The Damascus Events: What does the 1860 Damascus massacre teach us about coexistence?

"Let us finish the Christians, let us exterminate them," shrieked the mob outside the Damascus Citadel. 

Soon after, the Citadel — which housed thousands of Christians who'd fled their homes — was sacked, leaving hundreds dead. The Christian quarter of old Damascus was reduced to rubble; the pack of stray dogs roaming the streets searching for food was all that was left. 

The 1860 outbreak of anti-Christian violence was a shocking and shameful episode in Damascus’s history. Centuries of co-existence, tolerance and diversity were brought to an abrupt halt in a matter of a few days.

"The Damascus Events makes for a compelling and essential reading because it not only shows what happened but what is possible"

What happened?

The events of 1860 are scarcely remembered outside of Syria and remain poorly understood, however, they are essential in understanding modern Syria.

For the first time, Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, has explored the events of 1860 in compelling detail in his book The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World.  

The 1860 massacre, which unfolded over eight days in July, left in its wake 1,500 burnt homes, 270 homes destroyed by looters, 200 shops destroyed, and 2,500 dead — roughly 15% of the Christian population in Damascus, with an estimated $10.8 million worth of damage.

"The Damascus massacre was a genocidal moment, but it was not a genocide," Rogan writes. "Outside the city walls, working-class Christians in the Al-Maydan quarter were protected by their Muslim neighbours, and as a result, the quarter witnessed no communal violence during the Events. Within the city walls, a small but influential group of Muslim notables of Damascus rescued as much as 85 percent of the Christian population from mob violence."

The Damascus massacre was made possible by the extraordinary breakdown of law and order and the failure of local governing elites to do anything anything to stop the killings. Indeed, it was days into the massacre before the governor of Damascus Ahmad Pasha wrote to Istanbul informing them of the events and to request extra troops.

Who was to blame?

The massacre occurred at a time of heightened tension in the Levantine region going back a few decades. Increased intervention by European states in the Middle East saw different powers claiming to be the protectorate of different Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire. This weakened Ottoman sovereignty and transformed the fortunes of the region’s Christian population.

Levantine Christian communities grew wealthy while their Muslim counterparts grew poorer. Local laws no longer applied to Christians as they came under the law of the country which declared them a protectorate. For example, a Catholic person living in Syria could take a Muslim person to a French court due to their religious difference. And more often than not, the French authorities would side with the Catholic individual.

Legally, there was very little recourse for the Muslim in question. Christians were seen as replacing Muslims economically, and there were stories about Christians openly mocking Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. 

Rumours that Christians were planning to massacre Muslims during religious holidays fed into a sense of fear and anxiety. The outbreak of the Mount Lebanon Civil War in 1860 between Druze and Christians — which caused instability in the region — also gave some Sunni Muslim Syrians ideas after they heard about the massacres the Druze faction had carried out against Christians. Tension, fear and opportunity made the Damascus massacre possible.

"The 1860 massacre, which unfolded over eight days in July, left in its wake 1,500 burnt homes, 270 homes destroyed by looters, 200 shops destroyed, and 2,500 dead — roughly 15% of the Christian population in Damascus, with an estimated $10.8 million worth of damage"

However, we do need to be cautious here, as Rogan points out. The Damascene mob that attacked the Christians were not solely Sunni Muslim Damascene Arabs, a large chunk came from outside the city, and included Bedouin, Kurds, Druze, Yazidis and others.

Some Christians would convert to Islam when confronted by the mob, which would sometimes save them and sometimes not, depending on which mob they encountered. Those who converted and survived were encouraged to return to Christianity by the Ottomans after Istanbul regained control of the city.

Many Muslims protected Christians from mob violence, in particular the exiled Algerian religious leader and revolutionary fighter Abd Al-Qadir Ibn Muhyi Al-Din or Emir Abdelkader. Emir Abdelkader not only negotiated with different Muslim and Druze factions to stop the killing of Christians but also took up arms and got his fellow exiled Algerian fighters to patrol and protect Christian neighbourhoods and fight off the angry mobs.

But despite these individual efforts, the local governing elites failed to protect the Christian population, which the Ottomans would later punish them for.

What does the 1860 Damascus massacre teach us?

The Damascus Events is a chilling, heartbreaking and terrifying account told masterfully by Eugene Rogan that leaves the reader with a sense of the fragility of inter-communal relations in historically mixed cities like Damascus.

While coexistence and tolerance were the historical norms in Syria, a change in socio-political circumstances, the spreading of rumours and the weaponisation of grievance, was enough to undermine centuries of living together.

While The Damascus Events is a painful read, it does offer some nuggets of hope from annals of history. Muslim and Christian communities in Damascus were once again brought together during the rebuilding phase and with the help of Ottoman policy. As a result, Damascus thrived once again.

The Sublime Port’s investments in Damascus helped reduce tension by making sure no community was left behind but also encouraged integration between Muslims and Christians.

“They shared opportunities that came with the building boom, the modernisation of markets, the opening of new schools,” Rogan writes, “By 1888, Damascenes had their eyes firmly on the present and the future, and had every reason to hope that their children would enjoy a better future.”

The Damascus Events makes for a compelling and essential reading because it not only shows what happened but what is possible.

Usman Butt is a multimedia television researcher, filmmaker and writer based in London. Usman read International Relations and Arabic Language at the University of Westminster and completed a Master of Arts in Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter

Follow him on Twitter: @TheUsmanButt