The Walls and Gates of Homs

Of the wall that once ringed Homs, only a short stretch still stands on the east side: two towers, one semicircular and one square, with the wall between them. Under the Abbasids the city was entered through seven gates. Almost none of them survive, but their names carry on in the quarters and junctions of the old city: Bab Tadmur, Bab Hud, Bab al-Dreib, Bab al-Sebaa.

How old the wall is

The wall is generally thought to go back to Aramaean and Hittite times. It was repaired under the Byzantines and took its present form under the Ayyubids, the dynasty founded by Saladin. Marwan II, the last Umayyad caliph, had the walls torn down after a revolt in the city; they were built up again in later centuries. In 1225 the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Homs as large and walled.

Where the seven gates were

• Bab al-Souq (Gate of the Market): thought to have stood at the south-west corner of the al-Nuri Mosque.
• Bab Tadmur (Gate of Palmyra): on the north-east side of the wall, where the caravan road to Palmyra began.
• Bab al-Dreib, also called Bab al-Dayr: on the east side of the wall.
• Bab al-Sebaa (Gate of the Lions): east of the citadel; two lions are said to have faced each other above it.
• Bab al-Turkman (Gate of the Turkmen): at the north-west corner of the citadel, where it met the wall; named after the Turkmen who settled here in the 11th century.
• Bab al-Masdoud (the Closed Gate): north of Bab al-Turkman.
• Bab Hud: the largest gate, on the west; named after the nearby shrine of the prophet Hud, it opened onto the road to the coast.

What happened to the gates

The sources do not agree. English-language sources say the gates were pulled down in the Ottoman period. A local account carried by SANA, the Syrian news agency, says they were removed under the French Mandate to widen roads, and Arabic sources give 1925 for Bab al-Dreib. Accounts also differ on which gates kept any stone. What is certain is that the gates survive today as names of quarters and squares, not as structures. The site of Bab Tadmur is now a roundabout of the same name.

Do not miss

Bab al-Dreib is the name with the most stories attached. According to Arabic sources, the lily emblem of Nur al-Din Zangi stood above the gate, and during the Muslim conquest Abu Ubayda and Khalid ibn al-Walid entered the city through it. The gate itself is gone, but the quarter still carries its name. The Church of Mar Elian is near Bab Tadmur and fits easily into a walk along the line of the wall.