Meeting the New Rulers of Syria (Maaloula, Homs, Hama Vlog)
In this video, we're leaving Syria's capital of Damascus and heading north towards Aleppo. Along the way, we'll stop in Maaloula, one of the last places on earth where the language of Jesus Christ is still spoken today. A village scarred by conflict, but steadfast in its ancient traditions and faith. Then, we're moving on to Homs to see how this once war-torn city, known as the Capital of the Revolution, is slowly rebuilding. And finally, we'll visit Hama and speak with some of the militants currently governing the country about their vision for Syria. What- is there anything you want to change about Syria? Everything.
All that and more, coming up right now. Alright, hello guys, and welcome back. Right now we've come to our first stop along the journey, and we are here in Maaloula. Maaloula is an Aramaic word that means "the entrance." So, mostly the people here speak Aramaic.
And Aramaic, you guys may know, is the language spoken by Jesus Christ. Yeah. So a very, very, very old language.
In Syria, we have three villages that speak Aramaic. We have Maaloula, Jubb'adin, Bakh'a. These three villages. Until nowadays, they speak the language of Jesus, the Aramaic language. Amazing.
And it's also a Christian majority. A Christian majority, but also Muslims are living here. Okay. But you can see the Virgin Mary up there, I think... You can see crosses, a few crosses all around. So it's, you know, another piece of the diverse landscape of Syria.
Very, very diverse, and here is a Christian majority. Alright, so now we're walking up the hill, and this is the hotel, right here. We are going to visit a four-star hotel. Of course, it used to be a hotel, now it's like, massive destruction. You can see some damage.
You said the initial attack here was a suicide bombing? Suicide bomber. Yeah, we are going to see the car. Really? Yeah. Wow. Oh my goodness. They wanted to take this place because the hotel is the highest point.
And so here you can see the car from the initial attack. Just this mangled, twisted wreck. And apparently the bomb went off somewhere right along here. You can see the damage from the bombing. The pillars collapsed, and the rebar, and even the ceiling coming down.
Wow. The location is amazing. I mean, if they can rebuild this hotel, it would be...
So we're inside now. We got the, what was the reception. The damage is pretty, pretty severe. It's basically just a hollowed out shell of a building now.
Really bad damage. It's amazing, here they've even still got some documents and things from when the hotel was open. Training attendance sheet for the hotel employees, and dates marked in 2011, before everything happened here. Alright, and here it is. Wow.
and this must have been a whole... Oh yeah, even a restaurant.,. It was targeted from that way, from that direction. So while they took this place, they took over this place, so the fighting happened in this area. You can see how nice it must have been.
Got this whole outdoor deck, patio, a kitchen in there, I see like a brick oven. And then this whole area for sitting and relaxing with just an amazing view. And from here you can see the whole village.
So on the 14th of September, every year, they celebrate. They go outside the village, it's the Cross Day for them. They go up to the mountain. Wow. Oh yeah. They fire pieces of wood, and they throw them. So it was because of the Constantine, when he found the cross.
When he announced that "I found the cross," telling his mother, so he fired pieces of wood, and he threw them on the mountain. So that's why people celebrate here on the 14th of September. Interesting. It's so cool, the landscape too.
You've got these two sharp pieces of cliff. One there, and one right there, yeah. It's like bordering the village on either side. These two huge cliffs and the village below in the valley. Wow.
Beautiful. Now turning back towards the hotel from the viewpoint. They came in this direction to attack the hotel, and it's in pretty bad shape.
Jeez. Oh my god. It looks like some big blast just blew that out. This is from airstrike.
Airstrike, huh? So that's the regime airstrikes? Yeah. there's the pool. It looks like it used to be very nice. My goodness.
Now we are going to enter one of the monasteries, which is the Greek Catholic one. It's called Sergius and Bacchus. We are going to see a place that dates back to the 4th century in the Byzantine time, but it used to be a pagan temple before. So the entrance is something special, because small door, it's like a bit secret, but when you go inside, so you have to lean down to show respect of the place you are visiting.
Mm-hmm, it makes you bow. There we go. Oh wow. Almost all of this was reconstructed after 2013. Yeah, after 2013, they reconstructed most of the, the monastery.
Alright guys, there's a woman here who's going to recite a prayer in Aramaic. I've never heard it before. But she's going to do it so we can hear bit of the language that they actually speak here, and that was spoken by Jesus. Maaloula is famous for its local wine. So they used to have the factory outside. Of course in the village they used to produce wine, and I know some people now, until nowadays, they are making wine.
Thank you. Alright, a little taste of Maaloula wine. Very good. Nice red wine. I love it. Thank you.
