page_title: Umayyad Mosque
section_title: Abbasid and Fatimid era
hierarchical_section_title: Umayyad Mosque / History / Abbasid and Fatimid era
caption_attribution_description: Umayyad Mosque-Dome of the Treasury
context_page_description: The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus, located in the old city of Damascus, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. The mosque is also important in Islam because of its historical and eschatological reports and events associated with the mosque.
  After the Muslim conquest of Damascus in 634, the mosque was built on the site of a Christian basilica dedicated to John the Baptist, honored as a prophet by Christians and Muslims. A legend dating to the sixth century holds that the building contains the head of John the Baptist. Two shrines commemorating Husayn ibn Ali, whose martyrdom is frequently compared to that of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, exist within the building premises. The mosque is also believed by Muslims to be the place where Jesus will return at the End of Days. The mausoleum containing the tomb of Saladin stands in a small garden adjoining the north wall of the mosque.
context_section_description: Following the uprising that ended Umayyad rule in 750, the Abbasid dynasty came to power and moved the capital of the Caliphate to Baghdad. Apart from the attention given for strategic and commercial purposes, the Abbasids had no interest in Damascus. Thus, the Umayyad Mosque reportedly suffered under their rule, with little recorded building activity between the 8th and 10th centuries. However, the Abbasids did consider the mosque to be a major symbol of Islam's triumph, and thus it was spared the systematic eradication of the Umayyad legacy in the city. The Abbasid governor of Damascus, al-Fadl ibn Salih ibn Ali, built the so-called Dome of the Clock in the eastern section of the mosque in 780. Nine years later, he initiated the construction of the Dome of the Treasury with the purpose of housing the mosque's funds. The 9th-century Arab geographer, al-Muqaddasi, credited the Abbasids for building the northern minaret (Madhanat al-'Arous; "Minaret of the Bride") of the mosque in 831 during the reign of the caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833). This was accompanied by al-Ma'mun's removal and replacement of Umayyad inscriptions in the mosque.
  By the early 10th century, a monumental clock had been installed by the entrance in the western part of the southern wall of the mosque (Bāb al-Ziyāda.) This clock seems to have stopped functioning by the middle of the 12th century. Abbasid rule over Syria began crumbling during the early 10th century, and in the decades that followed, it came under the control of autonomous realms who were only nominally under Abbasid authority. The Fatimids of Egypt, who adhered to Shia Islam, conquered Damascus in 970, but few recorded improvements of the mosque were undertaken by the new rulers. The Umayyad Mosque's prestige allowed the residents of Damascus to establish the city as a center for Sunni intellectualism, enabling them to maintain relative independence from Fatimid religious authority. In 1069, large sections of the mosque, particularly the northern wall, were destroyed in a fire as a result of an uprising by the city's residents against the Fatimid's Berber army who were garrisoned there.
caption: The Dome of the Treasury was built in 789
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