city:antioch

Important : Syria’s ancient treasures pulverised - Robert Fisk
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrias-ancient-treasures-pulverised-8007768.html

The destruction of Iraq’s heritage in the anarchic aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of 2003 – the looting of the national museum, the burning of the Koranic library and the wiping out of ancient Sumerian cities – may now be repeated in Syria. Reports from Syrian archeologists and from Western specialists in bronze age and Roman cities tell of an Assyrian temple destroyed at Tell Sheikh Hamad, massive destruction to the wall and towers of the citadel of al-Madiq castle – one of the most forward Crusader fortresses in the Levant which originally fell to Bohemond of Antioch in 1106 – and looting of the magnificent Roman mosaics of Apamea, where thieves have used bulldozers to rip up Roman floors and transport them from the site. Incredibly, they have managed to take two giant capitols from atop the colonnade of the “decumanus”, the main east-west Roman road in the city.

Syrie, le fantasme de l’Etat alaouite

Syria Comment » Archives » Five Reasons Why There Will Not Be an Alawite State
►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=15475

Joshua Landis explique les cinq raisons pour lesquelles il n’y aura pas d’Etat alaouite

Parmi elles

2. The Assads planned to solve the sectarian problem in Syria by integrating the Alawites into Syria as “Muslims.” They promoted a secular state and tried to suppress any traditions that smacked of a separate “Alawite” identity. No formal Alawi institutions have been established to define Alawi culture, religion or particularism. They did not plan for an Alawi state. On the contrary, the Assads bent over backwards to define Alawis as main-stream Muslims, Bashar married a Sunni Muslim in an attempt at nation-building and to stand as an example of integration. He claimed to promote a “secular” vision of Syria.

Il faut rappeler qu’un territoire autonome alaouite fut créé par le colonialisme français, après le mandat reçu en 1920 par la Société des Nations sur la Syrie. Paris décida alors de morceler le pays en divers entités, dont certaines "confessionnelles" (alaouite ou druze). Parallèlement, Paris impose l’instauration officielle du confessionalisme au Liban, séparé de la Syrie au grand dam des nationaliste arabes. Il me semble avoir lu, mais c’est à vérifier, que, au début du XXe siècle, certains responsables français voyaient dans les alaouites "aux yeux bleus", des descendants des Croisés !

On ne rappelle pas assez ce que l’institutionalisation du confessionalisme doit au colonialisme français. Mais il est aussi important de souliigner que les Syriens (pas plus que les Libanais) ne se définissent pas uniquement par leur "confession" – on peut se sentir damascène, sunnite et syrien, comme on peut être kurde, syrien et appartenir à une grande tribu. Un des grands crimes des Etats-Unis en Irak est d’avoir réduit l’identité de chacun à sa seule appartenance confessionnelle et de l’avoir ainsi renforcée.

Five Reasons Why There Will Not Be an Alawite State
►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=15475

Will the Alawites try to establish an Alawite State centered in the Coastal Mountains?

Many opposition figures and journalists insist that the Alawites are planning to fall back to the Alawite Mountains in an attempt to establish a separate state. This is unconvincing. Here are the top five reasons why there will not be an Alawite State.

Dont le point 3 particulièrement clair :

3. Assad has done nothing to lay the groundwork for an Alawite state. There is no national infrastructure in the coastal region to sustain a state: no international airport, no electric power plans, no industry of importance, and nothing on which to build a national economy.

A Gay Girl in Damascus : Ma’arrat an-Numan : Cannibals Wearing Crosses
http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/2011/04/maarrat-numan-cannibals-wearing-crosses.html

The first of the two anthropophagic incidents occurred at Antioch. In the course of a long siege and counter-siege, food became increasingly scarce and the Crusaders desperately sought any sustenance: “Then the starving people [the Crusader army] devoured the stalks of beans still growing in the fields, many kinds of herbs unseasoned with salt, and even thistles which because of the lack of firewood were not well cooked and therefore irritated the tongues of those eating them. They also ate horses, asses, dogs, and even rats. The poorer people ate even the hides of animals and the seeds of grain found in manure.”
As the siege continued, the hunger grew worse and, “in a letter to Pope Paschal II, crusade leaders reported that ‘some could scarcely refrain from eating human flesh’.” During the winter of 1097/1098, “some of the poor even turned cannibal. Some wild Flemings who had followed Peter the Hermit and were known as ‘Tafurs" acquired a considerable reputation for this kind of thing. They always fought in the front lines and made the most of any Turks they killed.”

After Antioch had finally fallen, the Crusader leaders decided to attack the city of Ma’arrat-an-Numan. This town had a population of around 25,000 and was located astride the main route about fifty miles southwest from Antioch, towards Damascus and Jerusalem. Food and other rations were short among the invading army and capturing Ma’arrat was seen as both a way of keeping the army busy and of securing food for them. After a two-week siege, from November 27 to December 11, 1098, Count Raymond of Toulouse’s miners opened a breach in the wall and the city was entered. “On that day and the next [the Crusaders] killed all the Saracens from the greatest to the least and plundered all their possessions.”
While the massacre of the entire population of a city was certainly an atrocity, it wasn’t particularly unusual for that lot. More troubling for them was the discovery that Ma’arrat did not have the stores of food that they had imagined it to contain. Fulcher describes the actions of the Crusaders during the siege with more approbation: “I shudder to say that many of our men, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted. In this way the besiegers were more harmed than the besieged.”

#croisés #cannibalisme