Lattakia - الاذقيه

Lattakia (Al ladhiqiyah) Is the main sea-port of Syria on the Mediterranean. It is situated on the low-lying Ra's Ziyarah promontory that projects into the Mediterranean Sea. It was known to the Phoenicians as Ramitha and to the Greeks as Leuke Akte. Its present name is a corruption of Laodicea, for the mother of Seleucus II (3rd century BC).Lattakia lies 186 km southwest of Aleppo, 186 km northwest of Homs and 348 km northwest of Damascus.
Lattakia has retained its importance since ancient times. As Lattakia is the sea-gate to Syria, It is well-provided with accommodation, and is well-placed as a base from which to explore the coastal regions of the country. There are beaches, mountains, archaeological sites and many relics of the Crusaders, all within a few hours from each other.











The Lattakia coastline with mountains in the background:

Aleppo Ommayad Mosque

The Great Mosque of Aleppo is similar to the larger Ommayad Mosque in Damascus. It is also in the city centre and you can see the Aleppo Citadel in the background:
















The Great Mosque of Aleppo was built on the same lines as the Damascus Mosque which was built during the caliphate of Suleiman Ibn Abdelamalek. It was demolished several times, the first being when the emperor Nicephorus raided and destroyed the city of Aleppo, and the last one at the hands of Tamerlane. It was rebuilt during the Mameluke Era and the oldest part of it is its magnificent minaret, a square-shaped edifice built in 1090 A.D. It is also famous for its wooden pulpit made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory, fashioned during the reign of Sultan El Nasser Mohammed Ibn Qalawoun in the 8th A.H./14th A.D. century.

Olive Trees

Olive trees are very common in Syria. They make up one of the main agricultural exports from Syria. Farm houses in Syria have olive trees everywhere in their gardens

This is a picture of olive tree plantations in Tartus, a city located on the Mediterranean coastline of Syria just south of Lattakia:

Al Tekiyeh Al Sulaymaniyeh Mosque (Damascus - دمشق)

This is a very beautiful mosque in the Syrian Capital, Damascus, which is owned by my friend and his family:

Aleppo University

The Aleppo University differs dramatically in appearance when compared with Damascus University. Damascus University has a more traditional look whilst Aleppo University looks more of a modern building. Like Damascus University it has a student overpopulation. It is also estimated to have more students than Damascus University. It had been given a boost with an addition of 23 new subjects. Syria is experiencing a growth in its education which is benefit as there is a demand for more subjects available for further education and more universities. These have taken place successfully at present.

The entrance to Aleppo city sees a welcome with the Aleppo University being the first site:


















The Aleppo University square is a beautiful place at night with coloured water fountains. Water fountains are very common on the roads in Syria:

Aleppo Central Square

The central square provides the finest rest and you find a very calm atmosphere and beautiful scenery around you. Housing is very nice and of high standards.

Aleppo Tourist Areas

The Aleppo tourist areas are very nice places to visit. Unlike a lot of main city Aleppo it is very calm. Having a walk here is very good and at night you will find beautiful restaurants and cosy places to sit and even picnic. You will find that in Aleppo there are a few tourist spots rather than single big resorts like in Spain or Greece. The visitors in each tourist spot are quite different. In the central city most tourists are from Lebanon and the Gulf (particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and there are some French. Here you find top quality hotels and restaurants surrounded by beautiful scenery. The tourist spots more to the edge of the city are mainly one day visit areas and one of the most famous attraction here is called the Blue Lagoon which has very nice swimming pools and facilities as well as a restaurant. Here almost all the visitors are from Lebanon and one of the reasons is the coach service these types of attractions have in which they pick visitors up mainly from Lebanon due to the close distance. Lebanon has coaches provided by Syria just for the Blue Lagoon and you find them dropping of the Lebanese visitors very commonly. The tourist spot opposite the Aleppo Citadel, which is one of the biggest, is very beautiful. The only thing is almost all of the visitors are from within Syria itself and one would imagine that you will find the most diversity here but this turned out to not be the case.

