Scholars
the Umayyad Mosque
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus: the Umayyad era''s greatest mosque, built by al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik in 715 on the site of a Roman temple and the church of John the Baptist. Its golden glass mosaics picture paradise — without faces — beside a wide prayer hall and open courtyard, all in Kufic script. It burned repeatedly and was rebuilt, and it still holds the grave of John the Baptist shared by Muslims and Christians alike. It stayed the model of the early Islamic mosque: square minaret, dome, portico and gatherer of the Old City. In its court three civilizations stand together: a Roman temple beneath, John the Baptist's church before, al-Walid's mosque above — all of Damascus's history in one building; and its old fourth mihrab still witnesses the first qibla before the change. Those golden mosaics, picturing rivers and trees and palaces with no human face, are the greatest survival of Umayyad art — the mosque is museum and prayer-place at once.