Arabic sources report that in 86/705, the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I went to the church inside the former Roman temenos in the old city of Damascus. He tried in vain to persuade Christian community leaders to sell him the edifice, following attempts made by his predecessors, Muʿawiya and ʿAbd al-Malik. Upset at their refusal, he summoned a worker to bring a pickax, climbed a ladder, and “began demolishing the walls with his own hand” (p. 64). Emboldened by the caliphal example, other Muslims joined in, eventually dismantling the church.
Regardless of the veracity of this anecdote, al-Walid I’s act of destruction was a decisive step in appropriating the sacred space at the heart of the city, soon followed by the construction of a monumental new mosque. Alain George aptly observes that the caliph in this way “enacted two fundamental assertions of power” (p. 186) with tremendous implications: “al-Walid’s destruction of the church and foundation of the Umayyad Mosque were the most significant erasure and reinscription on the site since Roman times—and the most seminal” (p. 69). Both acts were commemorated in a now-lost mosaic inscription of foundation, proclaiming that al-Walid ordered “the construction of this mosque and the destruction of the church which was in it” (p. 76). The destruction of the church was likewise celebrated by three virtuosi poets of the time, Jarir, al-Farazdaq, and al-Nabigha al-Shaybani, who composed odes to the new mosque.
George has produced an excellent book that investigates al-Walid’s decision to give the new faith a prominent position in the urban fabric of the Umayyad capital. Attentive to the history of this sacred site in the longue durée (long duration), George offers a sophisticated study of the “politics of destruction,” treated equally as important as the “politics of building” (Ch. 3 in particular). He meticulously studies not only the caliph’s initiative but also the history of the successive edifices that pre-dated the mosque, going back to the 1st-century CE Roman Temple of Jupiter, to highlight the multilayered history of “one of the oldest continuously used cultic sites in the world” (p. 43). He approaches the Umayyad mosque as an architectural palimpsest: just as manuscripts can be erased and reused, embedding earlier textual layers in their materiality—a process best exemplified by the Sanaa Qurʾan, which preserves the earliest drawings of an Umayyad mosque—so too successive architectural “instances” can be detected, revealing the multilayered history of the edifice. Choices made for earlier structures determined the future of the site, and the use of spolia constituted an essential element of the builders’ discourse.
George reconstructs the sacred topography of the Roman temple, and notably the precise footprint of its cella (inner chamber). George is at his best when discussing the intricate relationship between the cella and the church: he thoroughly weaves together narrative sources, poetry, and untapped archaeological evidence to unveil the technique used to demolish the cella. The fallen piece of a column, discovered during excavations that were never properly published (only a few photographs of which survive), might even be a direct witness to this act of erasure (pp. 63–67). Further architectural elements suggest that the cella was converted into a church, a view supported by other sites in the region. As George admits, his conclusions remain “speculative” (p. 67) in light of the fragmentary nature of the evidence, but his discussion is convincing.
Identifying the exact location of the church proves crucial, in turn, for situating the first mosque, attested under the caliphate of Muʿawiya. The conventional notion that this edifice was divided between Christians and the new conquerors must be revisited: George meticulously demonstrates that it is the sacred space of the temenos that was shared, rather than a single building. When entering the temenos from the south, one would find the church to the west and the primitive mosque to the east (pp. 57–62). This important discussion about sacred spaces could have been further enriched by Paul Wheatley’s book, The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago, 2001), especially in light of recent debates about the fluidity of religious identities in early Islamic times (for example, the works of F. M. Donner 2010 and M. P. Penn 2015)Footnote 1.
Clearly, this arrangement became less and less acceptable for the Umayyads. In a new position of strength after the Second Fitna (ca. 680-92 CE), ʿAbd al-Malik and then his son al-Walid were able to assert their power more clearly. This proclamation of Umayyad power was directed not only at the local Christian community but also at the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II (r. 685–695 and 705–711). The threat of the destruction of major Christian sites in Damascus and elsewhere (e.g., Gethsemane) convinced the Banu Mansur (an influential Christian family that played a leading role in the Umayyad administration) to seek help from the Byzantine emperor. Justinian II agreed to supply materials and craftsmen to support caliphal building projects to prevent the obliteration of more edifices, especially because the Umayyad military was now on the offensive. This outcome was celebrated by Jarir as a “crushing defeat for the Slit-nosed” emperor (v. 24, p. 216), a reference to Justinian II’s mutilations. Here again, George does a remarkable job untangling the local and global dimensions of the construction of the mosque.
