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Damascus

Syrian city, capital of the Umayyad caliphate (661-750 CE) and home of the Umayyad Mosque. Ibn Battuta records reaching Damascus on 9 Ramadan 726 and lodging at the Maliki madrasa known as al-Sharbashiyya, quoting Ibn Jubayr's naming it 'the paradise of the East'; he calls its congregational mosque the finest of the world's mosques in construction, noting that al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik undertook the building after the Byzantine king sent craftsmen The Encyclopaedia of Islam traces the city from the Bronze Age through Aramaean, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine rule to the Arab conquest of 14-15 AH (635-636 CE), then through Umayyad, Abbasid, Burid, Zengid, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman rule to the French mandate of 1920, describing the Great Mosque built by al-Walid I and the city's role as a centre of madrasas under Nur al-Din and the Ayyubids.

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Damascus