العادات والتقاليد الأجتماعية في حمص ١_a .. كتاب حمص

Chapter III

Social customs and traditions

Customs and traditions appear in daily life, joys and sorrows, seasons and holidays.

A - Daily life:

The house was the mainstay of daily life, and each house was composed of the following elements: the courtyard, the houses around it, and the facilities. With these elements, they serve three vital, social and aesthetic functions. It provides shelter and comfort for its residents within a plan that reflects the traditions and beliefs of its residents. Women were veiled until the end of World War I among all residents of Homs, both Muslim and Christian, and this is what dictated the general plan of the courtyard: a courtyard surrounded by houses so that the mistress of the house and those with her from the harem would remain free in the confines of her home. His household affairs are free and comfortable. There were no windows on the street, out of fear and protection for women.

They used to call this courtyard (the land of the house), surrounded on its four sides or on some of them by houses, i.e. rooms, and the door of the house that connected it to the street was either connected to it by means of a narrow corridor that they called (the vestibule) or it led directly to the land of the house, and the (vestibule) was in It is usually covered, and it may be placed in the oven or stove in a house that does not have a kitchen. The materials used in construction were: dirt, stone, and wood. The dirt comes from the red quaternary dirt that is spread in great thickness on the outskirts of the city. It was used in the form of clay mixed with water and grass to paint roofs and install wall stones as mortar. He also used to beat the brick by pouring it: wooden molds of a known size. Half of the mold yielded a square-shaped brick, and the other half was divided into two parts, each of which was half a brick. It was left until it dried, and then it was used to build walls using clay mortar. Clay is used to build ramming walls by attaching a wooden mold to the bricks of the stone foundation of the wall, then pressing the clay joint between the two parts of the tambour and leaving it to dry, then the mold is removed and moved to another side of the wall, and so on.

On the fourth of Ramadan (1327 AH - September 19, 1909 AD), Homs was attacked by a flood the likes of which it had never witnessed in its life so far. Its result was the demolition of all the houses whose walls were built with mud and rubble. Sayyed Abd al-Hadi al-Wafa’i mentioned this in his manuscript in which he described the torrent:

As for the stone, it was taken from the Al-Waer area, which is the basalt plateau extending from the northern shore of Lake Homs to the borders of Hama Governorate between Al-Am in its east and Jabal Al-Hilu in its west. The basalt stones are hard, black and bluish in color. The advantage of basalt, with its hardness, is its malleability and malleability, such that it is easily divided into the shape of a rectangular prism with regular angles, and it is even possible to obtain slices of small thickness from it, with a length many times its width, for use in the roof of windows and lintels for the top of the door. Cement stones are not trimmed, but are thrown into the foundation trenches in large or small blocks. After the foundation, the trimmed stones are used until the roof is located. The foundations are always made of stone, and stone or mud walls are built above them. Wood was available from red orchards, but the strongest of it came from the mountains of Lebanon and the mountains of Balaas and was used in erecting wooden and earthen roofs, strengthening walls, and carpentry of doors and windows.

The courtyards of the homes of the rich were paved with carved stone, paved (1), or remained dirt for others. Pots of seeded seeds of jasmine, cloves, tulips, and other flowers are placed around the land of the house. In this courtyard is a well with a “syrup” or a pulley to drain the water from the well using a “bucket,” which they used to call “the hopper.” Some of the rich people also used to reside in an area in the middle of the house. The house, and most of the floors in it (baika), house the owner's transport animals and riding animals.

Every house has the following: The threshold, which is usually immediately following the door and is lower than the floor of the house and higher than the floor of the house, and on one of its sides adjacent to the wall there is (the mouth), which is a gap in the wall above the threshold divided into two parts: the lower one, in which the water jar is placed; The top (2) lamp or kerosene is placed in it, after that, and next to the estuary (the yoke), which is a wider gap than the estuary, in which mattresses and quilts are placed. On the other wall other than the main one on the floor of the house, there are (Khuristans), one of which is (Khoristan). Each of them has a door with two leaves that covers what is inside it, or it is sufficient to place a curtain of cloth as a robe for each of them. There may be a small hole in one of the walls that does not overlook the courtyard of the house, called a bookcase, in which books are placed. As for the wall leading to the land of the house, there were windows (windows), and they used to measure the capacity of the house by their number, so they would say, for example: A house with a door and a window, or two windows, or three if it was large.

The threshold is used to put shoes and clogs on it after taking them off and before sitting in the house. It was also used to wash children if it was tiled. In every house there is one or two overhead vents to ensure ventilation.

* Floor engineering:

The architecture of the floors was almost uniform, as we have seen, and there was no second floor in the house until the last decade of the nineteenth century. Likewise, there was no house in Homs as a whole that had windows on the street because of the woman’s veil and the protection of the house from thieves. Some of the rich people used to marry in the decoration of the walls. Between the white carved stone and the black carved stone, they also used to decorate the doors of wooden houses by engraving them with arabesque shapes, such as the house of (Kamel Luqa) and the house of Al (Nasim) in the Bab Tadmur neighborhood, and the house of Abdullah Farkouh in the neighborhood of Al-Sibbaa, and the house of Tawfiq Al-Zuhri Al-Yafi in Bab Al-Darib under the two cities and Qasr. slave