Stretching on either side of the road leading to the regions south of Damascus, the suburb of Mīdān owes its development in large part to the passage of the caravan of pilgrimages to the Holy Places of La Mekke and Medina and to the marketing of cereals from Ḥawrān and Biqā '. From the Mamluk era, several urban cores appeared in this peripheral space of Damascus; their growth, as well as the creation of housing estates and the multiplication of wheat warehouses along the road will participate, in the Ottoman era, in the constitution of the urban fabric of a large suburb. Through the chronicles, this one appears as the den of the local janissaries who, throughout this period, will oppose, in numerous and bloody conflicts, the imperial janissaries, installed in the citadel and the districts which are close to it . Analysis of the documents kept in the archives of the city's courts (acts of inheritance, real estate transactions, acts of purchase and rental in rural areas, acknowledgments of debts, etc.) completes the information drawn from these chronicles; it makes it possible to apprehend the |