Umayyad Mosque
The Grand Mosque of Damascus, also known as the Umayyad Mosque, is one of the largest, oldest, and holiest mosques in the world.
The spot where the mosque now stands was a temple of Hadad in the Aramaean era. The Aramaean presence was attested by the discovery of a basalt orthostat depicting a sphinx, excavated in the north-east corner of mosque. The mosque was later temple of Jupiter in the Roman era, then a Christian church in the Byzantine era.
Initially, the Muslim conquest of 636 did not affect it, as the building was shared by Muslim and Christian worshippers. It remained a church although the Muslims built a mud brick structure against the southern wall so that they could pray. Under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, however, the church was demolished and the current mosque built in its place; an indemnity was paid to the Christians in compensation.
The new mosque was the most impressive in the Islamic world at the time, and the interior walls were covered with fine mosaics, considered to depict paradise, or possibly the Ghouta which tradition holds so impressed Muhammad that he declined to enter it, preferring to taste paradise in the afterlife.
The mosque holds a shrine which is said to contain the head of John the Baptist. The head was supposedly found during the excavations for the building of the mosque. The tomb of Saladin stands in a small garden adjoining the north wall of the mosque, in a sarcophagus paid for by the German emperor Wilhelm II.
