Umayyad Mosque — mosque
Image by SLPix from Pixabay

Umayyad Mosque

  • 2 min read
  • 33.511° N 36.307° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • About 12,000 labourers built the mosque, among them Coptic, Persian, Indian, Greek and North African craftsmen.
  • To pay for it, the 45,000-strong army of Damascus is recorded as having a quarter of its pay withheld for nine years.
  • The compound measures about 97 by 156 metres, and its prayer hall alone runs 136 metres long.
  • The Dome of the Eagle over the prayer hall rises to about 36 metres.
  • The Barada panel in the western portico, the largest surviving stretch of the original mosaics, measures about 34.5 by 7.3 metres.
  • By the early 10th century a monumental water clock stood at the western entrance, which is why it is still called Bab al-Sa'a, the Gate of the Hour.
  • A second water clock was built outside the eastern gate under Nur ad-Din in the 12th century by an engineer known as al-Sa'ati, "the clockmaker".
  • A spiral staircase of 160 stone steps climbs the Minaret of the Bride to the muezzin's gallery.
  • The traveller Ibn Jubayr, visiting in 1184, described the mihrab as lined with tiny arcades inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
  • In Ottoman times the mosque's religious endowment employed 596 people.

Why it is worth it

The Umayyad Mosque, the Great Mosque of Damascus, stands in the old city on a site that has been holy for about three thousand years. The Arameans built a temple here to the storm god Hadad; the Romans enlarged it into a vast sanctuary of Jupiter, whose inner enclosure walls still form the outer walls of the mosque; and at the end of the fourth century it became a cathedral. After the Muslim conquest of 634 the building was shared for decades, until the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I, whose dynasty had made Damascus the capital of the caliphate, took over the whole site after 705 and built the mosque over the following years, compensating the Christians with other churches in the city.

Al-Walid's mosque was new in every way. Instead of the plain pillared halls of earlier mosques, it had a prayer hall of three long aisles on Corinthian columns, cut across by a high transept leading to one of the first concave mihrabs. A vast courtyard surrounded by arcades fills the northern part of the complex. The walls were clad in marble panelling and covered with gold-ground mosaics over perhaps 4,000 square metres, likely the largest area of gold mosaic in the world at the time. The best preserved survive around the courtyard: landscapes of rivers, trees and palaces without a single human figure, which have been read as a picture of paradise or of the cities of the world. On eight Roman columns in the courtyard stands the octagonal Dome of the Treasury, itself covered in mosaic.

Much was lost to fire, in 1069, when Timur burned the city in 1401, and in 1893, but the mosque was rebuilt each time. The central Dome of the Eagle was rebuilt in stone after the last fire. Three minarets rise above the walls: the Minaret of the Bride on the north side, the oldest, partly Abbasid; the Mamluk Minaret of Qaitbay from 1488; and the tall Minaret of Isa, around 77 metres, on which Islamic tradition holds that Jesus will descend at the end of time. Inside the prayer hall a marble shrine is venerated by Muslims and Christians alike as the resting place of the head of John the Baptist, and in 2001 John Paul II came to pray there, the first pope to visit a mosque.

Getting there

The mosque is in the heart of the walled old city of Damascus, about 1.4 km from the modern centre. Damascus International Airport (DAM) is about 22 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Syria 9The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria 6The Most Beautiful Medieval Mosques 12The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Mosques 14The Most Beautiful Mosques 61The Most Beautiful Medieval Sacred Places 123The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places 179The Most Beautiful Medieval Places 204The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus, located in the old city of Damascus, the capital of Syria, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. Its religious importance stems from the eschatological reports concerning the mosque and historic events associated with it. Christian and Muslim tradition alike consider it the burial place of John the Baptist's head, a tradition originating in the 6th century. Two shrines inside the premises commemorate the Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali, whose martyrdom is frequently compared to that of John the Baptist. It is considered to be the oldest mosque still in use in its original form.

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33.51139, 36.30667per Wikidata