How things used to be“THE city has adorned herself with flowers of sweet scented herbs,” waxed the great Arab traveller, Ibn Jubayr, when he visited 12th-century Damascus. “It is encircled by gardens as the moon by its halo.” Later European travellers were no less entranced by the dazzling turquoise square—Naqsh e-Jahan, “the image of the world”—that Abbas I built in Isfahan in the 17th century, leaving behind accounts of its splendours as well as of a host of other such leafy delights as drinking excursions on the banks of the Barrada River that flows through Syria’s capital. The Prophet Muhammad is even said to have shied from entering Damascus, otherwise called al-Fayha, “the fragrant”, for fear of entering Paradise twice.
He would have no need for hesitation today. Amid the bloodshed, car fumes and noise, residents are hard-placed to find anything fragrant in the sprawling cities of the Arab world. The number of places where people can mingle, picnic on cool watermelon by the rivers and fly kites has shrunk while their populations have soared. Per person, the amount of land devoted to parks, squares...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1OeB58v
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