This is a tourist area in central Aleppo and as you can see it has an advertising banner for a telecom company and you do find advertising a lot in this tourist spot especially. Most tourist here are from the Middle East:

Saladin

Saladin was born into a prominent Kurdish family. On the night of his birth, his father, Najm ad-Din Ayyub, gathered his family and moved to Aleppo, there entering the service of 'Imad ad-Din Zangi ibn Aq Sonqur, the powerful Turkish governor in northern Syria. Growing up in Ba'lbek and Damascus, Saladin was apparently an undistinguished youth, with a greater taste for religious studies than military training.
His formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle Asad ad-Din Shirkuh, an important military commander under the amir Nureddin, son and successor of Zangi. During three military expeditions led by Shirkuh into Egypt to prevent its falling to the Latin-Christian (Frankish) rulers of the states established by the First Crusade, a complex, three-way struggle developed between Amalric I, the Latin king of Jerusalem, Shawar, the powerful vizier of the Egyptian Fatimid caliph, and Shirkuh. After Shirkuh's death and after ordering Shawar's assassination, Saladin, in 1169 at the age of 31, was appointed both commander of the Syrian troops and vizier of Egypt.
His relatively quick rise to power must be attributed not only to the clannish nepotism of his Kurdish family but also to his own emerging talents. As vizier of Egypt, he received the title king (malik), although he was generally known as the sultan. Saladin's position was further enhanced when, in 1171, he abolished the Shi'i Fatimid caliphate, proclaimed a return to Sunnah in Egypt, and consequently became its sole ruler.
Although he remained for a time theoretically a vassal of Nureddin, that relationship ended with the Syrian emir's death in 1174. Using his rich agricultural possessions in Egypt as a financial base, Saladin soon moved into Syria with a small but strictly disciplined army to claim the regency on behalf of the young son of his former suzerain.
Soon, however, he abandoned this claim, and from 1174 until 1186 he zealously pursued a goal of uniting, under his own standard, all the Muslim territories of Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt.
This he accomplished by skillful diplomacy backed when necessary by the swift and resolute use of military force. Gradually, his reputation grew as a generous and virtuous but firm ruler, devoid of pretense, licentiousness, and cruelty. In contrast to the bitter dissension and intense rivalry that had up to then hampered the Muslims in their resistance to the crusaders, Saladin's singleness of purpose induced them to rearm both physically and spiritually.
Saladin's every act was inspired by an intense and unwavering devotion to the idea of jihad ("holy war")-the Muslim equivalent of the Christian crusade. It was an essential part of his policy to encourage the growth and spread of Muslim religious institutions.
He courted its scholars and preachers, founded colleges and mosques for their use, and commissioned them to write edifying works especially on the jihad itself. Through moral regeneration, which was a genuine part of his own way of life, he tried to re-create in his own realm some of the same zeal and enthusiasm that had proved so valuable to the first generations of Muslims when, five centuries before, they had conquered half the known world.
Saladin also succeeded in turning the military balance of power in his favour-more by uniting and disciplining a great number of unruly forces than by employing new or improved military techniques. When at last, in 1187, he was able to throw his full strength into the struggle with the Latin crusader kingdoms, his armies were their equals. On July 4, 1187, aided by his own military good sense and by a phenomenal lack of it on the part of his enemy, Saladin trapped and destroyed in one blow an exhausted and thirst-crazed army of crusaders at Hattin, near Tiberias in northern Palestine.
So great were the losses in the ranks of the crusaders in this one battle that the Muslims were quickly able to overrun nearly the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre, Toron, Beirut, Sidon, Nazareth, Caesarea, Nabulus, Jaffa (Yafo), and Ascalon (Ashqelon) fell within three months.
But Saladin's crowning achievement and the most disastrous blow to the whole crusading movement came on Oct. 2, 1187, when Jerusalem, holy to both Muslim and Christian alike, surrendered to the Sultan's army after 88 years in the hands of the Franks.
In stark contrast to the city's conquest by the Christians, when blood flowed freely during the barbaric slaughter of its inhabitants, the Muslim reconquest was marked by the civilized and courteous behaviour of Saladin and his troops.
His sudden success, which in 1189 saw the crusaders reduced to the occupation of only three cities, was, however, marred by his failure to capture Tyre, an almost impregnable coastal fortress to which the scattered Christian survivors of the recent battles flocked. It was to be the rallying point of the Latin counterattack.
Most probably, Saladin did not anticipate the European reaction to his capture of Jerusalem, an event that deeply shocked the West and to which it responded with a new call for a crusade. In addition to many great nobles and famous knights, this crusade, the third, brought the kings of three countries into the struggle.
The magnitude of the Christian effort and the lasting impression it made on contemporaries gave the name of Saladin, as their gallant and chivalrous enemy, an added lustre that his military victories alone could never confer on him.
The Crusade itself was long and exhausting, and, despite the obvious, though at times impulsive, military genius of Richard I the Lion-Heart, it achieved almost nothing. Therein lies the greatest-but often unrecognized--achievement of Saladin. With tired and unwilling feudal levies, committed to fight only a limited season each year, his indomitable will enabled him to fight the greatest champions of Christendom to a draw. The crusaders retained little more than a precarious foothold on the Levantine coast, and when King Richard set sail from the Orient in October 1192, the battle was over.
Saladin withdrew to his capital at Damascus. Soon, the long campaigning seasons and the endless hours in the saddle caught up with him, and he died. While his relatives were already scrambling for pieces of the empire, his friends found that the most powerful and most generous ruler in the Muslim world had not left enough money to pay for his grave.

