It was at the citadel that we first heard the famous muezzin of Aleppo. High above the city, over a light meal of spiced sweetmeats and grape juice, the afternoon call to prayer bubbled up, slowly at first, from unseen singers in the countless minarets sprinkled across the skyline by one or other Islamic dynasty since the eighth century.
Our guide, Mohammed, had explained how you could tell the ages of the mosques from the shapes of their minarets. The earliest Islamic rulers, the Omayyads, built their minarets like giant church towers, to rival their sister religion in height and splendour; the Mamluks and Seljuks went for more bulbous affairs before the Turkish Ottomans settled on the pointed pencils that have provided the model for the minaret ever since.
Now, one by one, these minarets were coming to life, the cries of the individual singers gathering into a mournful roar engulfing the city. And finally, as if he was waiting until last, our own muezzin began to sing Allahu Akhbar, God is Great, from the highest tower in the city directly above our heads.
Someone in our party said: 'That was better than the eclipse', and it did feel like a once in a lifetime experience. But here this happens five times a day: our special moment was just the third in a series.
Somehow, the quotidian nature of the call to prayer takes away none of its magic. And in Aleppo, a centre of ancient and modern Arabic music, they are proud of their muezzin. Here you have none of the usual lazy, muffled recordings played through loudspeakers you find elsewhere in the Muslim world. Here, the muezzin compete.
Aleppo is the most Mediterranean of Syrian cities. In the North-west near the Turkish border, it has been the traditional meeting point of Arab and European traders for centuries. It retains its mongrel charm. Even the citadel itself is the result of Christian-Muslim architectural inbreeding. It is a vast construction from the period of the Mamluks, rulers of Egyptian origin who finally drove out the Crusaders in the thirteenth century. But the influence of the Christian invaders remains in the way the Mamluks' own strongholds look like Crusader castles. Built inside a vast moat with a high-arched, stone entrance, Aleppo citadel is the finest example of this strange hybrid style.
Syria is finally opening up to the West, and there are high hopes for the new President Bashar, son of the late dictator Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country for almost three decades. The Foreign Office was already making overtures to the president-in-waiting on behalf of British business before the death of the 'Lion of Damascus' last June. British Mediterranean Airways has opened a new route to Aleppo, a canny move as the northern city is the perfect introduction to the country, away from the heavy, pre-Cold War atmosphere of Damascus.
With a good guide, a bit of planning and a strong constitution it is possible to see most of Syria's main tourist sites in a week. We travelled to Damascus; deep into the desert to the Roman ruins at Palmyra; and visited the Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers, near the Lebanese border, and the ancient Christian village of Maalula, where the people still speak Aramaic, the language of Christ.
It would be quite possible to spend a whole week in Aleppo alone and several days in the souk, which remains the soul of this trading city. Because of the Syrian government's boycott of companies that trade with Israel - such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Motorola - most of the products here come from the Arab world, or the Far East. Each sector of the market specialises in a particular product: spices, carpets, fabrics, dyes, silver, gold and even wedding gear. If it weren't for the odd photograph of Diana, Princess of Wales, (a particular favourite of the traders) in Arab headdress, it could almost be 100 years ago.
On the edge of the souk at the entrance to the Great Mosque, we bumped into Sebastien, a carpet dealer with a good stock of Oscar Wilde witticisms and chat-up lines rendered in camp Soho English. Paul Theroux and Robert Tewdwr Moss have both written about these pretty-boys who claim to have learnt their English from travellers picked up in the souk.
After asking me whether I had discovered myself 'in the darkness or in the light', Sebastien told me that 'the first time you will cry, the next time you will knock on my door'. He then tried to sell me an expensive carpet, so I decided this was an elaborate sales pitch. I made my excuse and left.
My favourite approach came from Mouffak, the owner of a fancy goods emporium, who came up with the highly original line: 'If you come and see my shop, I'll show you my synagogue.' In a country where the Jewish community has dwindled to a few hundred this was an offer not to be refused.
Until the foundation of the modern Israeli state there was a thriving Jewish community in Aleppo and the rest of Syria. Early Christianity, the most successful Jewish sect of all, made its first tentative moves towards the Gentile in cities that are now in Syria. It is easy to forget that Damascus and Jerusalem are equidistant from the Sea of Galilee and that both were under Roman rule during that early Christian period.
