Syria

Found! Vavilov’s view of the Euphrates

August 19, 2009

Long time readers will know that I have been confused by Vavilov’s note that he travelled north of Aleppo to the granary of Syria. I couldn’t figure out how you get to any kind of granary by going north. Thanks to human networks and the internets, I now have an answer. The crucial point here [...]

Read the full article →

Parting thoughts on the glory that was Syria

July 17, 2009

1926 Before leaving Syria I went to Baalbek and the ruins of the temple, dating to the period of the Roman Empire. The modest work of restoration, only for display, had already revealed an exceptional standard of living. This city, a military outpost of the Roman Empire, was solidly built, just like everything made at [...]

Read the full article →

Bouloumou run to ground

July 15, 2009

Vavilov found Father Bouloumou near death, and his herbarium “in a deplorable condition”. I could find no trace of Bouloumou or the herbarium in Google. Then I looked for the manuscript of Flora of Syria Vavilov wrote about. Could this be it? Alas, no, although it is immensely interesting. But it had a bibliography. And [...]

Read the full article →

Cedars and wild relatives

July 13, 2009

1926 From Aleppo we returned to Beirut and went from there northwards to Latakia and the Lebanese mountains. The mountains are a remarkable area, directly adjoining the coastal belt. They face the Mediterranean and reach an altitude of 2000 metres. The automobile was only with great effort able to climb to the top of these [...]

Read the full article →

The herbarium was in a deplorable condition

July 10, 2009

1926 We returned from Latakia to Beirut and tried to sum up the complicated impressions of the diversity of this country. I hurried to visit the herbarium of the Jesuit, Bouloumou. Father B. was near death. The superior of the ecclesiastical educational institution was astonished by my inquiries about the existence of the large herbarium [...]

Read the full article →

Syria in 1923

July 8, 2009

My ignorance of political geography in the 1920s forced a librarian friend to take pity on me and direct me to the treasure trove of historical maps at the Perry-Castañeda Library of the University of Austin at Texas. There, I found a link to this map of Syria and Lebanon in 1923. What it shows, [...]

Read the full article →

The Euphrates

June 8, 2009

1926 And there was the beautiful valley of the Euphrates, where once upon a time the Assyro-Babylonian civilization flowered, where the fate of the Near East was settled and where the Codex of Hammurabi determined the standards of economy, justice and responsibilities. Ordinarily, the agricultural crops are not irrigated. The waters of the Euphrates flow [...]

Read the full article →

Where is the granary of Syria?

June 5, 2009

This entry is very confusing; Vavilov says he is traveling north from Damascus, north of Aleppo in fact, to the “granary of Syria”. But all accounts I have been able to find reckon that the Hauran, a volcanic plain east of the Golan Heights, is the granary of Syria. What were the borders of “Syria” [...]

Read the full article →

The granary of Syria

June 4, 2009

1926 After collecting a large sample of different varieties and mailing them, I went to northern Syria, via Homs, Hama and Aleppo, from where I intended to go by car in the direction of Mesopotamia (Iraq) to the Euphrates river. This large area is the granary of Syria. It is inhabited by typical, slender Arabs [...]

Read the full article →

From breadbasket to basket case

May 29, 2009

It was dawning on Vavilov that he had arrived in Lebanon in the absolute worst of times. Over the previous two decades, these lands had suffered from wars, locust plagues, economic disruptions, and out-migrations that had reduced the pre-1900 population by more than 60 percent. But the worst problem facing the Arabian farmers and herders [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries