The courtyard of Maktab Anbar, Syria’s first high school, when it was still a private residence in the 1880s. The house, which became a school in 1887, was originally constructed and occupied by a rich Damascene Jew named Yusuf Anbar in 1867. Elizabeth Burton, the wife of the British Consul in Damascus until 1872, visited the glorious mansion and remarked: “Khawaja Anbar is also building a palace. The fashionable luxury is rich but too rich, however, no one can find fault with Khawaja Anbar’s idea of comfort. He has attached to his house a private synagogue and Turkish bath.”

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