There are churches everywhere in Aleppo and Damascus, and in Syria Christianity is recognised as the country's second religion. The Jews, however, have been systematically driven out, but, here and there, synagogues remain.
Mouffak's synagogue was around the corner from his shop selling 'objets d'art' under the shadow of the citadel. He had been given the key by the former owners before they fled the country. A silent courtyard with a single tree in the centre was surrounded by shaded walkways. Above the building was a tower with a wooden gallery like a squat mini- minaret. For all the world it looked like a small, primitive mosque, but Mouffak took me to the far wall, and there, sure enough, was a short prayer carved in Hebrew.
It is now accepted by some scholars of Islamic architecture that the basic design of the mosque is itself a hybrid: half church, half synagogue, and here, deserted in the middle of Aleppo, is proof of the umbilical link between Judaism and Islam in the form of its holiest buildings.
In the national museum in Damascus, there is further evidence of this link. Just after the First World War, a British soldier chanced on the almost fully preserved remains of a second-century synagogue at Dura Europos near the River Euphrates in the eastern desert. This extraordinary building has been transferred in its entirety to the museum, an ironic symbol of the religious diversity of the past.
On the walls of the synagogue are painted scenes from the Bible, lovingly executed in bright reds and yellows. The binding of Isaac, Moses and the basket and the story of Esther are all there, as well as one scene apparently from the life of Christ, suggesting that the synagogue could even have been used by an early Judaeo-Christian sect.
It is a strange exhibit at the heart of Syria's main state museum, and another reminder of the tragic legacy of the Assad regime.
Such reminders are everywhere you go in Syria. One example is carried in the pockets of every one of the country's citizens. The Syrian £50 note bears the picture of a medieval wooden water wheel from the city of Hama, in the centre of the country. It is one of 17 'norias' from the Mamluk and Ottoman periods that still draw water from the River Orontes to irrigate the fields around Hama.
But for anyone who knows a little of Syria's recent history there is something sinister about having these wheels on what is probably the country's widest circulation banknote, which is worth about 70 pence, the price of a bottle of the local beer. In 1982 Assad sent his troops into Hama, stronghold of the opposition Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood. They bombarded the city for a week, razing some quarters to the ground. Up to 40,000 people are estimated to have died in the slaughter that followed. Most had no connection with the Islamists.
As our coach passed Hama, Mohammed, our Ministry of Tourism guide, gave the government line: 'We used to have a problem with fundamentalists in Syria. Now we don't have a problem.'
The Roman ruins at Palmyra pose a similar difficulty. A three-hour coach ride brings you to this oasis in the middle of the desert, which was once a key staging post for caravans travelling to and from the Mediterranean. The city is dominated by the gargantuan temple of Baal, the great pagan god that pre-dated and, here, survived the monotheistic revolution. Like Hama, Palmyra is used by the regime as a symbol of Syria's links with the past and, as such, a guarantee of its legitimacy. The ruins are therefore often used as the backdrop to music festivals marking national holidays and beamed to every living room in the land.
Palmyra, isolated in the desert, is also the site of Syria's most notorious high security prison, where opponents of the regime are left to rot awaiting execution.
In one shameful episode after one of the regular attempts on Assad's life, the dictator ordered troops into the prison, where they opened fire on the unarmed, helpless Islamists inside.
Syria is a fascinating country, but it has been run for 30 years by a shockingly brutal regime, which has killed and imprisoned thousands of its people to maintain a tiny élite in power. President Bashar may be a reformer, but he is still dependent on senior members of the tiny Shia Alawi sect to maintain his rule. It would be hypocritical to counsel against visiting Syria, which has some of the most extraordinary - and, as yet, largely unspoilt - tourist attractions in the Middle East. Every now and again, though, somewhere like Hama reminds you that it is ruled by one of the most oppressive regimes on earth.
Getting there
Martin Bright flew with British Mediterranean Airways. Prices from £460. Tel: 0845 77 333 77. British Mediterranean also flies to Damascus five times per week. He stayed with Cham Palace Hotels in Damascus, Palmyra and Aleppo 00 963 11 223 23 00, fax: 00 963 11 222 61 78. The tour was organised by Sanadiki Travel Services (00 963 11 223 9800, fax: 00 963 11 224 5207).
