Cities of the Pyrenees

The Pyrenees is a mountain system in Spain, France and Andorra, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Bay of Biscay.

Length - 450 km, maximum height - 3404 m (Aneto peak).

The Pyrenees is an important climatic division: to the north of the Pyrenees is a territory with a temperate climate, to the south - with a subtropical one.

This mountain system is relatively young, but still older than the Alpine mountains. About 500 million years ago, the peaks of the Pyrenees were already standing, and the Alpine mountain system was just beginning to form.

The Pyrenees is an ideal mountain system: a long straight chain of mountains, from which, like branches, small side ridges extend, often strictly opposite each other. The valleys located between the transverse ridges are deepened by swift mountain streams to such an extent that they sometimes resemble the American Grand Canyon. In the upper reaches of the valleys are located glacial circuses - once rocky amphitheaters occupied by glaciers. From the walls of circuses, tapes of waterfalls fall to the bottom.

The Pyrenees are the most impregnable of all the ranges of Europe. Although their highest point, Aneto Peak, is almost one and a half kilometers lower than Mont Blanc, the average height of the Pyrenees is greater than the Alps. The snowy Pyrenees giants, lined up in a slender line, for the most part are about the same height, and it is not easy to find a gap in their mighty formation. The Pyrenees have only a few conveniently located passes, and these passes are on average twice as high as Alpine passes. Therefore, only four railways go from France to Spain: two of them bypass the Pyrenees along the coast from the southeast and northwest, and two more railways cross the mountains through a system of tunnels.

The capital of Syria - Damascus is known as one of the most ancient cities in the world. For all the years of its existence, this metropolis has always been the main city of the state. Its history can be studied from the Bible, which describes the most significant events of Christianity that took place in Damascus.

The old city of the Syrian capital is densely built up with historical sights. It is surrounded by a Roman wall and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It will take more than one day to see all the architectural monuments of Damascus. Among them there are many that you must see.

In the Zechariah Madrasah, built in 1266, the legendary Sultan Beybars, who was the ruler of Egypt and Syria, was buried. He is known for being able to rise from the position of a captured slave to the level of an omnipotent overlord. Sultan Beybars was an outstanding commander and revered throughout the Turkic world. Many peoples claim to call him their fellow countryman. The Madrasah archive contains a collection of the rarest books, numbering over 200 thousand copies.

In the ancient quarter of the city, near the East Gate, is the chapel of St. Ananias, who was the first follower of Jesus Christ. The construction of this religious building dates back to the 1st century AD. According to the chronicles, St. Paul was baptized in it. During the formation of Christianity, St. Ananias was executed for preaching the Christian religion.

One of the largest active convents in Damascus is the oldest Saednay monastery. It was built by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in VI AD in the village of Saednaya, which is located next to Damascus. For many centuries, the symbol of the monastery of the Virgin Mary is the miraculous icon of the Mother of God, allegedly painted by the Evangelist Luke. To adhere to the unique icon, every year thousands of Christians come to the monastery who believe in its healing power. A large influx of believers is observed here on September 8, when the Nativity of the Virgin is celebrated. Surprisingly, services in the Christian temple are held in Arabic.

The Umayyad Grand Mosque is located in the historical center of Damascus and is one of the most magnificent and oldest mosques in the world. Its construction was begun at the dawn of the VIII century at the behest of the caliph Walid I and lasted more than 10 years. The mosque was erected at the place where the temple of John the Baptist used to be. The richness of the decoration in which precious metals and stones were used, the Mosque can compete with the famous Byzantine palaces. Religious Muslims and Christians come here to venerate the holy relics of John the Baptist. Oddly enough, he is equally revered as a great prophet by Islamists and Christians. On the territory of this religious complex is also the mausoleum of the famous Sultan Salah ad-Din, who was an outstanding commander and spiritual leader of Muslims in the XII century.

The mausoleum of Sukaina, the great-granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad, is especially revered by the Shiites. It is located in the historical cemetery of Damascus, and was supposedly built in the XII century by the Fatimids who left Egypt. Sukaina became famous for its incomparable beauty. Its tomb, decorated in an elegant architectural style, invariably attracts the attention of Shiite pilgrims and ordinary tourists.

