Syrian City Research Articles

Advanced analysis technology in reshaping post war cities (Palmyra - Syria)

The purpose of the paper is to determine the interrelationship between urban planning and analysis technology in the stages of construction and expansion and their applicability to Syrian cities after the war. According to a UN report, more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. The report predicts that the world will witness a surge in urbanization and that the city’s population Will exceed to six Billion by 2045. Cities based on integrated technological systems can respond to rapidly changing needs by providing pre-built facilities within the city’s infrastructure environment, with the help of the flexible urban planning structure of the city, which cannot be achieved without advanced analysis technology that define the threats and the weaknesses and help to find the solutions. These cities are not limited to those that are established from the beginning by new technology, but also existent cities could turn into smart cities. And cities that are emerging from war situations and significantly damaged in their structure are a great opportunity to dynamically work on "from the bottom up" in urban planning and implementing new strategies based on advanced techniques in the analysis of the current situation and forecasting the future to develop appropriate plans and methodologies for the reconstruction and development of cities in accordance with principles that avoid mistakes in previous periods.

Assessing Spatial Equity and Accessibility of Public Green Spaces in Aleppo City, Syria

This paper examines the accessibility of urban green spaces within the Syrian city of Aleppo before the civil war using an environmental justice approach by indicating the current state of the parameters proximity and quantity in relation to the socioeconomic status of the inhabitants. Therefore, we conducted the average nearest neighbour analysis, facilities over and under coverage analysis, network analysis and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test followed by a post-hoc Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) test. The findings clearly indicate that the spatial pattern of the distribution of public parks facilities was significantly clustered (p-value < 0.0001), with a z-score of −16.4. Several neighbourhoods within the western and central parts of the city were identified to have a higher density of facilities, while the majority of the neighbourhoods located in the marginal parts in eastern Aleppo (low income) lack access to urban green spaces. The hierarchy-wise analysis reveals a strong deficit of urban green spaces at lower hierarchies, for example pocket parks and neighbourhood parks, while access to quarter parks and district parks is high. The urban green spaces at higher hierarchies are located in high and middle socioeconomic status areas. Regarding social segregation in park distribution and their accessibility, the data showed that high income neighbourhoods enjoy a significantly higher percentage of park facilities. The approach presented in this paper offers a generic method for the future development of public green spaces for balanced and sustainable planning.

Enslaved People in an Ancient Syrian City

Abstract The cuneiform documents found at Tell Atchana, a site on the River Orontes not far from modern city of Antakya, are of pivotal importance for our knowledge of western Syrian society during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. These tablets from ancient Alalakh provide data relating to the city’s daily life and its social structure and administration. Compared to the large amount of information regarding free citizens, the material concerning slave laborers and menial workers—which is the topic of this article—is scanty and not always easy to interpret, for both the public and private sectors.

The fragility of community security in Damascus and its environs

AbstractThe organizational errors of Syrian urban planning have been a major cause of the escalation of the Syrian crisis and its continuation. Syrian cities, including Damascus and its environs, have suffered from the fragility of social security, which is manifested in the form of cohesive human groups in closed communities, influenced by religion, culture, family, class, place of origin of the population, occupation, etc. This article examines the fragility of security during the crisis of 2011–18, with the aim of clarifying the impact of the organizational problems and the processing delay that has generated social security fragility because these closed communities are looking for their own security and safety outside the control of local administrations. The article proposes that the inherent fragility of security in Damascus and its environs should be associated with poverty, organizational errors and slums as a model for the fragility of all Syrian cities.

