Memory Statement

Sami Bahrami, interviewed by Andre Yacoubian

August 2019

I got to know al-Bahramiyya mosque at the age of twenty when my uncle took me there, not knowing at the time that my great grandfather was the one who built it! My relationship started with this place since then and lasted up to seven years. I was periodically visiting the mosque every Friday for prayers. I would go an hour or two before the time of prayer and sit inside a place that dates back between 400 to 500 years old. The smell of cleanliness that exudes from the space is very distinctive as there are three servants working continuously to keep it clean and tidy; the air is fresh and the walls are cool in summer. It has a wonderful uniqueness. The voice of the muezzin Abu Jalal in the Al-Bahramiyya Mosque is original and sincere as he raises the call to prayer. You just have to close your eyes to hear his voice and immerse deeply into your soul, to travel back to the place, with its magical beautiful prayer hall, as you enter a state of complete spirituality.

I remember arriving to the mosque before the prayer time and taking the key from the servant who usually stands at the gate next to the sabil (water fountain) and rinses the floor of the mosque and the souk (market) outside. I open the door of the prayer hall and enter. Next to the window to my right, I see an old man sitting with the Qur'an and a bottle of water reading quietly. I open the locked door with the servant’s key. Despite the fact that the prayer hall is supposed to be empty of worshipers; I would see this old man inside every time. When I asked the servant about him, he answered that this man goes inside the mosque every Friday at the Morning Prayer and keeps reading the Qur’an until the Noon Prayer, and then he goes home; this is his own ritual of prayer.

The mosque’s courtyard is beautiful, but the garden is even more. In the southeastern side, the mausoleum of the mosque builders, Bahram Pasha and his brother Radwan Pasha, is of great beauty and splendor. There are two (closed) entrances to the garden; one is on the eastern side from al-Madras al-Ahmadiyye’s alley where you can see the two shrines, and the other door is located on the western side, opening to the courtyard of the mosque. Before the war, I was unable to visit the tomb of my great-grandfather to recite some Qur'an verses on his soul, because the mosque's servant never allowed me to enter. Ironically now, because of the war, I was able to enter it for the first time by passing the hills of rubbles of the destroyed shops in the middle of souk Antakiyye and the two khans of Tutun. The destruction was massive and the height of the rubble would reach the length of a human. When we passed through it to reach the door of the mosque it was closed. So we went to the Western side where there are two other doors of the mosque but they were also closed as the neighborhood was full of rubble hills. I saw the wall of the garden torn down so I headed east to the place of the shrine where I saw the tombstones had been completely removed. There are no longer any traces of the graves except the columns surrounding it. At the beginning of 2018, I wanted to rebuild the destroyed garden wall, which is a wall of eight meters long and three meters high. Therefore, I allocated 400,000 Syrian pounds, but the cost study resulted in more than two million Syrian pounds, which I could not afford.

In 1822, a major earthquake struck the city of Aleppo, and the mosque’s dome was completely destroyed. It took forty years to build another one. The construction costs were covered by selling the insulating lead that was covering the old dome, between 1860 and 1864, where four pillars were built bearing the new dome that was smaller in diameter than the old one. Now, after the war and the great damage that affected the prayer hall, the dome and the minaret, I am not optimistic that it will be restored as it was, due to the lack of adequate funding and an apparent expert workforce.

The gallery of the mosque was under the threat of complete collapse due to the damage to one of the external pillars, and its situation was critical if it had remained without repair and restoration. Then Abdo Kno, a donor, supported and repaired it with his individual efforts. The costs of restoring and repairing one pillar were estimated at 700 thousand Syrian pounds, so what would the full cost of the prayer hall be? I visited the mosque more than twenty times after the roads have been accessible again to enter the old city. Every time I visit it I grieve the place as if I see the destruction for the first time. Praying here seems not to be near foreseeable.

I wish for the restoration work to start soon in the mosque, like the restoration in churches and other mosques, and for people to pray in those places again that are memorable to our Aleppian community. I hope to go back to the prayers on Fridays under the mosque’s dome with the same people that we used to pray together before the war.

Sami Bahrami