Architectural historians ramping up efforts to restore Syria\'\'s ...

Tag : syria

Damascus (Syria), August 3 : Architectural historians are rampingup efforts to restore Damascus''s historic bathhouses, whichexperts say are crumbling and in danger of disappearing altogether.
The baths in Damascus are among the most famous in the region. Manydate back to Roman times and flourished in the Umayyad caliphate ofthe seventh and eighth centuries AD.
According to historians, that bathhouses are an important part ofSyrian history.
They were used for political activities, as no one feared a meetingheld there would be placed under surveillance. On occasion,political leaders would be assassinated in bathhouses, includingprinces from the medieval Mamluk dynasty.
Over the centuries, though, bathhouses were mainly a place forsocialising, gossiping and traditions such as the ritualpurification of a new mother or a bride-to-be. Apart from that,women did not go to public baths, and most of them are nowmale-only establishments.
When Syrian homes began to acquire private bathhouses in the latterhalf of the 20th, demand for public facilities plummeted.
According to Ghazwan Yaghi, an expert on Islamic archaeology, only17 communal baths are still opening in the Syrian capital.
Once a centre for socialising, many of the estimated 200 bathhousesare in a state of disrepair and neglect.
"The role of the bathhouse has shrunk, and they have beenunder a lot of pressure, both architecturally andfinancially," said Sarab Atasi, a researcher who heads the OldDamascus Studies Office at the French Institute of the Near East inSyria.
"The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO has protected thebaths lying inside the old town wall since the Seventies, butconservations are particularly concerned about those in other partsof the city which have largely been neglected," said Yaghi.
Some have been turned into warehouses, and while others have hadnew buildings erected on their centuries-old sites.
Under a project funded by the European Union, archaeologists andcultural conservationists have been working to restore buildingsinside the walls of the capital''s old town, and are also trying torefurbish bathhouses in other parts of Syria and the wider MiddleEast, according to Atasi.
The French Institute of the Near East is working with the EuropeanUnion-funded Vienna Institute for Maintained Building Studies torevive public bathhouses in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Turkeyand the Palestinian territories.
The government and conservationists have turned some of therenovated buildings into popular tourist sites, such as the850-year-old Hamam Nuraddin in Damascus, restored in the earlyEighties.
According to Yaghi, the aim was to ensure bathhouses "are usedfor their original purposes, and are affordable to all, not justthe rich".
"Reviving the role of bathhouses is meant to revive oldrituals and customs," he added. (ANI)