In the year that Alexander Pope, trying to be a Catholic in London, was exercising his enlightenment sensibilities in The Rape of the Lock, a poet in a very different convention was constructing some tight verses in Arabic about Rome.
The author was Jibra’il ibn Farhat ibn Mitr ibn Shahin al-Mashruqi ibn Ra‘d al-Hasruni al-Halabi al-Maruni, more conveniently known as Germanus Farhat (1670-1732), for the last seven years of his life Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo. Sahrata l-imani sarat, “Rome has become the rock of faith,” he declared in the poem inspired by his only visit to the city in 1711.

Farhat was a lexicographer as well as a poet, a founder of monastic communities and of a library in his see. Aleppo’s Cathedral of St Elijah was unroofed this century in shelling during the Syrian civil war, but last year was reopened. Outside stands, or sits in his episcopal chair, a statue of Farhat in Maronite headgear, the tabieh, which looks like a giant hazelnut whirl. Behind him a clock in the bell tower chimes Ave Maria on the quarters; I don’t much care for bells that play tunes, but I’m glad they have the chance. In the cathedral courtyard between orange trees survives, I hope, a statue of St Elijah himself, curly-bladed sword aloft, ready for smiting.