So you said there used to be 50 ,000 people living here? Yeah, used to be. Before 2011. Ah, okay. Before the beginning of everything. Now i don't think it will reach 10. Really? Yeah. 50,000 to less than 10,000.
And so will the people come back now, you think? Yeah, I guess now. They are just like, waiting for the things to be settled again, so they are coming back. It's amazing, the diversity here. Like, I think people in the West, they think of Syria, they just think of, well, first of all... Islamic country and...
And war. And war, exactly. Which, okay, it's part of the story, but there's so much diversity here, a huge Christian population. I met a tourist, I was with him, and he told me, like, "I thought Syria was just like tents and camels." That was, yeah, that was different. No, a little more than that.
Yeah. Actually, a lot more. There's a lot to see. So we're going to walk inside the canyon from that way to reach the second monastery we are going to visit, which is inside the mountain.
Wow. Right in there, huh? Alright, let's do it. Let's go. The people of Maaloula believe that this entrance or this canyon is a miracle, because of Thecla, Saint Thecla. She was a student of Saint Paul.
She went back to Turkey, she's from Turkey, she tried to tell people about Christianity. Then they started following her, they wanted to kill her because this is against their religion. And she came back to this place and she prayed, she cried, she wanted to escape from soldiers, and in one moment this mountain was split, and she escaped to the cave that has water inside. Or, let's say, the mountain, the water comes from the mountain directly. Alright, and now we've come out of that little canyon, and there you can see the monastery. It actually leads out into like, kind of a neighborhood.
I thought it was going to be in the mountains, but there's more of the village or the city over here. And there's the monastery. Very big and very nice. Alright guys, so we've moved along now, and we are entering the city of Homs.
Our next stop along the way. Homs is the biggest province in Syria. So the city and the countryside, they are huge. So they are like the biggest in the country.
Homs people, we can say, are the most intelligent people here in Syria. They are very smart, really well-educated, and also a fact about the city... Steve Jobs' father is from Homs. Really? And Steve Jobs is from Homs, yeah.
What? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. His father is from Homs, and he moved to America after that, and they adopted him, as far as I know. Is Steve's father Christian or Muslim? Muslim.
Now we are going to enter the city center. We'll see part of the destruction of the city. Alright, guys, we've hopped out of the car now. We're on the streets of Homs, and a lot of noise. You can see people selling benzene, gasoline, there for the cars and things. But also a lot of fresh fruit, oranges and things.
Hi! Hi! She can speak English. Oh, you speak English? Yeah. How are you? I'm fine. Very good.
What's your name? Maya. Maya? My name is Douglas. Welcome. Is this your brother? Yeah.
Do you speak English too? Yeah. Oh, very good. How old are you guys? I am eleven. Eleven and? Nine years. Nine. Very good.
And you're from Homs? Yes. Very nice. Thank God. Everything has become very nice. Thank God. Really? Oh, I'm happy to hear that. Welcome.
Nice to meet you. Bye bye! There's a tourist information office. Probably from the old days. From the old days, yeah.
Wow. I wonder if there's anyone in there. Let's see.
Tourist information office. I think it's empty. I might be the only tourist in the city for now. This city is one of the two in Syria that was hit the hardest. Not the only two, but the two hardest. The one is Aleppo, and the other one is Homs.
Homs. So we're gonna be going to Aleppo tonight, your home city. Yeah, my home city. You guys can see just behind us there, that whole row of buildings is hit pretty badly. It's pretty extreme. I mean, it's very, very widespread.
You know, I could compare it a little bit to Mosul in Iraq, where I've been many, many times. But in Mosul, it's a little bit of a different situation because most of the destruction occurred in the old town, in smaller, older buildings, which was terrible because they were historical and beautiful, but smaller buildings. Here, it's like enormous apartment blocks and office buildings, tall, big buildings right in the city center that are destroyed. So, a little bit of a different situation, similar in some ways. Now we're going to enter a very famous mosque. We call it Khaled Mosque.
It has the real grave of Khalid ibn al-Walid. He's the greatest Islamic leader of all time. He's the one who spread Islam in Syria. That was in 636.
Okay. So when he passed away, they put him here, and it used to be a cemetery. But in the time of the Mamluk, 700 years ago, they decided to build a mosque honoring him. It was damaged during the war, but Chechnya, I guess, were the ones responsible to rebuild and reconstruct the mosque. So Chechnya took care of this. Yeah.
Interesting, wow. Welcome, how are you? Thank you. You know Turkish! I'm Turkish. You're Turkish. You're Turkish? I am Turkmen. Ah, Turkmen. I'm American, but...
