The Damascus Seen by Saul of Tarsus Still Exists, Presenting the Same
Scenes and Cherishing the Same Customs That Characterized It 1,000 Years
Ago.
If you were suddenly asked to name the oldest city in the world which is
still in a flourishing condition, what would be your answer?
In nine cases out of ten, the person to whom such a query might be
propounded would hark back to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. He would be wrong.
The oldest city in the world is Damascus.
Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is
buried in a desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris
and the Euphrates. Damascus remains what it was before the days of
Abraham--a center of trade and travel--an isle of verdure in the desert;
"a presidential capital," with martial and sacred associations extending
through thirty centuries.
It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light above the
brightness of the sun; the street which is called Strait, in which it was
said "he prayed," still runs through the city.
The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid
to enter "because it was given to man to have but one paradise, and for
his part he was resolved not to have it in this world," is to-day what
Julian called the "Eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah "the
head of Syria."
From Damascus came the damson, our blue plums, and the delicious apricot
of Portugal called damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and
silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the
damask rose introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII; the
Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful
elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane
carried the artist into Persia; and that beautiful art of inlaying wood
and steel with gold and silver, a kind of mosaic engraving and sculpture
united--called damaskeening--with which boxes, bureaus, and swords are
ornamented.