Jawdat al-Hashimi School, Damascus

A school on a large walled plot in the Sarouja and Hijaz district. It was the first state secondary school in Damascus, founded as al-Madrasa al-Tajhiziyya — the Tajhiz school — and later given the name of its first director, Jawdat al-Hashimi. Unlike most records on this site, this is not a heritage site but a working institution: it still teaches as a lycée.

Getting there

Walk north from Marjeh Square towards the Hijaz station and Sarouja; about ten minutes from the square. The plot is set back from the road and built around courtyards, so the building reads from the garden gate rather than the pavement line. The Al-Qabbani Theatre and the parliament building are on the same walk.

Can you go inside

No. This is a working state school with pupils in it and no visitor tour. Beyond looking through the garden gate and photographing the front from the street, there is no form of visit to plan. On school holidays the gate is closed too.

Where the school began

The Tajhiz school did not start in this building. It first operated inside Maktab Anbar, one of the largest mansions of the old city, and only later moved to premises of its own. The Maktab Anbar record on this site is therefore the school’s first address. The present building was raised between late January 1929 and the end of December 1933, designed by the engineer Suleiman Abu Sha’r, and it opened officially in 1936 once the school’s records and equipment had been moved in.

Who came out of it

Its alumni include leading names in Syrian letters and science: the philologist Said al-Afghani, the poet Suleiman al-Isa, the politician Akram al-Hawrani, the scientist Mustafa al-Shihabi. Most institutions left behind by the Ottoman education reform in Damascus have closed or turned into something else. This school kept teaching, and that is exactly what makes it worth a record.

Do not miss

The main entrance. At the centre of the front there is a window of three lobed pointed lights, and beneath it a stone-carved door recess; the same axis shows in old photographs of the place. Nobody walking past stops for it, though it is the one surface on which the school presents itself as a public institution.