Pursuing his palimpsestic approach, George shows that the church did not vanish with the construction of the mosque but became enshrined in the “fabric” of the new building (Ch. 4). George highlights that early Christian sources do not mention any relics of St. John the Baptist in Damascus, and he suggests that al-Walid’s “discovery” of these relics constitutes “part of a process of the sanctification of space through storytelling” (p. 108). Likewise, George forces us to reconsider the Bayt al-Mal (or qubbat al-khazna), located in the mosque’s courtyard. Specialists have long supposed that this structure was Abbasid, or perhaps an Umayyad building amended by the Abbasids. What previous scholars had missed, however, was that the eight pillars supporting the cupola of the treasury reveal the presence of an ancient baptistery, which determined the architecture of the Bayt al-Mal (pp. 112-115).
Many sources document the construction of the mosque itself, and George exploits this remarkable corpus to its fullest. One notable achievement of this book is its exhaustive analysis of the poetry composed by the three aforementioned cultural giants of the Umayyad age. His discussion centers around this poetry, especially the poem of al-Nabigha, arguably the only one composed after the completion of the mosque, thereby preserving the earliest memory of al-Walid’s masterpiece. Another welcome contribution is the outstanding translation of the three poems prepared by Nadia Jamil as an appendix. We also possess papyri from Aphrodito, in Middle Egypt, which give us a glimpse into the social history of the Umayyad monumental program. Half a dozen documents directly address the construction of the Damascene mosque and detail “requests for workers, maintenance stipends and, in one case, 47 litrae (about 15 to 20 kg) of chains” (pp. 77–78). This unique archive reveals the reach of the Umayyad empire and provides a sense of the “fiscal package” (p. 78) disbursed by the various regions to sustain Umayyad architectural projects. The cost of the Damascus mosque alone was astronomical, engulfing several years of Syrian fiscal revenues on top of the contributions of the other provinces of the empire. George also offers a comprehensive discussion of medieval Muslim geographers’ and travelers’ mentions of the mosque, underscoring the critical importance of Ibn ʿAsakir’s Taʾrikh Madinat Dimashq, which preserves some of the earliest textual memories of the building.
In addition to this rich textual corpus, George has assembled a magisterial photographic archive to unveil the complex architectural history of the edifice. In the absence of a systematic archaeological record, photographs offer a window into the evolving architecture of the mosque, especially prior to the major fire of 1893. George’s detective work in the photographic archive, as well as some Orientalist paintings, undergird the fascinating chapter, “towards a reconstruction of the Umayyad mosque” (Ch. 5). The history of the mosque does not merely include its construction but also the damage it has suffered over time, most notably by several earthquakes and fires. Unearthing the earliest layers of al-Walid’s mosque is therefore a formidable task. In a tour de force, George offers a profoundly original reading of the famous river mosaic, following the rhythms of Arabic poetry. Revisiting the long debate over the meaning of this mosaic, George makes the case for “the art of polysemy” rather than opposition: the mosaics could have simultaneously represented the vast territories of the Umayyad empire, the anticipated landscapes of paradise, and the “horizon of Judgement” (p. 209). This last apocalyptic dimension, previously ignored by modern scholarship, is corroborated by both the epigraphic program of the mosque and the poems celebrating it (pp. 206–207). Moreover, George concludes that the mosque was “a foil for the Qurʾan”: the majesty of its architecture and decorations “stood as a counterpart to the auditory experience” (p. 211) of the holy book, recited night and day by “readers who do not sleep” (al-Farazdaq, v. 20, p. 1).
By restoring the “experience of sight, sound, and smell” (p. 212) in al-Walid’s mosque and studying the history of the sacred site across the centuries, this lavishly illustrated volume does justice to the lines of Ibn al-Faqih: “One of the wonders of the Mosque of Damascus is that even if a man stayed there for a hundred years, he would ceaselessly discover new marvels” (p. 182).
