The Great Mosque at Damascus "The Great Mosque at Damascus, which was built by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I between 709 and 715, is the earliest surviving monumental mosque in the Muslim world. It was designed to be the place where the whole Mulsim community of the city could worship."
Exterior	Interior

"At Damascus, the capital of the Umayyad empire, an imperial mosque was constructed from 706 to 714/15 under al-Walid I that was a tour de force of early Islamic architecture. No expense was spared. The mosque consists of a court surrounded on three sides by a portico, while on the fourth (south) side the sanctuary is formed by three arcades set parallel to the south or qibla wall, intersected in the middle by a transept perpendicular to the qibla wall. The mosque was lavishly decorated with marble panelling and mosaics, and most of the columns were taken from older buildings. Although this view of the sanctualry gives a sense of the interior space, much of it was rebuilt following a fire in 1893."

Photos and captions are from The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World, edited by Francis Robinson (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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