The Building of the Great Mosque of Damascus

An old walled city in a great green oasis (the Ghuta) at the foot of bare grey mountains (Jabal Qasiyun rising to the north). The river Barada threads through the city. The plan of the old city is a clear Roman grid, with a long colonnaded straight street (the Via Recta) running east-west.

At the heart of the city, an enormous rectangular precinct, formerly the temenos of the Roman temple of Jupiter and then the Byzantine cathedral of St John the Baptist. The four massive Roman corner towers and the southern wall of dressed limestone still stand. Within the walls, a vast new construction is under way: the great congregational mosque (al-jami' al-kabir) commissioned by the Caliph al-Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malik (rahimahu Allah).

The plan is unprecedented in scale for an Islamic congregational mosque: a vast open courtyard (sahn) to the north, surrounded on three sides by arcaded riwaqs on marble columns; to the south, the prayer hall, three long aisles parallel to the qibla wall, cut by a tall transept leading to a great central dome, the Qubbat al-Nasr, over the mihrab. The form sets the template for the great congregational mosque of the Sunni world for the next thousand years.

The walls of the prayer hall are being covered in a great programme of glass-mosaic fusayfusa', the most ambitious mosaic programme of the Islamic world to date: rivers, trees, palaces, the cities of the world in green and gold against deep blue, executed by Greek mosaicists working under Umayyad supervision. The mosaic programme is non-figural, no human or animal figures, in keeping with the Sunni position on representation in places of worship.

The construction was commissioned by the Caliph al-Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malik (rahimahu Allah) in 87 AH / 706 CE and completed around 96 AH / 715 CE. The Caliph is recorded by Ibn 'Asakir as having said: 'The people of Damascus boast of four things over the rest of the world; let us give them a fifth that they may boast of forever', the four being their air, their water, their fruit, and their baths; the fifth, this mosque.

The construction is a public affirmation of Sunni Islam as the religion of the realm. The earlier shared use of the precinct with the Christians is recorded in Sunni sources (al-Baladhuri) as having been resolved by purchase and compensation; the Christian church within the precinct was demolished only after agreement with the Christian community of Damascus.

The light is the high clear light of late spring in inland Syria. Beyond the precinct, the courses of the old Roman city stretch east and west, and to the north the bare grey shoulder of Jabal Qasiyun rises above the Ghuta plain.

The construction of the Umayyad mosque is preserved in the Sunni historical and topographical record (Ibn 'Asakir's Tarikh Madinat Dimashq, al-Baladhuri's Futuh al-Buldan, al-Maqdisi/al-Muqaddasi's Ahsan al-Taqasim, al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir). The architectural form is preserved in the standing fabric, partially restored after the great fire of 1893, and analysed by K.A.C. Creswell.

al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan (9th c.): Early Sunni geographical-conquest history. Preserves the early history of the precinct under Muslim rule, the shared use with the Christians from 14 AH (635 CE), the location of the original mosque, and the later acquisition under al-Walid (rahimahu Allah).

al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-al-Muluk (early 10th c.): Cross-reference for the dating of the construction in the reign of al-Walid (rahimahu Allah) and the political context of the Umayyad caliphate at its height.

Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya (14th c.): Standard Sunni history. Synthesises the construction with the broader account of the reign of al-Walid (rahimahu Allah).