Nahr Yazid

A canal that explains a whole quarter in one sentence. The Yazid is the uppermost left branch of the Barada: it divides at Rabwa, runs east along the skirt of Mount Qasioun, and waters the Akrad, or Rukn al-Din, part of Salihiyya. Arabic sources say the branch was cut in the Umayyad period to water a wider stretch of ground, and that it takes its name from Yazid.

Why Salihiyya grew here

In 1156 the Hanbali sheikh Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi, together with his relatives, arrived from Jammain near Nablus in flight from the Crusaders and settled on this bank. The quarter grew from there. Salihiyya did not form around a palace or a mosque but along a working canal: there was water, gardens were possible, and people stayed.

What the noria did

The noria — a water wheel — built on this branch and named for Sheikh Muhyiddin lifted water up out of the channel. That water went to the Qaymari bimaristan, the hospital of its day, to the Ibn Arabi Mosque and to the houses around them. That is the logic of water in Damascus: where the channel runs low, a wheel raises the water; where it runs high, the water goes by itself.

What you see today

Most of the channel has been covered over or taken under the roadway, and in the lanes of Rukn al-Din you cross it without seeing it. What shows does so in short stretches and depends on the season. To follow the branch, follow the contour rather than the bed: the line of street that keeps one height along the skirt of Qasioun is the old line of the canal.