Umayyad Mosque

About

The Umayyad Mosque, in Arabic al-Jāmiʿ al-Umawī or the Great Mosque of Damascus, occupies the heart of the old walled city of the Syrian capital and ranks among the largest and oldest sanctuaries of Islam. It is regarded as the oldest mosque still in use in essentially its original form.

The site has been a house of worship since the Iron Age, when the Arameans raised here a temple to the rain god Hadad. Under the Hellenistic kings the precinct was rededicated to Zeus, and Roman rule expanded it into a vast Temple of Jupiter, whose outer walls still encompass the present mosque. Christian Byzantium converted the building into the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist under Emperor Theodosius I, and the head of the Baptist is venerated to this day in a marble shrine.

After the Muslim conquest of Damascus in 634, Christians and Muslims worshipped side by side within the precinct for several decades. In 705 the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I confiscated the cathedral for Muslim use, compensating the Christian community with other properties, and over the next nine years built the magnificent congregational mosque that has stood ever since.

The mosque was raised at vast expense by thousands of craftsmen from across the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. Its basilical plan with three parallel aisles and a perpendicular central nave, its concave mihrab and its sparkling Byzantine-style mosaics of paradise scenes set a model that mosque architecture would draw upon for centuries.

History

From an Aramean temple of Hadad through Hellenistic and Roman cult, then a Byzantine cathedral of John the Baptist, the precinct passed under Muslim sovereignty in 634 and was rebuilt as the Umayyad congregational mosque between 706 and 715. Two shrines within commemorate Imam Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet, whose martyrdom is often compared in Muslim devotional tradition to that of John the Baptist. Successive earthquakes, fires and the Mongol sack of 1260 damaged the mosque in stages, and careful restorations through Mamluk, Ottoman and modern times have preserved its character.

Significance

The Umayyad Mosque is among the supreme sanctuaries of Islam and a cornerstone of the early Islamic architectural heritage. Its veneration of the head of John the Baptist, its memory of Imam Husayn and its centuries as the principal congregational mosque of Damascus place it at the heart of the spiritual life of Syria and of Sunni and Shia traditions alike.