Diplomatic Relations between Syrian Cities and the Early Crusaders : Politics in the First Half of the Twelfth Century Based on an Analysis of Agreements and Jihad

Diplomatic Relations between Syrian Cities and the Early Crusaders : Politics in the First Half of the Twelfth Century Based on an Analysis of Agreements and Jihad

Correlations and forecast of death tolls in the Syrian conflict

The Syrian armed conflict has been ongoing since 2011 and has already caused thousands of deaths. The analysis of death tolls helps to understand the dynamics of the conflict and to better allocate resources and aid to the affected areas. In this article, we use information on the daily number of deaths to study temporal and spatial correlations in the data, and exploit this information to forecast events of deaths. We found that the number of violent deaths per day in Syria varies more widely than that in England in which non-violent deaths dominate. We have identified strong positive auto-correlations in Syrian cities and non-trivial cross-correlations across some of them. The results indicate synchronization in the number of deaths at different times and locations, suggesting respectively that local attacks are followed by more attacks at subsequent days and that coordinated attacks may also take place across different locations. Thus the analysis of high temporal resolution data across multiple cities makes it possible to infer attack strategies, warn potential occurrence of future events, and hopefully avoid further deaths.

Violent and Nonviolent Changes in the Images of Cities in the Arab Spring Countries

The Arab Spring transformations have caused tangible impacts on the urban environment throughout the Middle East with varying levels. In some cities in countries like Libya, Yemen and Syria, deliberate and accidental destruction has taken place, resulting in severe transformations in the image of these cities that could be considered as lasting or difficult to amend. In some cities, the damage caused to urban built environment could be considered a co-lateral damage as a result of internal fighting between the people and their regimes, or the fighting between the different factions in the country or from external interference of regional or international powers. Urbicide, which is defined as a deliberate destruction of cities is also another form of damaging the built environment or the city image, in which parties in an internal conflict tend to destroy symbols or quarters of their rivals to inflict a tangible damage to their social and moral believes. The impacts on the built environment and the image of the city, can result as well from non-destructive measures, for example changes in land uses or decisions to demolish specific buildings that belong to the former era will also result in a clear change in the city image. This paper highlights the types of transformation of the city images that took place as a result of the Arab Spring revolutions. The cases discussed in this paper focus mainly on cities from both Syria and Egypt. This highlighting is done in regard to the nature of change, as mentioned above, the violent transformation in the case of Syrian cities and few cases in Egypt and the nonviolent transformation with the examples from Egypt.In case of the Syrian cities the transformation is caused and sparked by the civil conflict, however the course of reconstruction of these cities after the conflict ends is argued to take one of three paths; reconstruction, renovation or redevelopment. While in case of the nonviolent transformation that is taking place already in Egypt, the nature of change was affected by political, social and security aspects, which in turn had direct impacts on the images of the Egyptian cities after the Arab Spring revolutions.

Suggestioni circa P.Dura 33

<p align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-size: medium;">The article examines the fragmentary P.Dura 33, parchment text found during the excavations of 1921-1922 in the Syrian city of Dura Europos, investigating its form, content and nature and inserting it into the context of the acts of marriage and divorce of Dura. The analyzes carried out on the document, which could therefore be considered as a sort of “reserved” inventory of objects, would highlight its peculiarities and differences within the context investigated.</span></p>

THE EGYPTIAN ROLE IN ULLAZA DURING THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C

Egypt had an extremely vital role in the Eastern Mediterranean coast since the beginning ofthe third millennium BC, allowing Egypt to control and impose its political and ideologicaldomination on the surrounding cities to obtain the products that Egypt lacked. Thus, many ofthe names of the Syrian cities were mentioned in the Egyptian records, including the city andport of Ullaza. Because of its strategic location and economic wealth, Ullaza became thefocus of the forces that competed Egypt in its domination, including the Mittani, Hittites, andKingdom of Amurru during the second millennium BC.

