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Castle of the Knights
Crac des Chevaliers, SyriaDo you remember the time when you were a little kid and loved listening to fairy-tales or reading books full of adventures from places somewhere beyond the horizon and far far away. Tales of powerful kings and queens and beautiful princesses? Tales of brave heroes and conquerors, tales of unbeatable armies in their shining armors, tales of the everlasting battle between good and evil? Do you remember the time...? The time when one side was good and the other side was evil? But as time does not stand still and as everything changes, even the good and the evil will change...!
Like back the time when mankind was still living in caves, it was pretty clear who was evil... - the mighty Saber Tooth Tiger, it could bite a man's head off with just a single bite, and that's pretty evil in my eyes, I mean who wants his pretty head bitten off by a tiger with strange teeth!? Later, when the Roman empire was in its bloom, someone, in later years known as "Jesus of Nazareth", was evil at the beginning and a threat to the peace of the colony before people found out that he was actually not
Minarettes
Hama, Syria really evil but "the son of God" and just dwelling on earth to suffer for mankinds sins and therefore, not a threat at all but a saviour indeed... then not long time ago, someone with a funny mustache and a boring haircut, named Adolf with firstname, came up with the idea of raising a huge army in Germany and to conquer the world, which was not just a megalomaniac but deeply evil idea, and not long after the little funny looking megalomaniac man had gone, the so called "cold war" started and made the countries in the East evil for the countries in the West and the countries in the West became evil for the countries in the East..., fortunately after the fall of the wall, both the West and the East realized that the other one was actually not that bad to be called "evil" and after the breakdown of the Eastern-block people started to think that all those Japanese must be evil, stealing and copying technology from the west, and just a few years ago, 2 airplanes crashed into 2 buildings and people started to change their minds again about who was really evil...
So in his
2002 State of the Union address, President Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." The charge leveled at those countries concerned their development of weapons of mass destruction and whether "they could provide these arms to terrorists." Later some other highly smart people added some more countries to an "extended axis of evil" and one of them was Syria...
- Hama, the city of Norias - Without really spending a thought on the idea that we have been travelling in an, according to some highly ranked American officals, evil country, we travelled from Palmyra back towards west to the city of Hama (Arabic meaning: fortress). Situated between Homs and Aleppo on the banks of the Orontes river, Hama is an important agricultural and industrial center. Except for Damascus, Hama is considered the most picturesque city in Syria and one may wish to take time to relax in its attractive gardens along river banks.
Hama has been settled since the early Iron Age. The main and actually only attraction of Hama are the great Norias, some of the oldest waterwheels in the world. They were
Norias
Watermills, Hama first built by the Byzantines, as a system of irrigation. The Orontes walls were too deep for water to be transferred directly from the river, so gigantic waterwheels were designed and built in order to raise water from the river and drop it into ducts and canals that lead to the fields waiting to be irrigated.
There are 17 surviving Norias along the Orontes and most of them, which all have given names, were rebuilt after the Byzantines by the Ayyubids. The oldest surviving wheels date from the 13th century. Though historically used for purpose of irrigation, nowadays the Norias are almost purely aesthetic and of historical interest.
Besides of the Norias Hama has nothing much to offer when it comes to sights, but then it's not always about seeing sights but much more about enjoying the daily life of the country itself and finding some time just to stroll aimlessly through a city or to have a drink or lunch at the restaurants and cafes on the riverside, which is a popular pastime for the people in Hama.
Walking through the city was relaxing as it has a different pace than the bustling and crowded Damascus
Model of
Crac des Chevaliers or Aleppo as Hama is a way smaller and sees a way less tourists.
We arrived in the early evening after a 3hrs busride from Palmyra and ended up staying on the rooftop of an hostel again, as the rooms were all full but unlike the one in Damascus, this rooftop was quite nice and not packed with tons of other travellers. When the dusk started to break in, we were sitting on our rooftop and listened to the prayers coming from the big loudspeakers of the minarettes... and even though I am not a muslim and not familiar with what the prayers were about, it soon became something like a daily ritual, to listen to them several times a day when the world around you seems to stand still for a few minutes.
- Crac des Chevaliers - The Castle of the Knights - On the next day we took a trip to the Crac des Chevalier, the greatest of all Crusader castles, and one of the greatest sights of Syria. The Crac des Chevaliers was described by T.E. Lawrence as "perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world".
