DamascusArabic Dimashqcity, capital of Syria. Located in the
southwestern corner of the country, it has been called the
“pearl of the East,” praised for its beauty and lushness; the
10th-century traveler and geographer al-Maqdisī lauded the city
as ranking among the four earthly paradises. Upon visiting the
city in 1867, Mark Twain wrote   The city’s Arabic name derives
from Dimashka, a word of possibly pre-Semitic etymology,
suggesting that the beginnings of Damascus go back to a time
before recorded history. The city is commonly called al-Shām,
the vernacular name of Syria as a whole, which is said to mean
“the left” or “the north,” where the region is situated relative
to the Arabian Peninsula. Owing to associations of Damascus with
Aram, the biblical capital of the Aramaeans, some Arabic sources
link Damascus and the Iram dhāt al-ʿimād (“Colonnaded Aram”)
mentioned in the Qurʾān, an identification that has long been
disputed. Also contended has been the association of Damascus
with Jilliq, a fertile pre-I