Rusijos propagandos praktika daro įtaką teoriniam komunikacijos modeliui

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The legacy of aleppine ottoman houses

The objective of this article is to show the importance of the architectural and interior design of Aleppine houses. Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria (after the capital Damascus) and is also its commercial capital. Aleppo has a long history, extending from the third millennium B.C. to the Islamic era. Islamic rulers made Aleppo great by re-building its walls, gates, towers and citadel. The Muslims also built mosques, schools, houses, inns, markets, hospitals, bathrooms and public facilities. Consequently, Aleppo flourished and became a very important station on the Silk Road: the third largest city in the Ottoman Empire after Istanbul and Cairo. Aleppo was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918. As part of this empire, local Aleppine architects and craftsmen combined their techniques and cultural heritage with Ottoman architecture and design. Due to growth in population, the Ottomans expanded the city, provided facilities and established neighbourhoods outside the walls. These neighbourhoods outside the walls were mostly for the affluent and contained the greatest treasure of decoration and materials. This research employs a historical and descriptive approach to explore the history, design and decoration of the traditional houses during the Ottoman period. In 1986, UNESCO added Old Aleppo City to the World Heritage List. Since 2012 much of Syria’s architectural heritage has been destroyed due to internal war. In Aleppo, the losses in both ancient and modern parts of the city have been tremendous. Some traditional houses have been damaged. This article will highlight some recommendations to protect and restore the traditional houses in Aleppo for future use. Keywords: Aleppine houses, Aleppo City, Aleppo Heritage, Ottoman architecture.

Towards Adaptive Residential Buildings Traditional and Contemporary Scenarios in Bioclimatic Design (the Case of Aleppo)

Traditional architectural typologies could play a crucial role in the environmental architectural contemporary framework, due to many attempts developed in last decades to adopt passive house model and bioclimatic criteria in the Mediterranean areas. According to climate responsive approach, the interactive and adaptive relationship between building, site, and climate consider a basic rule to reduce the environmental impact and improving energy efficiency in buildings. In recent decades this concept has extended to the preservation of the cultural identity of the places. High level of adaptive, sustainable and functional performances could be deduced from the traditional residential buildings as the case of Aleppo proves. The traditional Arab house in Aleppo is based on series of adaptive and sustainable-oriented principles derived from the integration of active and interactive design approaches. The old city of Aleppo (included in the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites) is considered one of the largest historical cities in the world, in terms of its population number (110,000 people before the war). The damage to cultural and historical heritage by the war asserts the peculiarity of the city in the Eastern Mediterranean area. This paper presents the study that the authors are carrying out on Aleppo, considering the bioclimatic approach as a key element to reorient the future construction process of the Syrian city to achieve the objectives of global sustainability and identify design criteria's for the development of the residential buildings. The study also aims to analyse the mutations which appeared through evolution process of residential buildings and identify the invariant elements and the main trajectories of modification established in the past, confirming their compatibility with the future development of Aleppo.

The European Migration Crisis (2011-2015): A Crisis of Failed and Fragile States

The surge in migrants seeking protection across Europe has been described as the second largest movement of people since the end of World War II. Prominent among the migrants are displaced citizens from the conflicts of Syria, Libya and Iraq. These situations represent Anarchy characterized by powerfully armed groups operating as central authorities under abysmal conditions. Millions of citizens are therefore displaced and forced to flee in search of safety and protection. Libyan, Iraqi and Syrian cities and towns once known for vibrancy are now ghost towns in total ruins with charred remains of death bodies and no safe drinking water or electricity to support livelihood. Using clearly defined theoretical and empirical analysis, the paper show that said failure and fragility coupled with the international community's failure to effectively respond to displaced citizens caught in these conflicts have led to mass migration of refugees across most of Europe.

This Is What a Syrian City’s First Free Library Looks Like

AbstractIn a war-ravaged suburb of Damascus, rebel fighters nurture a library of 15,000 books to keep the hopes of revolution alive.

