Mirrored Umayyad
At al-Uqaybah at the end of Souq Saroujah there was a Khan (caravansary) well known for vice, called Khan al-Zanjari. The debaucheries and depravities were intolerable. Al-Malik al-Ashraf, Musa Ibn al-Malik al-Adel (Ayyubid era), was told that such thing should not be tolerable in a Muslim land, so he ordered it to be demolished and to build a mosque in its place. The people named it “ Jamie al- Tawbah” Mosque of Repentance, as though it had turned in a repentance to God and repented of what was in it. The mosque was built in 632/1234 with a great resemblance to Umayyad Mosque, somehow suggesting that repentance involve copying or imitating the most important and holiest local building in the country.
posted by Ghalia at
1/27/2006
16 Comments:
Fun story and cute mosque.
By
Amr T, at 27/1/06 12:19 AM
Interesting story, and beautiful structure!
By
Hovic Atokian, at 28/1/06 12:04 AM
Excellent blog, beautiful pictures!
By
Yaman, at 31/1/06 5:53 AM
Just found your site via Kevin Sike's story on Yahoo. Awesome! I have enjoyed your site very much and it is one I will be telling others about on my own blog. Plus I have another website I will advertise it on.
Be blessed! Moonifa (Rachel Henderson)
By
Moonifa, at 31/1/06 3:17 PM
I think you will be getting a lot more hits after Kevin Sites articles. Of all 4 bloggers mentioned, I was most intrigued by your sight- it came off less political and more as an observation of your world. Your photos are beautiful and stunning! You should be proud of your abilities, and I look forward to continuing to read your posts. I think blogging in America is often about what is wrong in the world, and sometimes in their petty lives. You make me consider my own site- one to show the beauty in my life, not my daily difficulties or political rants. Again, I love your photography!
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 7:29 PM
Ghalia I am an american and i thank you for you education. Keep it up! Ricard
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 7:53 PM
Saw the article in yahoo concerning your blog. Tell us a little more about how you view Americans!
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 8:08 PM
Assalaamu alaikum Sister,
Where exactly is that Masjid? I studied in Damascus for 2 years but I never came across it.
Great Site!
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 8:18 PM
A new world. Thanks for the view.
By
dpaste, at 31/1/06 8:19 PM
[This has been used to save the lives of Katrina/Rita/Wilma refugees]
Suicide/impulsive depression/self-injury prevention.....[a figure of speech, a life preserver made up of words!!]
Please help me END suicide & spread this eveywhere! It works, which is
the only point!
Read with the kind of open mind that conquers the
unknown.
"SUICIDE VACCINE": ...........You don't have to
believe in God to sense that there are unseen,
negative forces at work against the human race; vast,
heartless, loveless and unsympathetic. (If you don't
believe in anything you can't see, touch or feel,
you're vulnerable!
Expand your horizon to understand that ALL of life is
connected and has a great impact on us, whether we can
see it or not!....like a virus,with the naked eye, for
instance.) Fallen angels (who are JUST as real as YOU
are, who hide behind our deceived ignorance of their
REAL methods, who lost their "day jobs" and have
nothing better to do than prey on us, and who are
ca
lled "demons") get sheer delight in tricking humans
into self-murder and slaughter us like slave/cattle
daily (as well as other deadly deceptions such as
incited, outward violence)!
One such deception we call "suicide". The word "angel"
means "messenger". The 'Maker of All Things' had
designed angels to carry His thoughts and put them
into the mind of man.
The fallen angels can still place their thoughts
directly into any human's mind, in that human's very
own thought voice....YOUR thought voice! (Ever had an
angry or impulsive thought, word or action that you
knew wasn't you? We all have!!)
"Suicide risk" people (and others) that don't know or
ACCEPT that this tampering can be done to them are
stuck thinking that was what they really wanted to do.
In play also is the demon's ability to incite, to
manipulate our feelings and emotions, dragging us
along the bottom of our lives (depression or pain of
any sort, whether physical or emotional) and setting
us up for a deadly trick, often through isolation,
arrogance, never-ending boredom or impulsive behavior
(we are most vulnerable here!).
Also, the more self-absorbed or self-centered the
individual is, the more susceptible they are (involve
yourself with other's needs as a
defense....others-centered rather than self-centered
LOVE is what you do for ALL others that is in their
highest or best interest, anytime, anywhere,
selflessly! 24/7).
