The Great Mosque of Damascus

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.