Dumar, Syria

With Daish (ISIS) advancing (5/15/2015) toward the gates of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra (Tadmur), another global archeological tragedy may be descending upon an irreplaceable treasure of the Syrian people and the world. This observer has been honored to spend many inspiring awe-filled hours these past few years observing and contemplating the city’s unique blend of Greco-Roman and Persian influences. Fears are raised today in Syria that this UNESCO World Heritage Site could face the same destruction which the jihadis have already wreaked in Iraq and in other areas of this country.

The Director-General of Antiquates and Museums (DGAM), Syrian patriot Dr. Maamoun Abdel-Karim, a man who has devoted his life to preserving our global heritage in Syria, and whose office this observer had just left when the news broke, declared that: “If ISIS enters Palmyra, it will be destroyed and this will be an international catastrophe.”

Against this horrific backdrop, discussing other aspects of Syria’s cultural heritage at this time may seem to the reader to be somewhat insignificant in comparison. Yet Syria’s historic Al Hijaz railway system, as is the case with much of this country’s cultural heritage, has also been damaged, looted and maliciously destroyed. Trains are considered by some jihadist salafis and deranged miscreants to be somehow religiously subversive. One barely teenage Da’ish (ISIS) tryout, deselected when he lied to recruiters about his real age (which was 13), explained to this observer recently that in the immanent Caliphate, camels, donkeys and horses, and other 7th century modes of transportation would be mandated via fatwa in order to render us all more religious and closer to what, in the eyes of Da’sih, Allah really wants us to be.

Virtually all Syrians scoff at this and at other nonsense. Countless numbers of them are volunteering at archeological sites, wherever and whenever security conditions allow, preserving and protecting the cultural heritage of both Syria and the whole world. This work includes many heritage projects around the Damascus area, including Syria’s historic train system, which was formerly a major national and global tourist attraction.

Admittedly, Syria’s rail system, old in terms of much of western history (including that of North America), is very recent in the context of the country’s ten-millennium long cultural history. Yet Syria’s trains have been an important cultural aspect in the history of the Levantine region from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the north sea of the Arabian Peninsula, to the south of Turkey on down to Jordan and Occupied Palestine.

Government workers and volunteers here are protecting and restoring the train system with the support and appreciation of a war-battered public.

An earlier railway for this area had been planned in 1864 by the Ottomans in order “to relieve the suffering of the hajjis on their 40-day journey to Mecca” through the wilderness of Midian, the Nafud, and the Hejaz Mountains. But not until 1900 was the railway begun by order of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. It was built largely by the Ottomans, with German advice and support, again ostensibly to facilitate religious pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, including Mecca. But as is often the case, particularly these days, religion was used as a mask to facilitate political objectives. The main reason for the train system, according to some scholars, was to strengthen Ottoman control over the most distant provinces of the empire. Before the construction, German military adviser in Istanbul Auler Pasha advised the Sultan that the transportation time of soldiers from Istanbul to Mecca would be reduced to only 120 hours. Another advantage to be gained was that the line would protect the Hejaz and other Arab provinces from possible British invasion.

German engineers oversaw construction and German trains were imported for the 820 miles of track that traversed 820 miles (1,320 km) of difficult terrain and was completed in only eight years. It ran from Damascus southward to Darʿā (Deraa) and thence over Transjordan via Az-Zarqāʾ, Al-Qaṭrānah, and Maʿān into northwestern Arabia, and inland via Dhāt al-Ḥajj and Al-ʿUlā, to Medina. The major branch line, 100 miles (160 km) long, from Darʿā to Haifa on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine, was also added.

World War I devastated much of Syria’s railroad system, but even before the war started, trains were sometimes attacked by Bedouins from adjacent desert areas because they threatened tribal control and profits made over the pilgrim routes to holy places. When the Arabs of the Hejaz revolted against Turkish rule in 1916, the track that ran to Medina was put out of operation by Arab raids, largely planned by the British archeologist and military strategist Thomas Edward Lawrence. Lawrence was dispatched from London to Arabia to assure the Arabs that England had their best interests at heart and would deliver on their pledges. After the war Messrs. Sykes and Picot arrived and the operative sections of track were taken over by the Syrian, Palestinian, and Transjordanian governments.

The very popular Rabweh to Dumar line of Syria’s railway system, which begins in central Damascus, is protected by the government and after nearly four years closure due to rebel threats has re-opened this month. The public is demonstrably elated. Like this observer, most of them seem to be steam engine and train lovers. They say that they are filled with memories of childhood family train trips and inhale deep breadths of joy and optimism over even a partial return to pre-conflict life these warm spring days. Today, nostalgia is widespread in Syria.

