The Great Mosque of Damascus
The Umayyad Mosque, also called the Great Mosque of Damascus, is one of the oldest mosques in the world. Constructed between 705 and 715 CE, upon it’s completion the Umayyad Caliph al-Walīd I proclaimed to his citizens: “People of Damascus, four things give you a marked superiority over the rest of the world: your climate, your water, your fruits and your baths. To these I add a fifth: this mosque.”
According to Britannica: “there have been religious buildings on this site for thousands of years, and the earliest known relics come from an Aramaean temple dating to about 3000 BCE. A 1st-century Hellenic temple to Jupiter was built during the Roman era, and a later church of St. John the Baptist was erected on its foundation. Some Syrio-Roman fragments remain in the structure, as does a shrine supposedly enclosing a relic honoured by Muslims as well as some Christians as the head of St. John the Baptist.”
In some of the following photos of the interior, you can see how Roman columns and their capitals have been re-used in the construction of the mosque.
When I was studying for my BA in Art History at the University of Edinburgh, I took a year-long course entitled Islam and Art, taught by Professor Robert Hillenbrand. Looking back, it was one of the most formative choices I made at university, as it opened up entirely new horizons for me, not only in the history of art but in my broader awareness of the world.
Professor Hillenbrand spoke with unforgettable passion about the places he had visited, painting vivid pictures of the Umayyad Mosque and describing, poetically, the lavish and highly sophisticated use of green and gold mosaics - seen primarily in the Treasury and the façade of the main entrance - to evoke heaven: imagined as verdant, green, and abundant in water and rivers, in deliberate contrast to the hot, dry landscape beyond its walls.
His passion for Islamic art, and his descriptions of sites like this that felt very distant to me at the time, had a profound impact. I can still recall it all with great fondness - and appreciation - more than twenty years later!
I wish I had taken more shots of the courtyard from different angles. I can’t quite recall why I didn’t but it’s possible that you weren’t allowed into the courtyard in 2023 thus reducing the types of shots I could take. When I retuned in 2025, you could walk around the courtyard but I wasn’t allowed to take my camera in!
