To escape the noise .. the Damascene seek refuge in the history of their ancient city

Montaser Abu Nabot - Damascus

Her eyes move left and right as she enters the old neighborhoods of Damascus through Bab Touma and takes a good look at that old stone door and then walks beside him until she crosses the remains of the Damascus Wall, which leads to a long and ancient history that lived in these buildings and ancient walls.

Haya Abdo visits the neighborhoods of her ancient city permanently and moves - whenever she arrives next to shops that maintain handicrafts - between tall neighborhoods towards ages where Damascus was the capital of the world during its prosperity .. a feeling that is repeated at every moment in which it enters the ancient city through any of the seven doors that Crossings remain essential to reach deep into Jasmine City.

Between the present and the past
At the walls of the old Damascus homes and shops near its seven doors, you find a space to leave the present, and she says in her talk to Al-Jazeera Net that the bad present that Syria lives in makes it always looking for an outlet that keeps it away from the charged air in the capital, indicating that it was never able to travel outside Syria Not even to the other provinces, which prompted her to search for a past under an unknown and abhorrent present, as she described it.

Haya Abdo, the daughter of al-Midan Damascene neighborhood, believes that she has a permanent desire to enter ancient Damascus from its various doors, leaving behind high-rise buildings that have no soul to enter ancient stone doors that define the history of each of them through their continuous attempts to reach their past by reading various books that go Her mind to previous centuries.

Haya describes herself as a Romanian girl once and Umayyad again, and she imagines the times when Damascus lived through political and social fluctuations and other states and breakdowns, most notably Roman before Islam and Umayyad after him.

The seven planets
When the Damascus Wall surrounded the entire Old City in order to protect it from external ambitions and invaders, there was a need for more than one door in the vicinity of the city within the wall in order to accommodate the residents of Damascus and visitors who enter it daily.

The seven chapters are considered Roman and date back to the first century BC, and each of them indicates a different planet according to Roman beliefs - this is what Ibn Asaker Al-Dimashqi emphasized in the book "History of the City of Damascus" (Part I, page 17) - in which he says that each chapter He depicted the planet symbolizing him.

Bab Touma refers to the planet Venus, which has become teeming with cafes and restaurants that take place in old homes and where the people of Damascus find an outlet for them, and symbolizes the planet Mars in the small door south of the city, and there is a historical cemetery in which the residents of the capital find a past worth visiting in search of victories between the tombs of the princes of Bani illiteracy.

The door of al-Faradis symbolizes the planet Mercury, which is adjacent to the market of architecture, after the door was called in the modern era, the door of architecture, while Jupiter refers to the door of the mountain that is crowded most of the time, despite the apparent neglect in that particular region.

To these doors and planets, an eastern door symbolizing the sun is added to it, and its fame comes with the Jabiyya Gate, as they were the two doors from which the Muslim army entered under the leadership of Khalid bin Walid and Abu Ubaidah al-Jarrah during the Islamic conquest of the Levant.

The door of Kisan symbolizes Saturn, where sacred places and churches lie next to it, in addition to the Roman wall. As for the last planet believed by the Romans, it is the moon that indicates the door to the shrine, but it escaped long ago after it was blocked by stones that still indicate its place in a neighborhood known as the Fryans.

The ten doors
The changes that ancient Damascus has witnessed throughout history have led to a permanent need to bridge and open new doors in the Damascus Wall, which is considered the first wall placed on the ground after the flood of the Prophet of God, Noah, peace be upon him, according to what is mentioned in the "Dictionary of Countries" by Yaqout al-Hamwi.

The number of doors in the wall during all the ages reached ten doors, seven of which are Roman based on the writings found on them, and the method of their Roman construction is characterized by the presence of three holes in each door that take the form of an arch from the top, the largest of which is in the middle, while the two holes on the sides of the middle are smaller And you use a pedestrian corridor.

As for the doors that remained and are believed to be not Romanian and complementary to the ten doors, three still exist, known as the names of peace, relief, and victory, and were built and renovated at different times.

On the other hand, the accounts that indicate the true number of doors in Damascus differ (ten doors or more), but the true story in this is that today it forms a path that leads one to a long history that the capital lived through long ages and made the ancient city a painting that clearly shows anyone He enters it and looks into its walls, as do the people of Damascus, to escape the painful reality.