People with good fortune shining on them would hardly
listen to a suicide thought, as out of place as it
would be there and a noticeable implant into their
thought process. The bad guys have thousands of lures
that get most of us (like $$money$$...which took the
place of Love in the USA....entertainment, sports &
business....which took the place of Family, "soaps"
etc., but we can be inoculated against the
fooling trick of suicide and eradicate it now that the
REAL source has finally been revealed! HELP to spread
this objective truth around freely to PREVENT more
needless deaths and tragedies, to PROTECT the human
race, including those you love!
"People who don't believe that the devil walks this
earth have not seen the things I've seen (terrible
human slaughter). I believe that there is such a thing
as true evil, and that there is true goodness." [Dr.
Ronald Wright:: Broward County Medical Examiner,
Florida]
Mick's response: "I realised
recently that if I ever caused an upset with someone -
knowingly or unknowingly - that I would try to handle
this upset by harming myself in an effort to placate
the other person. This included serious physical
damage to myself and attempted suicide. Having spotted
this info (Suicide Vaccine), I am now no longer going
to do it and wished to let you know this. It would be
better for me to confront the things I have caused and
handle them. Love Mick."
"The greatest trick the devil has ever pulled is
convincing the human race that he doesn't exist." The
Usual Suspects
"Reality is something that when you stop believing in
it, it doesn't go away". Philip K. Dick
---Ignorance is something you don't know when you really need it!---
JamesSorrell
http://jimsorrell.proboards33.com or
http://s2.excoboard.com/exco/index.php/boardid=15311 or
http://suicidevaccine.blogspot.com
JamesSorrell@nativeweb.net
By
Unknown, at 31/1/06 8:42 PM
I am an American and alittle worried about reading and writing on your blog
I wish to know more about your wonderful country.
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 8:45 PM
your map does not include israel...does that mean you deny the existence of the state of israel and wish its destruction?
or is that the extremist view of that syrians tend to have so they exclude israel off their maps?
i would like u to email me an answer at iop990@hotmail.com
thank you
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 8:50 PM
Great blog, Ghalia. Found it through the Kevin Sites article. Love your writing style and your choice of topics. Beautiful snapshots in words and images of your country!
As for iop990@hotmail.com ...
Look more carefully. Israel is the purple country below Lebanon, with Nazareth in it. The brownish "Palestine" you see is the West Bank. I think they just didn't label it because they only showed a tiny piece of the country.
But whatever. Why such a one-track mind? Why should a blog about life in Syria be obligated to crop its map in such a way that another country takes center stage?
I'm American, btw, and support (most) US policies in the Middle East, but I'm glad to get a little insight into real life in Syria. Shukran gazeelan!
By
Anonymous, at 31/1/06 11:45 PM
I found your blog through the yahoo article also. The pictures and stories are beautiful. I have always wanted to visit that part of the world because of the historic value. Maybe sometime in the future this can be possible.
By
Anonymous, at 1/2/06 1:08 AM
Funny - it reminds me that across the board so many religious sites (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) have their origins in our "baser" instincts - in Christianity of course the holidays are superimposed over the Pagan feast days that celebrated some sort of depravity or other - and the churches or temples often occupy the sites of some Roman nonsense or other. Maybe the important aspect is that these spots are where people congregate for some reason or other. Ironically, one thing that all of the religions have in common (at least in their texts, if not in their practitioners) is the idea of jubilation, joyfulness, exhuberance - it's a shame we can't just declare a year of celebration like they used to in antiquity and put everything else on hold. But then there are always those who have a pipeline directly to god - and according to them he's more concerned about the kind of shoes we're wearing.
By
Anonymous, at 1/2/06 4:01 AM
I'm not sure I'd call this a blog. A log implies an ordered sequence of some sort. This is something different, possibly unique. Not sure there is a word for what you're doing, but whatever it can be called is excellent. The Internet has much information, but information is not the same as culture.
The story is interesting. It depends on the exact beliefs of the place at the exact time - interpretations change over the ages - but there were many different ancient traditions that might explain at least some of what lay behind the copying.
The news story that mentioned this site said there were only about 7 regulars. Hey, I think you'd rather 7 quality readers than a million idiots, but I'm sure there are more than 7 decent people in the world. Well, I hope so, anyway. Best of luck finding them!
By
Anonymous, at 1/2/06 9:38 AM
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