Daughter of Damascus presents a personal account of a Syrian woman's youth in the Suq Saruja ("old city") quarter of Damascus in the 1940s. Siham Tergeman wrote this book to preserve the details of a "genuine Arab past" for Syrian young people. In it, she relates the customs pertaining to marriage, birth, circumcision, and death. She writes of Ramadan festivities, family picnics to the orchards of the Ghuta, weekly trips to the public bath, her school experiences, Damascene cooking, peddlers' calls, and proverbs. She includes the well-known dramatic skits, songs, and tales of the Syrian Hakawati storytellers. And, through the words of her father, she describes the difficult period when Syrians were involved in the Balkans War and World War I. All this wealth of ethnographic detail is set in real-life vignettes that make the book lively and entertaining reading.

Little has been published about modern Syrian social life. In this English translation of an Arabic memoir originally published in Syria in 1978, Tergeman appeals to a wide audience. General readers will find a charming story, while scholars can find source material for university courses in anthropology, sociology, family and women's studies, and Middle Eastern area studies. The introduction by anthropologist Andrea Rugh portrays Syrian social life for Western readers and points out some of the nuances that might escape the attention of those unacquainted with Arab culture.

This important reissue, enhanced with an audio CD to supplement the first chapter of the text (sounds), is another addition to Georgetown's world-renowned Arabic language-learning materials and is considered to be one of the most outstanding descriptions of any Arabic dialect written for the English-speaking world. It is comprehensive in its coverage—ranging from phonology (how sounds are organized and used) to morphology (sound, syllable, and word structure), with an analysis that is insightful and original. It contains hints on how to master nuances in dialectical pronunciation, as well as the differences of meaning in their various forms.

Based on the dialect of Damascus, the language covered here is part of what has variously been called "Syrian Arabic," "Eastern Arabic," and "Levantine Arabic," encompassing the dialects of Beirut, Amman, and Jerusalem—as well as Damascus—with references made to regional variants. In a world drawn ever closer to events in the Middle East, this comprehensive grammar reference is yet another extraordinary addition to the growing library of Arabic language-learning materials published by Georgetown University Press.

An expansive illustrated history of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of the oldest continuously used religious sites in the world. The mosque we see today was built in 705 CE by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid on top of a fourth-century Christian church that had been erected over a temple of Jupiter. Incredibly, despite the recent war, the mosque has remained almost unscathed, but over the centuries has been continuously rebuilt after damage from earthquakes and fires. In this comprehensive biography of the Umayyad Mosque, Alain George explores a wide range of sources to excavate the dense layers of the mosque’s history, also uncovering what the structure looked like when it was first built with its impressive marble and mosaic-clad walls. George incorporates a range of sources, including new information he found in three previously untranslated poems written at the time the mosque was built, as well as in descriptions left by medieval scholars. He also looks carefully at the many photographs and paintings made by nineteenth-century European travelers, particularly those who recorded the building before the catastrophic fire of 1893.