Scripting Mamlūk Cities: Insider's Look. Explorations into Landscape Narratives

AbstractIn a memorial lecture for Charles Beckingham, David Morgan1 evoked one of this prolific travel literature scholar's astute observations: “[T]he study of travel narratives, especially travel narratives about a culture quite different from the traveller's own, can be very revealing, not only about the culture he observed, but about the culture to which he belonged”.2 This insight indeed undergirds my own approach to the descriptions of cities by both insiders and outsiders. Narratives of cities, indeed of any landscape, are but interpretative and hermeneutics texts which can be surely used to narrate the very landscape, but also as texts which may be used to understand the culture and perceptions of the narrator. Over the course of this paper, I examine two accounts (texts) of residents of Mamlūk provincial cities in al-Shām. These texts will be placed under the scrutiny of the data and the existing literature of those cities. In other words, the ‘conceptualised city’ as narrated by the sources will be compared with the ‘tangible city’. The latter we may unearth from various other sources (mostly texts) as well as the city's built environment. Thus, this chapter examines the ways in which Mamlūk cities of al-Shām were scripted and narrated by two local ‘storytellers’ and ‘image-makers’ of the city.3 In this context, ‘storyteller’ is an umbrella term for those who left us with a narrated legacy of their city. I decided to call them storytellers for the purpose of accentuating their inherent subjectivity. Informed and accurate as some of these narrators may have been, all of their experiences with and accounts of the urban landscape were guided by a personal understanding and their own cultural background. Since each of these texts is about spatial practices and spatial arrangement (landscape) of the city, the argument can be made that they all fall under the heading of travel writing.4 What is more, any narrative with a spatial dimension (Michel de Certeau would argue that there is no such thing as a narrative without one) is a story that organises space. Against this backdrop, the objective of this chapter, above and beyond presenting ‘spatial stories’ of cities of Syria, is to demonstrate the complexity of the reading landscape and particularly the ways landscape descriptions need always be taken as subjective, culture-based, culturally constructed, and a constant negotiation between the traveller/story-teller/source narration, the ‘actual’ built environment and the political context.

Pagans, Jews, Christians, and a Type of Book Divination in Late Antiquity

According to the thirdcentury historian Cassius Dio, two third-century emperors, Septimius Severus and Macrinus, received oracles by verses of Homer in the temple of Zeus Belus in the Syrian city of Apamea. [...]just a few verses further on (1 Macc 3.56), Judas orders those who have just built a house, married, or planted a vineyard to return home according to the Law. [...]Van der Horst's interpretation is not convincing because this passage draws a parallel between the book of the Law and pagan cult statues, and not pagan sacred books, which is entirely understandable given that, as we have seen, there is no evidence whatsoever of a Greek divinatory practice consisting in opening any book at random. [...]the very idea of book divination was certainly known to Jews, pagans, and Christians.

The Second Crusade, 1145–49: Damascus, Lisbon and the Wendish Campaigns

AbstractThe Second Crusade (1145–49) is thought to have encompassed near simultaneous Christian attacks on Muslim towns and cities in Syria and Iberia and pagan Wend strongholds around the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. The motivations underpinning the attacks on Damascus, Lisbon and – taken collectively – the Wendish strongholds have come in for particular attention. The doomed decision to assault Damascus in 1148 rather than recover Edessa, the capital of the first so‐called crusader state, was once thought to be ill‐conceived. Historians now believe the city was attacked because Damascus posed a significant threat to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem when the Second Crusaders arrived in the East. The assault on Lisbon and the Wendish strongholds fell into a long‐established pattern of regional, worldly aggression and expansion; therefore, historians tend not to ascribe any spiritual impulses behind the native Christians' decisions to attack their enemies. Indeed, the siege of Lisbon by an allied force of international crusaders and those of the Portuguese ruler, Afonso Henriques, is perceived primarily as a politico‐strategic episode in the on‐going Christian–Muslim conflict in Iberia – commonly referred to as the reconquista. The native warrior and commercial elite undoubtedly had various temporal reasons for engaging in warfare in Iberia and the Baltic region between 1147 and 1149, although the article concludes with some notes of caution before clinically construing motivation from behaviour in such instances.

