مقدمة بقلم خالد أسعد مدير آثار ومتاحف تدمر ، من كتاب آثار تدمر

an introduction

Written by Khaled Asaad

Director of Palmyra Antiquities and Museums

The city of Palmyra lived its golden age during the first three centuries AD, although it was known that it was in the third millennium BC. The East, through its paths extending to Europe, China and Africa, carrying goods, traditions and customs that are influential and influenced, to create in its oasis the most beautiful city of its time, building, prosperity and strength, and to be a civilized beacon, which is returned to and issued by it, a summary of what man has created in art and innovation combining the arts of the ancient East with the arts of the West Al Nasheed, to forge the most beautiful civilized necklace that adorns the well of the Arab East forever, and to speak to people in every language about a happy past and a renewed present.They loved this torch, but its flicker still dazzles the eyes with its miraculous achievements that disappear until recently under the sand.Perhaps the truest description of this The city is what was mentioned by (the ancient Blaine) in the middle of the first century BC when he said about it: (Palmyra is a beautiful city for its location, famous for its buildings, fertile land and good water. It is surrounded by sand on every side, as if it wanted to hide it from the rest of the world, and keep it away from the roads. By the conquerors, it benefits from its excellent position, located between two empires (the Romans and the Persians), which

They jostle for world domination, and each one of them gets engaged when she disagrthe otheWith
Its eternity travels and ends, and its memories remain echoing in people's minds. Who built it? Who inhabited it? Who destroyed it? What great monuments do they contain? The imagination of many has gone so far that they attributed their construction to the jinn, because no one can build these great buildings, raise their lofty columns, carve their hard rocks, turn them into talking paintings, carve their talking statues, and make of them a mysterious legend that draws travelers to it, longing for knowledge and searching for the truth. What prompted the two gentlemen (Wood and Dawkins) to travel to it, to endure the burdens of travel, and the trouble of the journey, and to arrive at the desert bride in March 1751 on a scientific excursion, and to write this rich book (The Antiquities of Palmyra) according to the data and possibilities of that distant period, and to publish them in London In the year 1753, the information they gleaned from the stomachs of books, or what they transferred and translated from the writings scattered among the ruins with their beautiful drawings of these vast monuments, and their attempt to rebuild the building to its origin based on the data that they found through the architectural elements, so it was a great and commendable effort that shed bright lights on The bride of the desert, and made it a fertile material in the hands of students of knowledge and an incentive for scholars and amateurs to bear the hardships and horrors of the journey at that time and to satisfy their hunger and thirst for the sake of truth, culture and science.

People's thoughts about They searched and accomplished a great thing, and they memorized through their drawings scenes that existed, then fell piles on the sand, and they mentioned common things and information and names that were prevalent in Suleiman and the jinn and his palaces and harems and about the Turks and the Ottomans, but science and recent discoveries named things by their names, and deciphered symbols Magic and sorcerers, and reading the ancient and modern Palmyrene texts in their original language, explained most of what was obscure and made the riddles of history, legible lines attesting that their language, religion and inhabitants were from the Arab tribes that came from the Arabian Peninsula and settled them since the third millennium BC. And that their arts derive from the arts The East has its original roots, from which it derives permanent nourishment and blossoms its branches, with what it represents of the arts that come to it with caravans, and to create from it a breathtaking painting, in which the originality and richness of the East, and the fragrance of the West and its colors, and to paint on the chest of the desert a flame of light and a glowing plug that illuminates the darkness of the desert, and in which art lovers find Knowledge is a treasure of guidance.

What they mentioned about the conditions of the East in general, according to the prevailing concept at the time, contains a bit of Western arrogance, stemming from a new, young civilization that is boiling with the human being of the Renaissance, discoveries and conquests like a cauldron.
The vapor with which the new developed industries, the acquired sciences and knowledge began, and their ignorance or ignoring of the original sources of the East that fed and fueled their modern renaissance, everything they brought back to the Greeks or the Romans, art and culture, as if our country and our East were a neglected quantity that did not have a regenerative past before these and their predecessors were created thousands of years ago. In the Nile Valley, Yemen, Mesopotamia, natural Syria, India, China and Iran, the flowing springs of science, art and culture flooded most parts of the world until recently. But the local wars, and the barbaric external invasions of the Tatars, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, and Western colonialism destroyed what was left of the painting, so its colors faded and its springs dried up, but it still preserved its living stock as an ember under the ashes, and some of its beautiful features returned to the picture, and in Palmyra its history, features and effects are clarified for a year after a year. Thanks to its children and workers, both Arabs and foreigners. I want the honorable reader to study this book, to look at it, and to have his own opinion about it, and I have commented on some of its paragraphs to put the honorable reader in the picture of the reality today, without judging the writer,

(1)

that

. and with .

It emanates from his culture that he is equipped with, and he does not know the Palmyrene language (which is the vessel of the Palmyrene civilization).

became known today

This book remains an important reference for all scholars and intellectuals

Excavators and restorers in Palmyra to benefit and increase. When my brother Professor Ibrahim Asaad (the translator) showed me his translation and asked me to comment on the information it contained and to write an introduction to it, I answered him with pleasure. In the middle of the eighteenth century, it is a beautiful picture whose shadows still flicker throughout it with the fragrance of history and memories, despite the waves of modern civilization and its amazing gifts in various fields.

domains.

Translating and publishing this obscure book to acquaint the honorable Arab reader with the conditions of Palmyra, and what it reached at the height of its progress and expansion, a kingdom whose lands extend over most parts of the Middle East, then its flame that remained burning under the piles of sand was extinguished... and what the cities of the East and its citizens were like under the rule of Bani. Othman

(1) The Palmyra language: a dialect of the Arabic Aramaic language, consisting of (22 letters) and written from right to left. It was deciphered in the second half of the eighteenth century by the French Father Bartholomew and the English Sonnet in one period. Follow Favorite