In 1840, Europe helped the Ottoman empire by forcing the rebellious Egyptian army which had occupied Syria for 8 years back to Egypt, the price the Ottoman Sultan had to pay was more European economic and political penetration. 

The Ottomans signed free trade agreements that gave very good terms to European traders and bad ones to the Ottomans—ending the Ottoman monopolies, opening its market to foreign trade, and giving Europeans preferential tariffs. 

As a result, the Damascene artisans and merchants had to face floods of cheap European industrial products. For example, cheap fabrics competed with the domestic weaving industry, forcing many spinners, weavers and dyers out of business, meanwhile, European merchants were buying raw cotton, wool, and silk to fill their returning steamships so that they don’t go back empty. This foreign competition over local raw materials drove up the prices and created a strain on merchants and artisans. 

The steamships not only were used to carry products, but also pilgrims. With the expansion of steam travel in the 1840s, these steamships, having taken the uncertainty out of the sea and cut the times for journey significantly, led to a huge decrease in the number of pilgrims crossing through Damascus. A major blow to Damascus’ economy. 

Wherever European products went, European consuls followed, starting in the 1830s, more and more consulates were established in Damascus, and the councils were protected by treaty rights that gave them extraterritorial privileges—tax privileges and immunity from Ottoman laws. These councils, few in number, would mostly staff their consulates with local Christians, extending to them, and to their families, the same extraterritorial privileges they enjoyed. Gaining political power and foreign subject status that gave them unfair economic and legal advantages over Damascene Muslims. 

What poured gasoline on fire were a series of reforms aimed at modernizing the state and keeping European powers from interfering in local affairs called the Tanzimat, which in 1856, made Muslims and non-Muslims equal constitutionally . A massive inversion to the social order that had been in place for over a millennium, which contradicted Islamic laws and was thus viewed very negatively by the conservative city. Further heightening tensions. 

Damascene Christians became the prime beneficiaries as middlemen for European expansion as they were acquiring power and wealth and evading local jurisdiction through their trade ties and links to councils at the expense of Muslims. And became on equal legal footing before the Caliphate’s laws, challenging long standing social hierarchies. Many started to feel power was slipping and that traditional Muslim elites would be replaced by Christians. All of this created a fertile ground for what was coming

In May 1860, news and horrific tales of thousands of massacred Christians in a Druze-Maronite civil war in Mount Lebanon rippled across Syria, raising tensions and fears from all sides to extreme levels, and serving as a direct catalyst and inspiration to what would unfold in Damascus later, so much so that false rumors claiming Christians attacked Muslims in Homs and Juresalem while praying and that Christian households in Damascus had fighters ready to attack circulated. 

The tipping point came in July when a group of youth entered a Christian quarter and drew crosses on the dirt roads, Christian leaders complained to the governor, who in turn overreacted and sent a group of Muslim youths, seemingly arbitrarily chosen, in chains with brooms, forcing them to sweep the Christian quarters as a punishment. The scene was all it took to spark one of the darkest chapters in Damascus history

Within an hour, masses of people tore through the Christian quarters, burning hundreds of shops, at least 1,200 houses, and murdering at least 5,000 Christians over the course of 8 days. And while the masses were mostly Arab Muslims, they also included Druze, Bedouins, Yazidis, Jews, Alawites, and Kurds.

Several Muslim notables protected their Christian neighbors, most notably Abd Al Qadir Al Jazaari, a leader of the Algerian struggle against the French occupation, who had settled in Damascus along with an army of 1200 Algerian veterans that would play the main role in rescuing the 85% of the city’s Christian population, first keeping them in his mansion and refusing to release when mobs demanded it telling them “How low have you fallen?”. He ultimately moved them to Damascus citadel, where as many as 15 thousand Christians were protected for months. 

How did the authorities handle the aftermath? 

News of the massacres reached the corners of the earth, European pressure was mounting, the Ottoman authorities sent Fuad Pasha, the foreign minister who realized that achieving total justice and reimbursement was unattainable, instead what he thought was needed is enough justice to secure respect for the law moving forward and enough restitution to rebuild the Christians’ homes and restart their trades

Quickly, he had the main culprit figures, the governor of Damascus along with 57 notables, executed, for failure in their responsibilities. Thousands of others were jailed or exiled. Many were forced to vacate their houses so that they could host the homeless Christians. 

Next came the rebuilding process, Fuad Pasha imposed a tax on all non Christians, which raised tensions further, and merged the 3 provinces of Sidon, Acre and Damascus into the Vilayet of Syria, with Damascus as the capital, a new structure that helped channel regional trade and tax revenues through Damascus, which immensely helped in the rebuilding process of the economy and society.

With this new income, new public spaces began to emerge, with cafes, theaters, government buildings, schools and markets— the souqs of Hamidiyah and Madhat Pasha—providing a space for daily interactions and exchanging between the different communities. Not a quick fix but enough to secure the gradual healing of communal wounds.

Conflicts can have positive effects too, they reveal hidden problems, trigger re-evaluation of identity, narratives, and moral assumptions, which can open a path for empathy, new shared identities and acceptance of shared histories. 

Indeed, it was in the aftermath of this violence that the seeds of Syrian patriotism were planted, with Butrus Al-Bustani, dubbed the father of Syrian patriotism, declaring the Nafir Suriyya (“The Clarion of Syria”) from Mount Lebanon, a series of anonymous pamphlets published between September 1860 and April 1861 in which he articulated his vision of an equal, united Syrian society that shared language, geography, and cultural heritage, which he believed superseded the divisive sectarian affiliations, saying that Ḥubb al-Waṭan min al-Īmān (“Love of the homeland is a matter of faith”). 

He called for national consciousness, civic morality, rejection of fanaticism, and critical thinking about the self and others, and gave us two choices: either we continue down the sectarian path, or we elaborate an anti sectarian humanist sensibility.

Note: this article is mainly inspired by Eugene Rogan’s book, The Damascus Events.