. Five years in Damascus . ently re-mains perfect. The walls are upwards of four feet thick,built of large blocks of squared stones, put together withoutcement. The roof is formed of flags about six inches Interior of House in Burak. thick, eighteen inches broad, and twelve feet long. Theyare carefully hewn, and closely jointed; their ends restupon other stones which project about a foot beyond thewall, and are moulded so as to form a cornice. Thedoor of the apartment we first entered was a slab 4 feet6 inches high, 4 feet wide, and 8 inches thick; it opensupon pivots, being projecting parts o
. Five years in Damascus . ently re-mains perfect. The walls are upwards of four feet thick,built of large blocks of squared stones, put together withoutcement. The roof is formed of flags about six inches Interior of House in Burak. thick, eighteen inches broad, and twelve feet long. Theyare carefully hewn, and closely jointed; their ends restupon other stones which project about a foot beyond thewall, and are moulded so as to form a cornice. Thedoor of the apartment we first entered was a slab 4 feet6 inches high, 4 feet wide, and 8 inches thick; it opensupon pivots, being projecting parts of the stone itself, Chap. X. TO THE JEBEL IIAURAN. 23 and working in sockets in the lintel and threshold, likeall the modern gates and doors in Syria. It is on thisaccount extremely difficult to displace the door, and Ihave since seen hundreds of them in their places evenwhen other parts of the building were mere masses ofruin. The first apartment we entered in this house was20 feet long, 12 wide, by about 10 high. From it. a low door opened into another behind it of the samedimensions and character, and from this a larger door ad-mitted to a third, to which there was a descent by a flightof stone stairs; it was a spacious hall, equal in breadthto the other two, and some 25 feet long by 20 fine semicircular arch spanned it in the centre length-wise, supporting the stone roof. The door was so largethat camels could go in and out with ease. Such is a specimen of the houses of Burak, the nameof the ruined town in which we now rested, and such,too, is a fair specimen of all the houses throughout nearlythe whole of the Hauran. Many of them are still founduninjured, but very many are mere heaps of ruins. Someof them are large, with spacious courts in the interior, intowhich the chambers open; others again are small and 24 JOURNEY OVER THE DESERT Chap. X. plain; but all are massive and extremely simple in theirplan; thus denoting high antiquity. Owing to the darkness of the nig
Size: 1835px × 1362px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, booksubjectsyriadescriptionandt
