Aleppo and St. Simeon - 2nd January, 2006

Firstly, thanks for the comments and the emails, it is great to hear from people. We have had a lovely day today and we both feel quite recovered from the arduous journey to Syria. As we write this, we are enjoying a cup of coffee. To get instant coffee, you ask for 'Nescafe' and they bring you a mug of frothed milk with instant coffee sprinkled on the top. Stir it in, add some sugar, and you have a very nice cup of coffee.

After we updated yesterday, we went back to the hotel. We were planning on going to the museum, but it was already getting dark. It is winter here and the sun sets around 4.30pm. We had a rest and then met the new people on our tour. We now are a group of nine, five of whom are Australians. In addition, there are two Americans and one Brazilian. To get to know each other, we went out for dinner in the Christian Quarter. It was a lovely night, but by 10pm we were quite tired and headed back to the hotel for bed.

This morning we headed out to the St. Simeon monastery. This is about an hour's drive from Aleppo, so we hopped into a little minivan to get there. As we drove out of Aleppo, we got a good look of the countryside, which is very rocky. Limestone is quarried in massive quarries along the road – a suburb called 'New Aleppo' is built almost entirely of limestone, hence the demand.

The St. Simeon monastery is located on a hill above the ghost town of Telanisous. We stopped there first to have a look at the ruins and to get the backstory on St. Simeon, the stylite (person who sits on a column). He was born c. AD 392 and went to a school at Telanisous. When he was about 17, he developed a taste for fasting and would sit for days without eating. His school expelled him and Simeon would fast sitting on the hill above the town, looking down at his school. People would make pilgrimage to see him, especially after he developed a reputation for curing diseases. A friend suggested that he sit on a column and built him one that was about 2m off the ground. For the next 30 years, Simeon would sit on this column, which gradually was increased in size until it was 16m tall. After his death, he was interred at the site and a monastery was built around the column. It was maintained as a monastery and church for about 150 years (and a burial crypt housed the bodies of St. Simeon and the monks who lived there) and was then abandoned after a series of earthquakes. In the tenth century, a Kurdish prince discovered the building and turned it into his palace.

The monastery is in a state of disrepair but the grandeur and scale can still be discerned. The entrance is particularly remarkable – a series of arches and columns. Inside, the base of Simeon's column remains in the very middle of the building. Surrounding it are four domed areas, which are laid out in the shape of the crucified Christ: the arms are outstretched, the legs point west and the head is tilted to the right. Standing at the bottom of the 'foot' dome, you can clearly see the layout. The floor was originally covered in mosaics. Some still exist but have been concreted over because people kept trying to steal the tiles. Only a few are uncovered to give an idea of what the floor would have looked like. There are also eighteen different types of crosses found in the building, at the top of columns and on the arch keystones. We didn't find all 18, but saw about 10.



The site also houses a baptistery about 100m from the monastery. Very little remains there, but we could see the baptismal pool. It had steps leading into it from two directions and would be about five feet deep. The base of the pool is covered in mosaics and there is a viewing area to the west of the pool. As I said, very little else remains, but there is good views off the hill.

After making a requisite toilet stop, which requires payment to use a hole in the ground, we headed back to Aleppo. It was midday by this time and we visited the Aleppo citadel before lunch. It is in the centre of Aleppo and is on a very tall mound. After walking up a very steep slope and many stairs, we entered into the castle. It is currently being excavated and the archaeologists have found evidence that site has been used since Hittite times (which was c. 1500 BC). The majority of the castle that exists today was built after the crusades and borrows heavily from crusader architecture. We wandered around the ruins for about an hour, marveling at how much of Aleppo we could see from the top. From the way we have driven in and out of Aleppo, we had the impression that it was not a big city. We were wrong! It stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions. Almost all the buildings are made of stone or concrete. As very few of the buildings have any facing, this gives the impression that the city is almost white. In fact, we have noticed that the Syrian landscape in general is quite devoid of colour.

The highlight of our visit to the citadel was the Throne Room. We nearly missed seeing this, as we couldn't find the way up to it. As we were leaving the castle, we noticed a few men climbing out of a hole in the wall. We decided to investigate and went in. We had to climb about five flights of stairs (where each stair was almost 50cm high) and had nearly given up on finding anything when we stumbled into the most beautiful room. Every surface was covered in lacquered wood paneling and there was some gorgeous stained glass in the ceiling. Hanging from the roof were beautiful wooden chandeliers. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the stained glass, giving the room a beautiful rosy hue. It was a beautiful room and we were so glad we found it. Nobody else in the group saw it and they were all very jealous when they saw the photos. It really was the highlight of the citadel.

We had some lunch after visiting the citadel and then walked through the souk (bazaar) on our way back to the part of the city where we are staying. The souk is incredible; you could buy almost anything there. The whole thing is arranged into sections, with fabrics, jewelry, clothing, food and so on all divided into different 'roads'. The jewelry section is quite stunning, particularly the gold 'road'. It just glows! There were heaps of people in the souk and it was very slow moving through it. When we finally made it out the other side, we had some Aleppo pistachios and apricots to sustain us. Well, I ate the apricots and Fletch the pistachios. Both were divine, Fletch said the pistachios were the best that he had ever eaten.

We then had a wander through some of the old streets until we ended up here. We have a bit of free time until dinner at 7pm, and as it is dark, we thought we'd pop in and do the diary.

Fletch's tips for new travellers

A handy tool for the traveller is a camera tripod. Not only can you take better photographs, you can also rid yourself of beggar children and pesky traders!