Temple, church, mosque
The site in the heart of Damascus has been sacred for three thousand years. An Aramaean temple of the storm god Hadad stood here, then a huge Roman temple of Jupiter, whose enclosure walls and gateways still frame the mosque. At the end of the fourth century the temple became a church dedicated to John the Baptist. When Damascus became the capital of the Umayyad caliphs in 661, the church stood in the middle of their city.
According to tradition, Christians and Muslims shared the site for some decades. Around 706 the caliph al-Walid I took over the whole enclosure, demolished the church and built a mosque that would express the power of the new empire, much as the Dome of the Rock had done in Jerusalem a few years earlier. The work took about ten years.
A plan copied across the Islamic world
The mosque reuses the rectangular Roman enclosure. Half of it is an open courtyard surrounded by arcades; the other half is the prayer hall, divided into three long aisles running parallel to the qibla wall, the wall facing Mecca. A taller central aisle, crossing the others at right angles, leads to the mihrab and is crowned by a dome. This arrangement, with its high transept, was imitated in many later mosques.
The corner towers of the Roman enclosure became early minarets. One of the later minarets is named after Jesus, who according to Islamic tradition will descend there at the end of time. In the courtyard a small domed building on columns, the treasury, once held the mosque’s funds.
Landscapes in gold
The walls of the courtyard and prayer hall were once covered with glass mosaics on a gold ground. They show riverside landscapes with palaces, houses, bridges and huge trees, but no people or animals. The best surviving section, the Barada panel in the western portico, is about 34.5 metres long and named after the river of Damascus. Scholars still debate what these landscapes mean: an image of paradise, of the cities of the empire, or both.
Most of the decoration was lost over the centuries. The mosque was damaged by fire several times, most severely in 1893, when the prayer hall burned. Part of the mosaics had been hidden under plaster in Ottoman times, and they were uncovered and restored in the twentieth century.
A saint inside a mosque
Inside the prayer hall stands a domed shrine said to contain the head of John the Baptist, a prophet in Islam as well, where he is called Yahya. Muslims and Christians alike come to pray there. In 2001 Pope John Paul II visited the shrine, the first pope to enter a mosque. Just outside the north wall is the mausoleum of Saladin, the twelfth-century sultan who fought the crusaders.
Recent years
The Ancient City of Damascus has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2013, because of the war in Syria. The mosque is open to worshippers and visitors. In May 2026 the United Arab Emirates announced that it would fund a restoration, mainly of heating, electrics, pipes, floors and mosaics; a Syrian official quoted by The National described the structure as sound but its services as old. It is one of the founding monuments of early Islamic art.
Where to see it
The mosque stands in the Old City of Damascus, at the end of the covered Souk al-Hamidiyya. Visitors usually enter through a separate entrance and must dress modestly; women are asked to cover their hair.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Ancient City of Damascus”.
- Google Arts & Culture, “The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus”.
- Ministère de la Culture (France), “La mosquée des Omeyyades”, the Barada panel.
- The National (15 May and 12 June 2026) on the restoration announced by the United Arab Emirates.
- F. B. Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Leiden, 2001).