This is Saladin's Grave in Damascus:

Orontes River bridge (Homs - حمص)

Here is a well known bridge crossing the Orontes River in Homs in central west Syria near the Lebanon border. This is Syria's second longest river and it runs through the industrial city of Homs. It is the only river in the world where the water flows from north to south:

Damascus University

Damascus University has a very nice and unique design and like Aleppo University it has a student overpopulation:

New Aleppo - حلب الجديدة

With my previous article on the Aleppo city expansion... I believe it is now time to introduce you with some of the pictures I have taken of the areas and for all the Aleppians who have not seen their city for a long time meet the growth of your city and here is a load of them for you to get a taster:

These housing are full up with new residents:













































These housing are in areas still being built and so some houses are still yet to be bought:



















Here is a new mosque being built in one of the new areas. It is the best picture of a new mosque being built in the areas I caught:










This is an example of infill as this is a new building in the inner city. Infill is when an empty space in a city is built upon rather than just building on the edge of the city:

The Aleppo - Lattakia railroad

The Aleppo - Lattakia railroad connects the two major citites and as you can see in the picture beautiful scenery surrounds the railroad with mountains and vegetated slopes:

Al Rahman Mosque

Al Rahman Mosque is a famous mosque in Aleppo recognised from its unique design:

Ommayad Mosque (Damascus - دمشق)

Ommayad Mosque:
Ommayad Mosque is the most important mosque in the whole of Syria. It is located in the heart of the city of Damascus. This great mosque is known to be the oldest existing monumental structure in the Islamic world.

Aerial view of the Ommayad Mosque:
















This beautiful mosque in the holy month of Ramadan fills up with people who wait for sunset so they can break their fast together here. Every mosque in Ramadan offers food at sunset.

Interior and Exterior of the Ommayad Mosque

Ommayad Mosque exterior:
















Ommayad Mosque minaret:























Interior of the Ommayad Mosque:

Bagdad Station

Bagdad Station (old Aleppo):
A famous area in old Aleppo which contains many shopping districts and is surrounded by a more modern part of Aleppo. Being part of the main central city the Aleppo Citadel is easily seen from balconies as it is built on the highest point in Aleppo.

Bagdad Station housing:
Making up part of the stations (main areas) consisting of the highest multi-flat buildings in Aleppo due to the highest population densities in the city. These seven storey buildings have seen gentrification by nearly all new residents who have moved to the area and some buildings that have fewer storeys have had additional storeys added on top of the original buildings to increase housing to support the population which had currently boomed. In fact the population density is so high (the highest in the world) that some buildings have flats built underground beneath the main buildings for more housing.










Here is one building that has had additional storeys built on top of the original building and also has housing underground:

Bagdad Station city centre

Bagdad Station city centre:
The busiest part of Bagdad Station especially at night with its Fabulous scenery and boasting the biggest shopping district in the area which now has modern banking facilities, car showrooms, the most successful Chinese restaurant in Aleppo and high technological shops, including Sony, which are still currently flourishing.










It has been made perfect for shoppers with brilliant lighting and fountains in the centre with spaces for seating for whenever they wish to rest.










The largest public park in Syria, Hadiqat Al Aam equivilant in size to Hyde park in London, England, is also found here with its main entrance and it also connects to Nile Road which is part of a major Aleppo road system.


















Below: this view in the centre of Hadiqat Al Aam shows one of the wealthiest areas of the city in the background. There is also a statue in the middle which is a memorial of the many Aleppian innovators.
















The main areas Sulaymania and Azizye also connect with this city centre directly in the middle seperating them. Residents enjoy high standards of living with large, modern, clean and very beautiful housing and marvelous sceneries from their balconies and the shopping centres only below them.

Bagdad Station at night

Bagdad Station at night:
At night Bagdad Station is very busy and in fact it comes to life at this time with every shop open, crowded streets and roads heavily congested. Everyone is awake and it is guaranteed that no one would be sleeping until about 2am. Most balcony doors are open as children are playing in the balconies whilst the adults are watching the television and drinking tea or coffee and enjoying the cool night time breezes after the very high temperatures of daytime on summer days. All you can hear are cars, children playing and chatter. Standing on a balcony would mean seeing the jam packed roads and so many people on the streets.