On Mount Cassion, as the Bible says, there was a vile assassination of Abel, who died at the hands of his brother Cain. From the observation deck on Mount Kassion, located at an altitude of 1150 meters, a beautiful panorama of ancient Damascus opens, in which Islamic and Christian shrines peacefully coexist.

All authors (C. Bücher, E. Meyer, D. Brested, Bogdanov and Stepanov) agree that the closest reason for the emergence of cities of primitive eastern despots was the iron will of the omnipotent leader of the tribe (1-theory of individual arbitrariness), which forced its slaves , and most often members of the defeated tribe, to build for him from the brick dried in the sun the impregnable walls surrounding a considerable space, over which the despot’s palace dominated. Here he himself settled, his warriors, his slaves drove here, and from here he dominated the surrounding population. The fortified city was indeed built to exercise strategic dominance over the tribe, but it was built where the tribe settled especially densely, but the tribe naturally settled in those places where it was easiest to obtain livelihoods (primitive agriculture, hunting, fishing and healthy drinking water). Cities that sprang up on the whim of a despot, if they had no economic prerequisites, disappeared as quickly as they arose; in reverse cases (Memphis, Nineveh, and a friend), they developed, expanded, built up, and flourished for centuries until a new victorious tribe destroyed them to the ground.

Thus, the ancient eastern cities are primarily administrative, as well as religious and military centers. They arose in the valleys of the largest rivers, since the economic main of the most ancient states was irrigated agriculture.

Cities appeared a little differently in the era of ancient Greece and the ancient “polis”. According to the studies of C. Bucher, the process of urbanization was carried out among the Greeks and partly by the Romans with a peculiar logic. They entered history, like all nations, in a state of purely rural life, scattered in open villages, eating the fruits of the earth and weakly united by tribes. But then, for a large part, these tribes left rural life, established themselves in cities and built a free community behind strong walls, not only by order of influential overlords, but also of their own free will (2-theory of free agreement). The emerging cities entered into alliances (symmachies), which in turn founded colonies that repeated this device within the barbarian countries. So the whole system of municipal-political cohabitation was founded. At its core, it has an economic reason: the inability to live and engage in settled agriculture outside the protection of fortified centers, where the agricultural population was saved in the event of repeated attacks by enemies of Pyrenees.

The city-states of the Greeks and Romans were usually at the same time fortified cities (3-theory of social protection), as in ancient times, and either special fortifications were erected, or the cities were surrounded by stone walls, and in woodlands - wooden (Herodotus , Iv). However, according to most researchers, the walls and fortifications at that time were not at all an obligatory sign of the original city, and often the presence of a garrison or military service of the chivalrous population of the city ensured it from attacks. So, it is known that in the Spartan cities there were never walls; according to many researchers, in the initial period there were no walls in a city like Athens, and, according to Max Weber, even the fortifications of the rocky acropolis were erected much later than the city was founded in the cities of Pyrenees.

The genetic-municipal problem in the Middle Ages caused a long debate in science, giving rise to several conflicting theories. In general, the question of the origin of the medieval urban system, as one of the most difficult, complex and controversial in the history of economic life, is subject to schematic resolution only with great reservations and, in any case, allows for many doubts and exceptions of Pyrenees.

The oldest theories include Romanism (Guizot, Renoir, Thierry, Savigny), who, however, found the newest protector (neo-Romanism) in the person of Kuntze. This theory regarded Western European cities as a direct continuation of the cities founded by the Romans. The novelism was continued and developed by the Senile theory, in the person of Eichhorn and Nietzsche, which added to the Roman law-making source in the genesis of the European city the Senile Law (Hofrecht), i.e. association under the rule of the seigneur of various layers of the pre-urban population, which supposedly gave rise to the city. However, Romanism was largely eliminated by the studies of the “Germanists” Arnold, Güllmann, Girke (for Germany), Hegel (for Italy) and Flack (for France).