of Damascus , 1723–1783 (Beirut : Khayats, 1996), 181.
- 23.
Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus , 1708–1758 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Rafeq, The Province of Damascus.
- 24.
Ḥayāt Nasīb al-ʿĪd Bū ʿAlwān, Muʾarrikhū Bilād al-Shām fī-l-qarn al-thāmin ʿashar, (Beirut: al-Furāt, 2002), 229; Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 57–60.
- 25.
Rafeq, Province of Damascus, 207–209.
- 26.
MS no. 123, fols. 8r–8v, Daiber Collection I, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo.
- 27.
The following buildings are the only ones mentioned in the Ottoman court registers of the Sublime Porte: Istanbul DBŞM.BNE (Bâb-ı Defterî, Bina Emini) 15,914; Istanbul MMD (Maliyeden Müdevver Defterler, Başbakanlık Arşivi, Istanbul) 3160. According to the Istanbul court registers, the Mosque of Ibn ʿArabī was also restored with financial help from the Sublime Porte (Istanbul MMD 3160).
- 28.
School of Giovanni Bellini, Receiving a Venetian Delegation at Damascus in 1511, early sixteenth century. Oil on canvas, 1.75 x 2.01 m. Musée du Louvre, Inv. 100.
- 29.
Alfred von Kremer, ed., Topographie von Damascus (Wien: Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1854), Tafel II.
- 30.
Ibn Kannān, Yawmīyāt Shāmīya, ed. Akram al-ʿUlabī, Damaskus: Dār al-Ṭabbāʿ, 1994, 101.
- 31.
Personal correspondence with Caroline N. Finkel.
- 32.
See for example the Madrasa Salīmīya, completed in 973 AH/1566 CE, Jāmiʿ al-Murādīya 983 AH/1575–6 CE, Jāmiʿ al-Sinānīya 999 AH/1591 CE, Jāmiʿ al-Darwīshīya 982 AH/1574–5 CE [Michael Meinecke, “Die osmanische Architektur des 16. Jahrhunderts in Damaskus,” in Geza Fehér, ed., Fifth International Congress of Turkish Art (Budapest: Akad. Kiadó, 1975), 580–585, fig. 12, 14–16] and the Zāwiyat al-Ṣamādīya, built before 948 AH/1541–2 CE [Stefan Weber, “The Creation of Ottoman Damascus : Architecture and Urban Development of Damascus in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Aram 9–10 (1997–1998) 441] to name just the most prominent.
- 33.
Yūsuf Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Thamār al-maqāṣid fī dhikr al-masājid, ed. Muḥammad Asʿad Ṭalas (Beirut : Maktabat Lubnān, 1975), 251 no. 266.
- 34.
More research on the seventeenth-century architecture of Damascus is needed. Only a few buildings can be dated to this century with any certainty.
- 35.
The renovation of the mosque is dated 1301 AH/1883–4 CE by an inscription on the minaret (Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Thamār al-maqaṣīd, 191 no. 7), while van Berchem, in his unpublished Receuil Waddington Nr. 531, mentions an earlier restoration date: 1222 AH/1807–8. The Mosque itself may be of an even earlier date. However, it also represents the simple mosque type.
- 36.
Cf. the Madrasa al-ʿAdīmīya and the Madrasa al-Firdaws (Yasser Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo , Pennsylvania 1997, Fig. 117a,b, 145, 154, and 131–133, Fig. 198).
- 37.
See footnote 29.
- 38.
For example, the Khan al-Sadrānī and the Khān al-Safarjalānī (seventeenth–eighteenth century).
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Daiber, V. (2017). The 1173/1759 Earthquake in Damascus and the Continuation of Architectural Tradition. In: Schenk, G. (eds) Historical Disaster Experiences. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_13
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