At the crossroad between Mutanabi street -the main street going straight in the direction of the mound of the citadel-
and the Bab Antakia street, you follow the latter, but turn left to go under a vault and then right, to walk on
the path of the old enclosure wall. From this elevated street you will grasp a little of the complexity of these
old Arab cities that seem to have been conceived to confuse the minds of tax collectors, policemen, and other such
persons who the inhabitants did not want to meet! This narrow street, between roofs and skies, a predilection for
hungry cats, will bring you back to ground level near the Antioch gate. Another approach is to go under the covered
passage mentioned above and just to go straight.
On reaching the Antioch Gate (Bab Antakia), a construction erected in the 13th century by the Ayoubides and resorted
by the Mamelukes in the 15th century, you will also see the entry into the souks.
You will cross them by following a straight, narrow covered street, the Souk EI-Attareen, prolonged by the Souk
EI-Zarb, (lined its shops) which was the most important of the medieval city. But the orthogonal layout of this
quarter leads us to think that it was erected almost exactly to adapt to the checkerboard architecture of the Seleucide
city. Narrow perpendicular streets to the right and to the left give access to mosques and other pious places,
such as the madrassas (unused today), caravanserais, workshops grouped in «Qaysarias», and Hammams
The purpose of these auxiliary establishments was most often to provide an income under the form of rentals for
the maintenance of religious buildings. |
|
