Aleppo and the Clash of Civilisations

ALEPPO AND THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS ROSS BURNS Should we worry any longer about that cultures slide gradually into a process of ‘clashes of civilisation’? Is it still valid to merging or synthesis that may not necessarily assume that cultures, empires and world involve violence and may take centuries to powers are stuck on tram tracks, rapidly accomplish. hurtling towards each other propelled by Anyone who visited Aleppo before 2011 forces that draw their motive power from would have been conscious of how its mixture world history? of cultures—Arab, Islamic, Armenian, Turkic, For a while, it was fashionable to believe Christian, Kurdish—seemed to rub along so or to see a need vigorously to counter without great difficulty. Certainly there were such assumptions. We have, after all, been the occasional tensions over the centuries faced in the last two decades with enough but all paled into insignificance compared appalling conflicts which seem inexorably to to the suppressed disdain directed at the set one culture, faith or military power against country’s rulers. Now, however, a visitor to another to validate the thesis proposed in Aleppo would find that the city has been Samuel P. Huntington’s 1996 work The Clash of physically torn apart by what could very Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.1 well be construed as a true clash of violent But is it possible that we have only ideologies. How can one city reconcile the imagined ourselves into a belief that two perspectives? Was it for long proceeding civilisations are destined to clash? I have quietly on tram tracks towards calamity but recently finished a history of Aleppo (and no one could detect the signs? revised a companion history of Damascus If one takes a ‘clash of civilisations’ for a second edition). This has given me a approach, it might be reasonable to divide chance to puzzle over Huntington’s scenario the history of Aleppo, as an example, into from the perspective of two cities central to ten phases when one culture or political the history of one of the world’s key regions. framework replaced another. I counted the I have also contributed to the work of a team following major transitions: based at Oxford University’s Department • Bronze to Iron Age/Aramaean of Archaeology which is looking at the • Aramaean to Assyrian/neo-Babylonian material remains of the transition from (Mesopotamian) pagan temples to Christian churches to see • Mesopotamian to Achaemenid (Persian) what patterns emerge. Both these exercises • Achaemenid to Greek reveal very little of the sort of ‘clash’ that • Greek to Roman (including Byzantine) Huntington had in mind but rather indicate 62 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 • Arab to Turkic and the focus is given to just a few cases which • Turkic to Mamluk are constantly assumed to relate to a pattern in • Mamluk to Ottoman Turk which a whole era is declining into darkness, a • Ottoman to French Mandate ‘deliberate destruction of the ancient world’. • French Mandate to Arab independence If we look, though, at the physical evidence and rely less on the highly coloured accounts While most of these changes were bookmarked of ancient church sources, such processes of by military battles, a true ‘clash of civilisation’ cultural change rarely seem to have happened scenario would also require major cultural in a flash. Another case I’ve been involved in, changes and even population movements to linked to the situation around Aleppo, was to back these transitions—pressures built up on look for physical evidence of this process of the interface between cultures so that they the transition from paganism to Christianity spontaneously broke through and brought in the countryside to the west of the city. about change. This remains one of the most fertile areas to Closer analysis of these phases, however, examine what was happening on the ground shows nothing like the sort of pattern that in late antiquity, outclassing any other region Huntington might have expected. On my of the late Roman world in terms of the sheer reckoning, while 9 of the 10 changes were quantity of evidence. There are over 600 brought about through military action, virtually villages from the Roman–Byzantine period none of them in themselves resulted in a with standing remains in the countryside sweeping cultural change and even fewer in straddling the main highway from Aleppo to significant population movements. Pressures Antioch. The chain of hills was better known were indeed building beneath the surface in the last century as the ‘Dead Cities’ since but these forces were rarely directly linked the first Western explorers of the region noted to changes of culture or population. Mostly it the almost complete absence of populated was a pattern of elite events that marked the villages in a zone which had long lost its historical divisions but cultures and ethnic major export market for wine and olive oil in shifts moved on separate tectonic plates, often nearby Antioch. That former Roman metropolis hard to discern except in the long term. suffered a precipitate decline after the Islamic This method, however, doesn’t sell books Conquest and had few chances to regenerate or inspire TV historical documentaries with during the Crusading centuries when it became re-enactment scenes, constantly swishing a true war zone. sounds of sword blades and talking heads Although modern archaeological researchers producing brief snatches of prose. A recent have barely scratched the surface, we have effort to reduce the forces of historic change several comprehensive studies of the epigraphy to a few selective bites was Catherine Nixey’s of the zone, enough to give us a basic sequence 2017 book The Darkening Age: The Christian of the main villages with their rich store of Destruction of the Classical World.2 This catered churches. The Oxford study builds on this to the public taste for assumptions that broad record to try to identify the pattern for the historical processes can be summed up in a changeover from pagan to Christian places of few events taken to be representative of a vast worship—why were some temples repurposed pattern of incidents. while others were actively pulled down; how Nixey’s book is cleverly constructed so did these patterns relate to the campaign by that the instances she gives of the wholesale the church from the late fourth century to destructive pattern directed against pagan outlaw pagan worship? religious shrines and images are surrounded by The first conclusion reached so far is that enough scattered qualifications that we are left there is no pattern. There are patches where with the impression that scholarly detachment the suppression of temples can be related to has been preserved. In fact, though, nothing the introduction of imperial laws outlawing like a comprehensive appraisal is undertaken pagan worship but there are even more areas HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 63 to ‘re-badge’ an existing pagan ‘holy mountain’ and graft Christian pilgrimage onto it. There were many ways to lure recalcitrant pagans to such dual purpose pilgrimage centres. Often the central attraction was a monk who performed heroic feats of privation, spending all his days atop a tiny platform raised atop a column, for example. But even once baptised, what was to stop a farmer having a bit both ways, addressing his prayers both via the church as well as through a ‘pagan’ custom of tying a bit of rag to a tree limb (as many still do today)? The spiritual encounter was not just a building, a relic or other holy remains, it was the place itself and its environment—a mountain, a spring or a cavern ▲ Fig 1. Jebel where pagan tradition only went gradually out While the picture we are often given is of Sheikh Barakat seen of style. In effect, for over two centuries many church officials campaigning against such from the Church of St Simeon the villages respected both pagan and Christian temple conversions, by the sixth century Stylite, 1985. affiliations. (fig. 1) they were not uncommon particularly when IMAGE: ROSS BURNS Perhaps what is more disturbing for the a temple building offered a convenient adherents of sword and sandal docos is that configuration which allowed the installation many inhabitants had quietly placed a bet each of an apse in the east. In some cases, too, the way. Even if temple-going were discouraged church was happy to tolerate the sharing of or proved impossible once temples had been worship space. Within two centuries of the torn down, the religious traditions attached original imperial decrees banning the re-use to a geographical feature (often a ‘high place’ of pagan temples, it was quietly happening whose origins went back several millennia) in numerous centres surveyed in my work on persisted. A small temple atop a high place Syria and Lebanon. Usually, the broader temple could be re-purposed by installing a monk in a temenos was used but not the footprint of the new chapel or by reconfiguring the enclosure old central shrine or cella. of a pagan shrine. While Christianity officially We do not know how most of the old banned re-use of pagan structures, a lot of temples had met their end. Some show regions ignored the laws when distant from the evidence of a violent destruction and in a few monks and bishops who sustained programs cases such interventions have been dated. of destruction which encouraged the zealots. Most buildings, though, are more likely to have Moreover, even the zealots couldn’t do much succumbed to earthquakes and neglect or were about the countryside itself where the old ‘high robbed for building stone over centuries.

Load more