Qanawat, Damascus

Qanawat means canals in Arabic. The name was not chosen at random: the English Wikipedia entry connects it to the remains of a Roman aqueduct in the quarter. Qanawat lies immediately west of the old city and is one of the most crowded parts of Damascus; the 2004 census counted 58053 people.

Getting there

Bab al-Jabiya, the western gate of the old city, stands at the eastern end of the quarter. Walk west through the Al-Hamidiyah Souq, step outside the line of the wall, and you are in Qanawat. The easiest arrival by public transport is the Hejaz railway station, whose building falls inside the quarter.

How the quarter was built

The Arabic Wikipedia entry describes Qanawat as the work of well-off Damascenes who moved outside the walls as the old city grew tighter. The houses they built are wide. Some still stand, and are listed. Today Qanawat is not a single neighbourhood but an administrative unit holding eight sub-quarters: Bab al-Jabiya, Bab Sireeja, Qabr Atika, Suwayqa, Baramkeh, Mujtahid, Ansari and Hijaz.

What to see

Three heavyweight buildings of Damascus fall inside the same quarter: the Tekkiye Suleymaniye, the Hejaz railway station and the National Museum of Syria. All three stand in Qanawat. Each is visited on its own, but the distances between them can be walked. The rest is housing and shops, with wide old Damascene houses surviving among them.

What most people miss

Read the names of the sub-quarters. Bab al-Jabiya and Bab Sireeja are named after two gates of the old city, which means the quarter took its boundary from the wall. Walking Qanawat, you are walking the line along which Damascus first spilled outside.