Today, I was planning on visiting the museum here in Damascus but my plans changed a bit when Ahmed, the son of the hotel owner, offered to take Gabija (A Lithuanian girl staying at the same hotel) and me to his favorite place around Damascus named Maaloula.

Since it is always nice to have someone taking you for a tour, the choice was not too difficult and I was not disappointed :).

Maaloula is the largest of three towns (pop. 2000) where western Aramaic is still spoken in Syria. Aramaic is one of the language that Jesus spoke and some scriptures of the Christians were initially written in Aramaic. For example, some of the Dead Sea scrolls I had the chance to see at the Jordan national museum in Amman were written in Aramaic.

 

The town is quite nice, nested against a mountain that gives great photo opportunities. Most of the population is Christian so the veil can hardly be seen around town. Also, as it is the case in Damascus, a lot of houses are sporting flags for Brazil, Germany, Italy, France or other countries engaged in the world cup!

The two main convents are interesting to visit and each of them was exhaling a nice spiritual karma. I really liked the St Sergius convent that is a very old church since it has been dated to the 4th century. It was built in place of a pagan temple and shows some features of old Pagan temples like a semi-circular high border altar in place of the usual flat altar just missing the hole for the sacrificial blood. This is because it predates the definition of how a church should be organized. A nice woman told us about the church and we got to listen to a prayer in Aramaic.

The whole round trip from Damascus in minibus including a nice lunch of Syrian Pizzas and the visit of the town only took 5 hours without any hurry. As my London readers would say: “It was quality!”