I live in Turkey. Where in Turkey do you live? In Istanbul. Istanbul? Yes. Are you studying there? No, no, I'm working.
Tourism? Exactly. I work in tourism. So, generally in the Middle East, and that's why I live in Turkey.
Okay. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a nice day. It's weird to see people speak Turkish, right? Yeah! Many people left the country and they moved to Turkey, so you know, they are somehow expert at speaking Turkish.
He said he's Turkmen though. Oh, he's Turkmen! Yeah, we have also many Turkmen here. But it was funny, because we just walked by and he said "Hos geldin," which is "welcome" in Turkish, but he didn't know that I speak Turkish. So they are a local, smaller organization, they are now taking care of the place. First of all, they are working voluntarily, not getting paid. Every Friday, they come to this place, just adding these rugs, all the ground here.
They want to do all of this for people to pray next to the mosque. So it will be bigger space for them, so it can contain as many people as they can. So they have another 15, small group of people. They come here everyday, just to take care of the place, to clean, especially the bathroom.
So they are taking care of the place just for the people who can enter this area and pray together inside and outside the mosque. Thank you so much. Welcome. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Alright, so we're gonna go check out the inside of the newly reconstructed mosque. Many people from different parts of Syria, different cities, they come here to this place just to see the grave, or the Khalid. And there it is. Yeah, the Islamic greatest, one of the greatest Islamic leaders. I noticed this in the mosque in Damascus too, the stained glass. It's interesting, I always thought of that as a Christian church thing.
Because, you know, maybe the architecture was, somehow, was taken from the previous, let's say, religion, let's say Christianity. So yeah, they have the glass, like, on the dome. And always, always, in a mosque, we have this chandelier that gives very nice decoration of the place. Yeah, absolutely. By the way, guys, I don't know if you already heard this in my first video from Damascus, and if you haven't seen that one yet, then click at the top of the screen and go check it out. But, stay tuned till the end of this video, because I have some details for you about how you can join me here in Syria very, very soon on my first ever group trip to Syria.
It's coming up soon. Details to follow. Hope to see you there. And so back outside the mosque, even amidst all this destruction, you can see life carries on. Business, food, people selling everything you can imagine here. You can still see a lot of HTS militants, like that guy right there, who are kind of just around, monitoring everything.
But yeah, life carries on here. Wow... Very good! So he's selling soap here. Very nice.
It looks radioactive. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, now we have left Homs, and we're on our way to one last stop for today, for this video. So stay tuned.
What's up guys, I'm jumping in here real quick from very cold Istanbul to let you know that in September of 2025, I am going to be leading a group trip to Syria, to many of the places that you're seeing in these videos. The trip is going to be from September 7th to September 14th, 2025, and we're going to be going all across Syria, from Damascus, to Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and so many other places that are not even in these videos yet. We're going to be seeing one of the best preserved medieval castles in the world, and of course, we're going to be eating a ton of amazing, delicious Syrian food. If you join the trip, you're going to be traveling with the absolute best Syrian local guides, and of course, yours truly. And maybe the coolest part of this trip is that it all will culminate at the end of the trip with a very, very special, one-of-a-kind visit to the village of Maaloula for the annual Cross Festival. There's really nothing else like it in the world.
It's going to be a blast. If you want to learn more, go to dougbarnardtravel.com/trips, or click the link down in the description below.
I'll see you in Syria. And now we have made it to our kind of last stop of the day. The city of Hama. Hama. The city of the water wheel. The city of the waterwheels, and also more recent history, as in, like, a month ago, it was pretty significant in the fall of the Assad regime, is that right? Exactly.
So Hama was different. The city of Hama was not destroyed, and was not affected during the recent war, because the city was closed. They didn't start the war here inside the city. They were somehow afraid because of the thing that happened in 1982 with the Muslim Brotherhood. Because the city in 1982 was completely destroyed during the father of Bashar al-Assad. He killed tens of thousands of people, is that right? Yeah, many, yeah.
And then in December during the revolution, this was kind of like the last defense, the strongest defense line of the previous regime, the Assad regime. And so kind of once they got through here, it was like, straight to Damascus, more or less? Exactly. They went straight to Homs, they stayed for maybe like a day or so, then directly they went to Damascus.
Wow. So essentially, this city was the beginning of the end for the Assad regime, or close to the end of the end. But it was the last kind of resistance to the rebels coming in and officially putting the Assad regime to rest. Chaotic scene here. We've got a lot of people out and about.
We've got a camel here. And the famous water wheels. And you can see people climbing up on top of them and everything. Wow. So the water wheels, these are an Aramaic invention, was developed in the Roman time. So what is the main purpose of the water wheels? To take water from the river and irrigate different lands and put the water in different aqueducts.
