ancient cities

southwest of the city), and a significant Christian
minority (about 11 percent) of Maronites,
Catholics, Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrian
Orthodox. A very small Jewish community remains
in the Old City.
While Damascus is still rich in Classical and
Islamic monuments, it is the amount of surviving
domestic Islamic architecture (in particular the
bayt arabis) that makes Damascus (and Aleppo) so
unique. Approximately half of the 16,832 houses
listed in the Ottoman 1900 yearbook were still
remaining in 2001, according to the UN report by
Stefan Weber of the Aga Khan University in the
United Kingdom. However, Weber warns that
Syrian administrations and others assume the
city’s status as a World Cultural Heritage site covers
only the area within the city walls, when it
refers to the whole city. This oversight has led to
minimal (or nonexistent) protection for extramural
areas, where twelfth-century homes are being
replaced with multistory concrete buildings.
Continued strained relations with the United
States (including accusations by the Bush administration
in 2005 that Syria is part of the “axis of
evil”) have led to limited Western investment in
the city. However, the Old City, at least, has no
shortage of willing investors from Syria itself and
elsewhere in the Arab world, in particular the Gulf
and newly resident Iraqis.
Applications for restoration licenses have increased
tenfold in recent years, and the number of
“renovated” cafes and restaurants had risen from
approximately 5 in 1998 to more than 100 by April
2007. Luxury boutique hotels and nightclubs (now
about 10) soon followed. The Old City’s famous
markets have also been the focus of speculation. In
2006, Kuwaiti prince Majed Al Sabah proclaimed
the street called Straight to be the next Bond Street
when he opened his luxury designer store Villa
Moda in a restored house there amid a flurry of
attention from the world’s fashion media.
Although this development is mostly welcomed,
there is concern about the general quality of the
work carried out, and Weber’s report calls for a
training and planning center to help investors in
this work.
See also Historic Cities; Islamic City
Jessica Jacobs
Further Readings
Davis, Mike
205
Damascus Online (http://www.damascus-online.com).
Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2000. The Great Mosque of
Damascus: Studies on the Meanings of an Umayyad
Visual Culture. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill.
Old Damascus (http://www.oldamascus.com).
Rihawi, Abdul Qader. 1979. Arabic Islamic Architecture
in Syria. Damascus, Syria: Ministry of Culture and
National Heritage.
Salamandra, Christa. 2004. A New Old Damascus:
Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Umayyad Mosque of Damascus (http://archnet.org/
library/sites/one-site.tcl?site_id=7161).
Weber, Stefan. 2002. “Damascus—A Major Eastern
Mediterranean Site at Risk.” Pp. 186–88 in Heritage
at Risk: Report of the International Council of
Monuments and Sites. Retrieved March 25, 2009
(http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/2001/
syri2001.htm).
———. 2007. “Damascus 1900: Urban Transformation,
Architectural Innovation and Cultural Change in a
Late Ottoman City (1808–1918).” In Proceedings of
the Danish Institute Damascus. Aarhus, Denmark:
Aarhus University Press.
Da v i s, mi k e
Mike Davis (1946– ) is a prolific Marxist labor
historian whose renown stems from a memorably
trenchant, provocative mix of scholarship and
reportage on urban issues, especially those concerning
Los Angeles. Davis labels himself a “writeractivist,”
“former meat cutter and long-distance
truck driver,” and “Marxist-environmentalist”;
his perspective on American cities is consciously
that of someone who grew up in a southern
California marked by deindustrialization, suburbanization,
and racism. Alongside these workingclass
credentials stand prestigious MacArthur and
Getty fellowships, two books—City of Quartz
(1990) and Ecology of Fear (1998)—on the Los
Angeles Times bestsellers list simultaneously, and
celebrity status within and outside of academia.
Davis has directed much of his analysis and critique
of urban conditions toward the detrimental
effects of economic restructuring and welfare state
shrinkage for the urban working class. Nevertheless,