But it's
Inside
Crac des Chevaliers not a castle like you imagine in fairy-tales like Cinderella, not a castle like in Neuschwanstein with decorated huge, colourful halls, where you can easily imagine pretty dressing princesses running through the corridors or playful kings chasing around their hundreds of mistresses and having wild celebrations with dancers and acrobats and people spitting fire. No, it's literally a fortress, especially when you bear in mind that the word "Krak" is coming from the Syriac karak, meaning fortress. And as a Crusader fortress, Crac des Chevaliers was the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller during the Crusades. It was expanded between 1150 and 1250 and eventually housed a garrison of 2000. The inner curtain wall is up to 100 feet thick at the base on the south side, with seven guard towers 30 feet in diameter. In short, it was not built for living in pleasure, but for war. Not built for pretty girls, but for knights in their heavy armors, waiting for to march into battle or to defend it against invaders. In short, only for military purpose.
At Crac de Chevaliers all that was best in both European and Middle Eastern military design combined to produce a fortress. Without
Crac des Chevaliers
Crac des Chevaliers doubt, it is one of the greatest masterpieces of military architecture.
We spent a couple of hours there strolling through and around. The castle was impressive and with a bit of imagination I could conjure up what it might have looked like in the time of the Crusades and while standing on one of the guard towers, overviewing the flat landscape laying in front of the Crac, I could imagine how it must looked like to see huge armies marching over the hills approaching the fortress for the final battle... a bit like in one of those "Lord of the Rings" movies when they were waiting for the hordes of Orcs to come! You know, men, no matter if they are 7, 12, 25, 36 or 69yrs old... will somewhere deep inside always stay little boys and for little boys a place like this is a huge playground, I am sure that most of us would love to run around at such a place, dressing like heroic knights, swinging around funky swords and kicking each others butt... but then fortunately or unfortunately, most of the time we can suppress the little boys in us!
Back in Hama, Grace
Nuts
Hama, Syria had to do some more editing work online and I strolled through the city myself a bit. There was nothing much to see, so I just had some aimless walks. It was funny that now and then people came up to me and asked me to have a cellphone-photo with them, and surprisingly not just men but mostly girls, considering that I was in a muslim country and in a rather conservative part of Syria! I am not sure why they wanted to have a pic with me, maybe just because I look Asian and therefore in a way a bit Alien-like for some of them or a doll, or hmm ...whatever, I will leave it to your imagination!
People were friendly and welcoming, some came to us and just wanted to have some conversation in English. Hama was judging from my experience hassle free and people genuine. We enjoyed the good food and repeatedly went to dinner at a beautiful restaurant, set around a courtyard, like in most Middle Eastern cultures. Food was relatively cheap, considering that we were at a beautiful upper-scale place, and we ate plenty. Another ritual during our time in Hama was that Grace
Kids
Hama, Syria became a kind of addicted to the juice-shop next to our hostel, so that she had to have her regular dosis of fresh juice there from time to time, like 3-4times a day. According to her, it was the best juice in the country! I am not sure, as I am not too much into juice but much more the Coke-guy, but even I liked the juice!
We stayed a couple of more days before we decided to move south back to Damascus and then to Amman, the capital of Jordan.
And just for the record and to whom it may concern, I haven't seen nor found any plausible reason why Syria should be more or less "evil" than any other country, nor did the people looked evil and nor did walking through the streets felt in any way dangerous! I think Syria is in general a very safe country to be, even at night it didn't feel unsafe.
Maybe the Syrian politic has not the same goals and do not treasure all the same values like some Western countries, and I can't exclude the possibility that the government provides arms and support to terrorists, but all
that doesn't make a country itself and much less its people in any way evil! And it doesn't make this country less worth to travel, on the contrary... it's a beautiful destination with lots to offer, from numerous historical sights ranging from Crusader castles and ancient Roman ruins to neat beaches! A destination with maybe the most friendly and welcoming people in the Middle East and without any doubt highly worth a visit!
To be continued… next: Jordan - The City half as old as time...
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Mariana Harkenson
non-member comment
Chiiiii !!!!
Dude, finally a new update! What took you so long huh?! Looking forward to more SOON.. so Hurry up! °--°