Common urban development patterns have given Middle Eastern cities their distinctive character. This identity is partly due to the climatic and regional similarity. The remarkable degree of unity and homogeneity amongst Islamic cities is also attributed to the common religious backgrounds and the behavioural expectation of Islamic society in its urban context. / In the past, when religion and politics acted as one body, the Islamic building principles played a major role in shaping the traditional settlement of Damascus. Political, economic, social and cultural changes introduced a new system of government. The reform movements changed the structure of the administration and established a new judicial system. The authorities implemented the Building Code and other pieces of legislation, with the object of organizing the growth of the urban form of Damascus. / This paper analyzes a cluster of traditional houses in a residential quarter of Damascus, with the objective of exploring the reciprocal effect between the physical form of the cluster and the social life that existed within it. Thereafter, in the same manner, the new settlement currently replacing the old one will be analyzed. These two settlements will be compared, with regard to the traditional building principles in the old quarters, and the new building code and regulations in the new settlements. Building guidelines that make the built environment and the social life of its inhabitants complementary will be the ultimate goal of this thesis.

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In contemporary Damascus, the modern oboe and an instrument known as its predecessor, the zurna, are heard on a daily basis as they continue to be employed in Syrian popular and folk music practices. After observing the pervasiveness of the sounds of these instruments in Syria, I proceeded to investigate the socio-cultural processes surrounding their usage. This study provides a history of the zurna, traces its development in Europe into the modern oboe, and explores the oboe's re-entry into musical practices in the Middle East. Through empirical fieldwork, I collected data that allowed me to observe the social significance of the sounds of these instruments for musicians and listeners alike in the Greater Damascus area. Using Jonathan Shannon's modernity improvisation model (Shannon 2006) as a departure point, I analyze the way Syrians use instruments such as the zurna and oboe in seemingly diverging ways to create their own "modern" subjectivities. Additionally, I demonstrate how these sounds reflect what Clifford Geertz refers to as the inevitable struggle between essentialism and epochalism in post-colonial nations such as Syria (Geertz 1971) through the analyzation of discourse surrounding instruments so deemed "modern" or "authentic" (such as the oboe and zurna, respectively) in contemporary Syrian society. Musical examples are included in order to demonstrate performance practice and provide perspective on the music theory behind the ways composers and musicians include the sounds of the oboe and zurna in particular works and genres.

This thesis examines gentrification in the historic centre of the Syrian capital Damascus prior to the civil war beginning in spring 2011 and to what extent the authoritarian regime facilitated and benefited from gentrification and urban heritage as means of regime maintenance. In so doing it critically engages with and brings into dialogue bodies of literature that, on first sight, have not much in common: first, gentrification, the production of urban space for the better-off, a process which can now be observed globally; second, urban heritage (i.e. its use for economic, political or identity-related purposes); and third, authoritarian resilience, with a focus on the Middle East, a region where authoritarian regimes remained resilient to internal and external pressures for economic and political liberalization. The thesis identifies the advance of neoliberalism and alterations in Syria’s elite composition as the contexts in which the literatures as well as the processes under scrutiny overlap. Qualitative interviews with private and official stakeholders in gentrification and heritage preservation in Old Damascus form the empirical foundation of this study, complemented by the analysis of newspaper articles, internet sources and works of fiction. Until 2011, gentrification emerged mainly in the form of commercialized historic property, a trend mainly driven by members of the upper and upper-middle classes, who were both producers and consumers of a gentrified Old Damascus. Beside the sheer interest in capital accumulation, stakeholders “used” the old city as a source of identity and an element of a Damascene heritage discourse. In addition to upper-class Damascenes’ economic and identity-related interests this thesis argues that authoritarian resilience, and thus the interests of the authoritarian state, developed into an additional aspect of gentrification and heritage promotion in Old Damascus, as the regime benefited from and facilitated both processes. Providing affluent parts of the population with a commodified landscape of consumption enabled the regime to domestically gain the support of consumers and those co-opted by privileged access to lucrative business opportunities in the old city (i.e. regime cronies and loyal entrepreneurs). Additionally, the promotion of a gentrified Old Damascus and its heritage as a tourist attraction functioned as an opportunity to upgrade the country’s negative image abroad. In conclusion, approaching authoritarian resilience through the analytical lenses of gentrification and heritage contributes to a broader understanding of urban transformations in authoritarian states. However, in the face of coercion through urban warfare, destruction and ethnic cleansing, it is unclear to what extent gentrification and heritage are still of importance for regime maintenance in Syria’s cities.