The Case for Megacities

We cannot know for certain what the future operating environment will be, but we must prepare for it. To date, the US military has not paid enough attention the rise of megacities. This article argues the US Army must continue developing new concepts, capabilities, and ultimately solutions for achieving national security objectives within the current and future operational environments of the megacity. ********** The 2014 Army Operating Concept (AOC) defines the term complex as environment that is not only unknown, but unknowable and constantly changing. (1) It goes on claim that to win in a complex world, Army forces must provide the Joint Force with multiple options, integrate the efforts of multiple partners, operate across multiple domains, and present enemies and adversaries with multiple dilemmas. (2) Nowhere is this more crucial or difficult accomplish than in the complex urban environment of a megacity. Such cities present the Army and joint force with a level of complexity for which they are not fully prepared. However, many opportunities exist for the Army and joint force reinvigorate past research efforts, consolidate learning, and prepare the current and future force for operations in such environments. Historical Context Urban warfare is not a new phenomenon. For example, in the ancient Syrian city of Hamoukar, archeologists have discovered evidence of urban combat as early as 5,500 years ago. (3) Throughout the ages, urban conflicts have tended be more the rule than the exception. Previous wars centered on the sieges and defense of urban centers of all sizes, while large battles have for centuries been the exception rather than the rule. Contemporary reminders of urban warfare and its inherent challenges include the battles of Stalingrad and Aachen during World War II, Hue during Vietnam, and Grozny in 1994-1995, and again 1999-2000. There is little reason believe future conflicts will not also require some form of urban warfare. As such, the Army's capacity engage, fight, and win major urban combat operations will determine the success of future operational and strategic endeavors. The Battle of Hue during the Vietnam conflict reflected the tendency for urban combat operations blend the levels of war, creating the situation where tactical outcomes had significant strategic implications. Arguably, the bloodiest battle during the Tet Offensive took place in Hue, Vietnam's third largest city, with significant operational, cultural, and spiritual significance. The Battle for Hue involved 26 days of intense street-to-street, house-to-house fighting against a determined enemy established in a defense-in-depth. Major urban combat operations occurred in the midst of a civilian population of around 140,000 people, and against an initial enemy force estimated at 7,500 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) troops, later reinforced a division-sized element. Facing them were three US Marine battalions and 11 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) battalions. (4) Although the United States employed Army units from the 1st Cavalry Division and 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of Hue, these forces focused on the outlying areas prevent NVA reinforcement. The US Marines and ARVN conducted the majority of fighting inside the city. When the fight for Hue ended, US and ARVN forces retook the city. The US military suffered 216 killed and 1,364 wounded, while the ARVN lost 384 killed and 1,830 wounded. Civilian casualties were around 5,800 people killed or executed by NVA/VC due their political allegiances. Estimated enemy casualties were 1,042 killed and 4,000 wounded. (5) Despite the tactical gains from retaking the city and repelling enemy forces across South Vietnam, the United States and Republic of Vietnam faced the strategic repercussions of having laid in ruins an estimated 80 percent of the city, with over 116,000 persons left homeless. …

Multidrug resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from nosocomial respiratory and urinary infections in Aleppo, Syria.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents a serious clinical challenge due to its frequent involvement in nosocomial infections and its tendency towards multidrug resistance. This study uncovered antibiotic susceptibility patterns in 177 isolates from inpatients in three key hospitals in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria. Exceptionally low susceptibility to most routinely used antibiotics was uncovered; resistance to ciprofloxacin and gentamicin was 64.9% and 70.3%, respectively. Contrarily, susceptibility to colistin was the highest (89.1%). Multidrug resistance was rife, found at a rate of 53.67% among studied P. aeruginosa isolates.

The Seventy Bulls Sacrificed at Sukkot (Num 29:12-34) in Light of a Ritual Text from Emar (Emar 6, 373)

This article deals with the seventy bulls offered at Sukkot according to Numbers 29—a number unparalleled in any other Israelite festival for which no persuasive explanation has been adduced to date. In light of a ritual from the ancient Syrian city of Emar (Emar 6, 373: 36-38), it is suggested that the custom reflects an ancient Levantine tradition of sacrificing seventy sacrifices to the seventy gods—the whole pantheon—during the New Year celebration. The evident transformation of the seventy gods into seventy nations by biblical scribes may explain the late rabbinic midrashic tradition according to which the seventy offerings made at Sukkot correspond to the seventy nations.