عُثِرَ على هذه البقايا في جملةِ منحوتات ستارة parapet طابق الرواق العلوي الذي سَبَقَ ذِكْرُهُ. تظهرُ في الصورة امرأتان عاريتا الصدر، ترتدي كلٌّ متهما نطاقاً فوق تنّورَةٍ وتحملُ رمّانةً بيدِها اليسرى. اليد اليمنى مبتورةٌ. الفنّ إيرانيّ الإلهام دون شكّ، في رأي Schlumberger، سواءً في غطاء الرأس والشَعْر، أو الزيّ، أو الهيئة العامّة. لا يمتّ هذا الطرازُ بصلةٍ إلى النماذج اليونانيّة والرومانيّة، وإنّما يشبِهُ ما نراهُ في الفضيّات الإيرانيّة الساسانيّة أو اللاحقة للساسانييّن.
From the bazaar of the goldsmiths we have now found our way into that of the booksellers. Copies of the Qurʾān, beautifully illuminated, were occasionally found in the shops, but in these days a good manuscript copy can only be obtained secretly and by paying a high price for it. The magic energy of the printing-press will ere long altogether supersede the laborious methods of the copyist, and even now but few manuscript books of special value are exposed for sale in these stalls. Here is another side-door, which the same amount of bakhshish will unlock, and from the terrace of this private house we can examine the remains of an ancient gateway in front of the western entrance to the Great Mosque. Those four massive columns are all that can be seen of it here in the street.
What we now see rising above the roof of the bazaar is a portion of the arch and pediment of the gateway, supported by three columns with Corinthian capitals. The one at the end is composed of a square pier of masonry, with a semi-column on the inner and outer side. The cornice, arch, and pediment are profusely ornamented with scroll-work, flowers and foliage, and other architectural designs similar to those seen among the ruins at Baalbek. In the masonry over the cornice there is a small window with a double moulding, and, judging from the proportions of this elaborate fragment, the entire gateway must have been more than seventy feet high and of about the same width. Let us descend and walk through the booksellers' bazaar to Bāb al-Barīd, at the end of the street. The double colonnade which formerly extended from this ancient portal to the mosque has been almost entirely destroyed, and only a few of the columns remain; some of them are built into the walls of the shops and houses along the street.
Here we are at this unpretentious entrance to the mosque, and the custodians have brought the slippers we are required to wear within the sacred edifice. On former visits I had to purchase slippers in the shoemakers' bazaar, but the keepers have become more accommodating, expecting to be liberally rewarded for their polite attentions when we leave the mosque.
William McClure Thomson, The Land and the Book, Vol. III, Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond Jordan. Harper1886 (p. 378-379).
L'étage supérieur comporte un portique et une grande salle destinée à servir de salle d'exposition.
Les pièces suivantes sont exposées dans la grande salle :
افترضَ عبد الحقّ (صفحة ٤٥-٤٦) أنّ النحت بين النافذتين الثانية والثالثة في الطابق العلوي من واجهة قصر الحير الداخليّة يمثّلُ رجلاً جالساً على عَرْشِهِ. قد يكون هذا صحيحاً بيد أنّ بقايا التمثال لا تسمح بتحديد جنس الشخص، على الأقلّ استناداً إلى الصورة.
العرشُ محزّز القائمين. تستندُ القدمان على كرسي صغير واطئ ياخذُ شكلَ بناءٍ واجهتهُ محمولةٌ على سبعة قناطرٍ معمّدة. نصفُ التمثال العلوي مفقودٌ. الثوبُ سابغٌ يسندلُ حتّى القدمين. الأصابعُ ظاهرةٌ عَبْرَ خفٍّ مزركش يغطّي أعلى القدمين. ارتفاعُ التمثال، أو بالأحرى ما تبقّى منهُ، ١٤٠ من عشيرات المتر.
سليم عادل عبد الحقّ في الحوليّات الأثريّة السوريّة، الجزء الأوّل، المجلّد الأوّل ١٩٥١. إعادة تشييد جناح قصر الحير الغربي في متحف دمشق (صفحة ٥-٥٧).
بقايا بوّابة هيكل المشتري الخارجيّة
أروقة جامع بني أميّة
بيت لزبونة نموذجاً لدور دمشق الموسرة
بيت في صالحيّة دمشق
جامع السلطان سليم
مآتم دمشق
موكب جنائزي في دمشق
دمشق القدّيس بولس
الباب الشرقي
الشارع المستقيم
حرّان العواميد
The town of az-Zabadānī has an elevation of nearly three thousand six hundred feet, and Blūdān, on the mountain above it, to the east, is a thousand feet higher, while the lofty peak of Anti- Lebanon, behind that village, rises to a height of more than seven thousand five hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean.
Blūdān is best known as the village where the British Consul of Damascus, the Irish and American missionaries, and a few merchants of that city spend the summer. It is beautifully situated on the mountain-side, facing the west, and surrounded by vineyards and gardens of fruit-trees, vegetables, and flowers. It is abundantly supplied with running streams and purling brooks, and, from its great elevation, commands a magnificent view of the plain beneath and the mountains beyond as far southward as Mount Ḥermon.
Having passed away from the borders of those fruitful gardens of az-Zabadānī, which have the neatest and best kept hedges in Syria, not excepting those of Damascus, we will now turn westward across the plain to the Baradā, and follow the left bank of that river to where it descends, through the eastern mountains, into the deep and narrow chasm of Sūq Wādī Baradā.
The river here appears to be deep, and its course swift and noiseless, as it goes on its winding way through the fields and meadows of this ever narrowing plain.
Farther on, near the ruins of an ancient bridge, it falls over a ledge of rocks in a series of beautiful cascades; and thence onwards to the pass west of the village of Sūq Wādī Baradā it is a tumultuous and roaring torrent. There we may rest awhile in the wild and romantic gorge and admire the grand and magnificent scenery almost unequalled even in this country.
These cliffs are in some places quite perpendicular, especially on the southern side of the gorge, and the mountains towering above them on our right are at least a thousand feet high.
William McClure Thomson, The Land and the Book, Vol. III, Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond Jordan. Harper1886 (p. 348-349).
