Ryan Lewis, 14 December 2017
The photograph of the bombed mihrab created a mystery that took multiple people to solve, and it took several weeks before we arrived at what we believe to be the most logical answer to the riddles it posed. The mystery began with the hand-written label on the photograph itself. The label claims the picture was taken in the “Hamidra Quarter” that was destroyed by a French bombardment in 1924. Immediately after finding the photograph I tried to figure out where the site was located within the country of Syria, but no research I did was able to even identify “Hamidra” as a place.
After some failed research I reached out to a friend from Syria to see if she knew anything about it. I asked if she had heard of the place, or had any idea where it would be located and luckily, the name was familiar to her. She told me that it was in Damascus, but it was only a place that she had heard about; she had never been there. I asked why it was only a place people hear about but do not visit, and she suggested that this might be because it was a place associated with elite or very wealthy individuals. She said it seems to have been a secret chambers place that only people with relatively high power could access, and that maybe this was why my research could not find anything on it. She compared it to Area 51 in the United States, suggesting that this was something that people know about, though it is still considered secret or sensitive.
I thought that this information had finally helped to solve the mystery, though it still seemed odd that there was nothing online about a “Hamidra Quarter.” Professor Fozi also found it odd that none of the research had led to any information. She was able to discuss the topic with a few colleagues who specialize in studying the Ottoman Empire and they had also not heard of it, which was unfortunate and very strange to hear. She then did more research on the Great
Syrian Revolt and soon discovered that there was a Hamidiyya neighborhood that had been bombed by the French in 1925. The neighborhood is also spelled Hamidiyah, and sometimes referred to as al-Hamidiyah Souq. It seems like the original handwritten label had most likely misinterpreted this name, and mistakenly recorded the photograph with a misspelling and the wrong year for the bombardment. Since this neighborhood was in the Old City of Damascus, it makes sense that my friend would have associated it with the elites of the city, and given the great tragedy of the bombing that led to so much destruction in the 1920s, it is also understandable that she would think of it as a kind of a secret: it was probably a topic that older members of the Syrian community would have avoided out of a sense of loss.
After going through multiple attempts at research and speaking to those close to the subject, it appears we have come to the best solution in solving the mystery. The challenge of properly identifying what the label on the photograph meant helped shine, even more, light onto how cultures and histories can easily be forgotten through a simple mistranslation. That is why the archives of the Nationality Rooms are an essential part of the University and why research opportunities like this exhibition are important: preserving and exhibiting information becomes a way to ensure cultures and histories do not get lost.
The photograph of the bombed mihrab was originally picked to be a part of the “Culture, Conflict, and Cohesion” section of the exhibition because it fit the theme of conflict and the need to preserve culture. It was eventually installed together with the materials from the “Sacred Space for the Spiritual and the Scholarly” section, however, because it also fit in well with those materials. This also had the added benefit of presenting the bombed mihrab with other objects from the Syria-Lebanon Room, which helped to create a more powerful message.