Not long after this country was convulsed in conflict, Syria’s railway system stopped functioning and rebels destroyed $250 million worth of new train cars, recently arrived from China, which had not yet been put into service. Also destroyed were many vehicles and parts of buildings when rebels occupied the largest railway museum in the world, at Qadam, a Damascus suburb. Serious damage was done to the “museum of the rolling stock of Al-Hidjaz Railway”, with fires that destroyed antique steam engines, wrecked and burned out train cars, as well as buses, heavy equipment and other assorted vehicles. Damage also resulted from the shelling of the outer walls and ceiling of a large maintenance and storage facility at Qadam. The jihadists also looted computers and large LCD TV’s, but in some cases passed on many irreplaceable objects — such as old Morse code machines, historic documents and other heritage items — apparently not appreciating the historic significance or cultural value of what they were bent on destroying.

In February 2014, the central Damascus Hejaz railway station was bombed by a rebel mortar, killing 12 people. Shrapnel damaged the exterior of the station, but missed its large historic red, yellow, blue and green stain glass window and Ottoman-period ceilings. The elegant building, which was designed by the Spanish architect Fernando de Aranda, currently houses a museum and is a popular meeting place for the public. Other damage to Syria’s rail heritage includes the derailment, in 2012, of a passenger train to Aleppo. Mr. Younes Al-Nassar reported insurgents perpetrated the crime with a kitchen pot stuffed with explosives. The engineer and his assistant were both killed, but the 500 passengers miraculously escaped serious injury.

Mr. Al-Nassar, a Transportation Department employee who works as the Director of National and International Affairs for the government’s Al Hijaz Railway, spent an afternoon last week giving this observer a detailed history and current affairs overview. He insisted that “the Syrian Hejaz railway is part of the Arab memory and its heritage and it should stay alive.” Explaining that railways are the most sociable form of travel, he recalled his own train trips to Turkey on to Romania, Bulgaria and Iran. It has long been said that the people here are deeply connected historically and culturally to their train system. Many thousands of Syrians, as well as international tourists, enjoyed it until the crisis began in March of 2011. Countless families would use train travel en route to family picnics, often starting from Damascus beneath the Quasioun Mountains, on toward Lebanon along the Barada River which flows easterly from Ein Al-Feijeh.

Mr. Al Nasser described how his grandfather used to ride to work in Palestine on trains that linked Damascus to Haifa and other villages now cut off by the Zionist regime. An official with the Al Hijaz railway system, Mr. Al Nasser had kindly made arrangements for this observer to travel from Rabweh near central Damascus to Dumar on the historic line. One purpose of the trip was so that the engineer, Atef, and his crew could inspect the rails and stations en route in preparation for crews to make repairs. Hopefully, arriving tourists would soon come this way. More immediately, students and their families will travel to rest areas and parks several weeks when exams are finished and summer holidays begin.

Engineer Atef could not have been a more gracious host. He invited this observer to ride with him up front in the nearly hundred-year-old German coal fueled engine — now running on diesel — as we chugged and whistled our way west. Brushing the side of our three passenger-car train, manufactured in Bremen, were maple, olive, sycamore, pine and mulberry trees, the latter with branches bent low by heavy clusters of still-green mulberries. And to my pleasant surprise, within a few yards of our passing train along the route, there were many Akedenia trees with their delicious sweet yellow fruit, perhaps my favorite spring fruit of the region.

As we started to pull out of the central Damascus station, with blasts of whistles and warning horns, engineer Atef shouted at me, “Do you know how to operate a train’? I replied “Not really, but for many years I operated my Lionel American Flyer model train in the USA.” However, with all the noise and the challenge of English-Arabic interpretation, Atef obviously misunderstood my weak joke and shouted back, “Kweiss! (Good!). Then the engineer pointed to the large control lever on the left of the engine compartment and gestured at three variously-sized whistle buttons with different functions. Atef lit a cigarette and sat down on a chair next to me and sipped a cup of tea, while encouraging me to reach over to the right and operate the whistles whenever I saw someone walking along the tracks or as we approached the stations. Actually, it was terrific fun operating the whistles and pretty easy to operate the power/speed lever, but I was never quite sure which horn or whistle was to be sounded for what purpose. But they all sounded great. Only after we arrived in Dumar did my son Alistair come to me from one of the passenger cars and inform me that one lady complained that the engineer must have gone crazy because he was blowing the horn and whistles much more than was normal or necessary!

The memory that this observer will retain of Syria’s train system is the excitement, the friendly waves and smiles of citizens all along the railway line, the sheer joy expressed by people that their train system is back, even if limited to secured areas. And that her historic railways are deeply valued as part of Syria’s cultural heritage and warrant protection and preservation.

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