The great mosque
of Damascus
Damascus, Syria
The Great
Mosque of Damascus is the first monumental work of architecture in Islamic
history; the building served as a central gathering point after Mecca to
consolidate the Muslims in their faith and conquest to rule the surrounding
territories under the Umayyad Caliphate.
The Umayyad mosque's religious significance was
reinforced by its renowned medieval manuscripts and ranking as one of the
wonders of the world due to is beauty and scale of construction.
The Umayyad
Mosque site has housed sacred buildings for thousands of years, in each
incarnation transformed to accommodate the faith of the time. When the project
began all remaining fragments on the site from Roman to Byzantine periods were
removed to accommodate a large innovative mosque planned according to Islamic
principles.
The Umayyad
Mosque plan articulated the rising political status of the Islamic world as a
major world power. Its majestic stature became an Islamic architectural
prototype for mosques being built in all the newly established territories.
Umayyad Mosque is one of the few early mosques in the world
to have maintained the same general structure and architectural features since
its initial construction in the early 8th-century and its Umayyad character has
not been significantly altered. Since its establishment, the mosque has served
as a model for congregational mosque architecture in Syria as well as globally.
Damascus is
believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and the
Umayyad Mosque stands on a site that has been considered sacred ground for at
least 3,000 years.
The Umayyad
Mosque in Damascus was accordingly a magnificent
structure. The work of thousands of craftsmen of Coptic, Persian,
Indian and Byzantine origin, the mosque complex included a prayer hall, a vast
courtyard and hundreds of rooms for visiting pilgrims. The layout was based on
the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina.
This mosque tends
to portray the principle of Tawhid more than any other one of the principles as
it follows the ideas of the mosque of the Prophet in Medina and the mosques stands
on a sight surrounded by the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world
which shows unity and unicty for the city.