Marine sedimentary rocks ranging in age from Early Cambrian(?) to Middle Ordovician, inclusive, crop out in the Damascus area. Approximately 13,000 feet of beds are exposed, comprising 14 formations. The stratigraphic succession is rather complete and is broken by a single recognizable hiatus which represents most of late Early Ordovician time. Clastic rocks of questionable Early Cambrian age are about 3,600 feet thick. Rocks of known Cambrian age are about 6,800 feet thick and consist of, in ascending order, elastic rocks, dolomite, shale and carbonate rocks, and mixed carbonate rocks. Carbonate rocks of Early Orodovician age range from 1,000 to 6,000 feet in thickness. Middle Ordovician rocks aggregate approximately 800 feet in thickness, the basal 100 feet of which is limestone and the remainder is shale and sandstone. The Elbrook formation of middle and Late Cambrian age is herein divided into four members of which one, the Widener limestone member, is formally named and mapped. A crepicephalus fauna from the Widener limestone, and a single trilobite, Plethometopus sp. From the Conococheague formation are illustrated. The strata have been folded into five synclines and four anticlines and are broken by two major thrust faults, and Lodi thrust and the Holston Mountain thrust. The faults were initially low-angle thrusts which have been folded with the overridden rocks so that locally the fault planes have steep dips. / Master of Science

‘Bless you, may you bury me’ is a common refrain among older people in the Syrian capital Damascus, directed especially towards children and young adults when they help with daily tasks or provide joy by their play or achievements. The sentiment expresses the hope that the old may die before the young and be mourned by them. It makes explicit the interlocking of life-cycles, through aging and mortality, and presumes an understanding of ideal kinship temporality where successive generations succeed one another in their proper order. It also hints that there is no certainty in this process. Sustaining these ideals is contingent on persistent material and symbolic work, a tempering of hope with memory and experience. These types of daily reckoning of personal and kinship time through mortality and life courses are rarely explored in the literature on Middle Eastern kinship. But how do these formations of time and generation sustain and transform? Anthropological theorising on the ‘Arab Family’ models it as cyclically reproducing roles, while socio-historical discussions of regional ‘transformations’ in politics and society understand them as lineal and successive. Both contain implicit speculations about the perceptions of time and the role of generations. Neither model, however, fully addresses the instrumentality of the types of temporality and generation they presume. What is it about the unfolding of familial and social generations and the temporality they imbue that is so integral to the models of kinship and society used to understand the region? And what is happening when historical change and familial generations interact? Based on 18 months of fieldwork, this thesis explores the interrelationships of Damascene life courses and their reciprocity with the historical context in which processes of birth, maturation, procreation and death take place. It describes subjective dispositions manifested at specific points in the life course and the manner in which individuals relate to past, present and potential selves, through memory, narrative and historicity, and through the unfolding sensual experience of time, place and objects. These inter-generational relationships illustrate not a recycling, but rather an historical and historicising process through transformative exchange and reciprocity. By tracing the shifts in the narratives of kinship in and through time, I consider Damascene history and time as emergent properties of inter- and intragenerational dynamics within a supple kinship system. I assert that however much kinship activities such as eating together, transmitting property, marrying, bringing up children and giving them names may be concerned with maintaining order and propriety, they are also contentious creative forces whose tensions and joys are paramount to Syrian social transformation.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Leipzig, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-320).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Kullīyat al-Imām al-Awzāʻī lil-Dirāsāt al-Islāmīyah, 1989. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. 1089-1123) and indexes.

<p>Missing Page 56.</p> / <p>Recent Biblical scholarship has acknowledged and stressed the sociological factors at play in the formation and continuing development of religious beliefs and in the structure of religious communities. By examining the text of the Damascus Document (CD), this thesis attempts to reconstruct the social structure of the CD community, and suggests reasons for its origins and development based on the social forces which contributed to its self-definition.</p> <p>The first chapter examines the problem of deriving historical information from texts which are not strictly historical, and suggests a methodology which allows for the extraction of Social reality from religious texts. Following this, a date of origination is suggested, the historical period examined, and the origins of the community described.</p> <p>The second chapter discusses the community's self-definition, and the implications this definition and a new social situation had on their belief and community structure. An analysis of the community's response is then offered. The third chapter examines modern sectarian theory in relation to the CD community. Using the information of the previous two chapters, the CD community is discussed as a sect and compared to another sectarian movement. The conclusions deal with the community's unique role in the religious fabric of ancient Palestine, and with their common role as a sect.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)