What place does Syria hold in the sacred geography of Islam?
The overthrow of Bashar Al Assad takes us back to Syrian news. But this news hides another, timeless one: the “sacred geography” in which Syria is located (Shâm, in Arabic), where it assumes several spiritual functions.
This geography permeates Muslim consciousness and influences events even today. It identifies spaces that stand out qualitatively, thus becoming spiritual centers – these places “where Heaven has touched the earth”. This is the meaning of the historian Mircea Eliade’s words: “For the religious man, space is not homogeneous; it presents ruptures » (1).
Islamic sources evoke certain of these separate places, supports of blessings or manifestation of the divine: Mount Tûr (Sinai) where God epiphanizes; Al-Quds (Jerusalem), of which God has “blessed the surroundings” (Quran: 17; 1); Mecca (“navel of the world” And “God’s most beloved land” according to the Prophet); and the Shâm therefore, notably Damascus.
Damascus, place of divine election
The Shâm is first and foremost a place of divine election, according to numerous hadiths (said by the Prophet). One of them reports this word from God: “O Shâm, O Shâm! My Hand is on you, O Sham! You are the chosen one of My lands. I will populate you with the elite of My worshippers. » The holiness of the place will not have been contradicted by history: it is in fact a major spiritual center of Islam where countless saints and scholars lived, making Damascus, in particular, a mecca for pious visits (ziyâra). The tomb of the mystic Ibn Arabi (died in 1240), later joined by that of his posthumous disciple, and no less mystical, the Emir Abdelkader (died in 1883), are only two cases among many others.
A space with eschatological significance
Traditions report the antiquity of this blessing: Mount Qâsiyûn on the heights of Damascus, thus contains a cave in which Abraham, Job, Moses (and its mysterious initiator, Al Khidr, mentioned in the Koran: 18; 59-) prayed. 82) and Jesus. In the Middle Ages was born a topos literary: the books of Merits (Fada’îl) of Shamwhich compile the hadiths evoking the region and the biographies of the greats who lived there. The most famous of these books is that of Ibn Asakir (1106-1176), whoseHistory of Damascus extends over 80 volumes…
But tradition also sees in the Shâm the place of divine uproar, with eschatological significance: violence there is primordial… and final. At the dawn of humanity, the first murder in history would have been committed at Qâsiyûn: Qâbîl (Caïn) would have killed Hâbîl (Abel), and the redness of the rock of the mountain would be the trace – the sign – spilled blood. At the end of time, the region, once again plunged into violence, will see the Mahdi (“the rightly guided”) to fight the Dajjal (the Antichrist, who came from the Syrian-Iraqi borders), before Jesus, descending from heaven on Damascus, killed the latter, established justice and peace, then ended his life as a man.
(1) Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the ProfaneGallimard, p. 21.
