AN OLD WORLD

Walking round the castle and souks of Tripoli, Anita Limaye got whiffs of ancient Lebanese culture

 

   TRIPOLI – Lebanon’s second largest city stretches along its northern coast and lies 85 km from the capital, Beirut. Visiting there, I was of course intrigued that it bore the same name as the capital of Libya! I learnt later that Tripoli means ‘triple city’ in Greek and was originally the centre of a Phoenician confederation made up of Tyre, Sidon and Arados.
   Tripoli is made up of two parts – Al Mina – the port area — and the enigmatic Old City which is a maze of narrow, winding streets dating back to the 14th century. Tripoli is famous for its aromatherapy soaps, traditional Lebanese sweets (variants of honeyed baklava) and fresh fish served in several wayside restaurants around Al Mina.
   But first, to work up our appetite, we decided to explore the city and started at an imposing Crusader castle called the St Giles Citadel. The citadel is a virtual city by itself, with
a labyrinth of corridors, sudden open courtyards, unexpected vistas and green spaces. It was mainly a military garrison with numerous dungeons and prisons for criminals — and perhaps infidels! We enjoyed exploring the place and felt like we were transported to the medieval era. More so since we were trying to find our way round a huge castle, with not a soul in sight!
   Most of the other historic sites in Tripoli are at the foot of St Giles Citadel. These include The Great Mosque (which has an intriguing clock in the minaret), The Church of St John and the Taynal Mosque which has an imposing portal in the typical Arab architectural style.
   We simply had to have a dekko of the old souk too – how could I leave Tripoli before a bit ofshopping? We stopped at a shop called Khan Al Saboun, selling — what else! — traditional soaps made with olive oil. talk about linguisitic links between cultures! The shop was a veritable paradise for the senses – we got lovely wafts of perfume periodically as the salesgirl showed us wonderful creams and oils...
   There was an overwhelming variety of different soaps for different purposes and everything inside the store seemed to be made of soap, including the strings of necklaces hanging from the ceilings! I also learnt that the soaps there are made by hand, cut by hand and wrapped manually – a tradition long-forgotten in other places!
   We decided to buy their Violet Honey soap which relaxes the soul, the Orange soap which is a refresher and awakens the senses, Bader soap which is made up of aromatic herbs and oils and coal soap, supposedly for anti-sweating, which looked exactly like a round piece of black coal!
   A walk down the other by-lanes of this souk again reminded me of Chandni Chowk in Delhi and the Khan-el-Khalili market in Cairo. People also told me that gold is also a good buy at the souk.
   After having built up a good appetite, we headed towards Al Mina to try the seafood. I must add that the fish we ate in Tripoli was the tastiest I have ever had! We went to a restaurant called Talal-el-Bahr which was a roadside dhaba.
   We chose our fish (a red snapper) which was barbequed right in front of us on charcoal, simply basted with olive oil, fresh lemon juice and ginger-garlic paste and served up piping hot! Fish comes with the ubiquitous pickled dill, Arabic bread (a huge pile of thin rotis) and two sauces for dipping the fish, one garlicky the other like green chutney. Everything was equally mouth-watering and we didn’t leave even a morsel! And the courteous service at the restaurant was a joy...We left feeling very contented indeed.
   After that heavy meal, we decided to just drive to the Ottoman Clock Tower in the centre of town before leaving Tripoli . Any activity which did not involve walking was fine with us! The Ottoman Clock Tower built at the dawn of the 20th century is located in the At-Tall area in the heart of the city and is the main hub for all transit systems including buses and cabs. It is a tall reminder of the influence of the Ottoman Empire in Lebanon alongside many other empires which have left their mark here like the Byzantines, the Romans and the Greeks.
   We left Tripoli with a heavy heart and a heavy tummy as well!