The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam By Alain George

Abstract

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is an in-depth analysis of one of the main sacred buildings of the Islamic world. It focuses on the Umayyad phase of the building which, given its repercussions on the mosque foundation, is the reason Alain George devotes a good share of the volume to the pre-Islamic history of the site. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and an appendix section with some primary sources that contribute to a fuller appreciation of the mosque. The introduction and first chapter discuss the interest sparked by this religious building as reflected in works devoted to it. The fascination with it started very early as a now lost work about the mosque is attested as early as 900. For modern times the overview includes pivotal publications by Creswell1 and Sauvaget,2 The Great Mosque of Damascus by Barry Flood,3 and a few works produced by Syrian scholars such as Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Munajjid4 and Adnan Bounni.5 The first pages also state the main aims of the book, namely to disclose the process that led to the mosque’s foundation and to undress the structure of later accretions in order to reveal the Umayyad phase of the building. The chapter recounts the main events occurring in and around the mosque over the centuries—especially interesting are the contestation of Damascus between the Fatimids and the Seljuks, and George’s careful reconstruction of the fires and earthquakes that affected the mosque structure. The chapter also introduces some methodological notions that reappear throughout. The first is the notion of palimpsest, meaning a surface layer which retains some traces from previous (older) layers. The second is the extensive use of the rich photographic—and, to a lesser degree, pictorial—evidence of the mosque produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.