They take the water from the river, then we have boxes all around the water wheel, and as it goes up, the water will go directly to the aqueduct so that they can irrigate different lands. Oh, very cool. Ah, okay. Thank you. So is he just here trying to give some fun facts? Yeah, he's telling you about, like, sometimes when the water, the level of the water is high, they go up and they throw themselves in the river.
Oh, they jump off? Yeah, they jump off. Wow. Oh, that sounds fun. Alright, we got two volunteers to show us how they climb the... how they climb the water wheel.
Very eager to show us how it's done. Don't fall! Alright, there they go. It's just a free-for-all, huh? I guess it's a bit dangerous.
Yeah I think so, a little bit. I don't know how big it looks on video guys, but it's it's probably like 30-40 feet tall. Oh my goodness. Wow! Good job! Very good! Nice job. And we've got the guys here. As-salamu alaykum.
How are you? I'm well, thank God. Thank God. Where are you from? From Hama. Hama.
Ah, so you're locals. Very good. But working HTS.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, right? Ahrar al-Sham. Ah, very good. Thank you. Hey, guys! How are you? I'm well, thank God. Very good. Very good.
Picture, picture! How are you? I'm well, thank God. Thank God. Where are you from? Hama? I'm from Hama. Very good. Where are you from? America. Woah! He was surprised.
Picture, picture, picture! Picture. Say hello, YouTube! Now he's shy. Very good. Very good! Okay.
Where are you from? America. Thank God for your safety. Thank you.
Okay, say bye bye, guys. Bye bye. Goodbye! Even the militants here are very popular, people coming to take selfies, and he's even letting the kids hold the AK-47 there. Where are you from? I'm American. Tourism. Do you know Turkish? Yes! Because I live in Turkey.
How many years have you been living in Turkey? Two years. Two years. How do you know? I know Turkish well. Like, how? Why? I lived in Turkey for 10 years. Over there. Really? Where in Turkey? Ah, well, the war ended in Syria, and I came to Syria. But Syria is so nice, life is good, everthing is good, thank God.
Yes, it's so nice here. Very nice. Yes, Syria, Hama, all of Syria is good.
Yes, exactly, exactly. This is my first time here, and I was very surprised. It's very nice.
Syria is very nice. It's very comfortable here, no? Yes! Very comfortable, very calm... Yes...
What's your name? Doug Barnard. Write your name. Okay. Giving the guys my channel here. How long are you staying in Syria? One week, only one week. But, I'll come again, God willing. Okay.
Okay, now I'm getting asked for the selfies with the guy. So guys, the guys here are being very friendly and I've asked them if I could ask them just a few questions about what is HTS and what is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham? There's a lot of questions like in other countries like, who are you guys? Where did you come from? They are a different group. They call themselves Ahrar al-Sham, not Tahrir al-Sham.
Ah, okay. But all of them are the same, let's say, umbrella. Okay.
So, one army. One big army. Gotcha. What do you think is the future of Syria looking like now? What's the, what's the plan? They hope that the situation will be better soon. And so, what's your job here right now? So they are somehow responsible of the people here in Hama, as they are from Hama. They wanted to keep the city as safe as they can.
Prevent stealing, kidnapping, this kind of stuff. So they're doing basic security and things? Yeah, basic security things, yeah. And it seems like they're very popular with the people here.
Yeah, people always, you see them like, they want to take some photos with them. Yeah, yeah. And um, what... is there anything you want to change about Syria? Everything. So the previous, the previous regime like, they somehow destroyed, yeah, destroyed everything. They destroyed the country.
Now everything is... They are going to change most of the thing to the best. God willing. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you.
So guys, everyone has been very friendly, but these guys are the friendliest of the militants that we've met so far, the new people running Syria. They've just invited us to go for a little coffee with them, so we're going with them. And we've got the whole squad here trailing us.
Say hello guys. Hi guys! It's amazing, i've met so many people in Syria who speak Turkish, which I'm not so good at, but at least I can speak it better than Arabic, so it's allowed me to communicate with a lot more people than normal. Alright guys, that was a lot of fun.
We've left Hama and we've driven for about another hour or so, and now we are on the outskirts of Aleppo. Welcome to Aleppo. Interesting thing is, right here next to that is a big poster that was formerly a picture of Bashar al-Assad, and since then it's been burned. You can just see his little pointy ear on the top of his head. Now we are onward to Aleppo.
Stay tuned for that, that's coming up next. But that's it for this one. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.
2025-03-27 00:53
