Umayyad Mosque
— — a courtyard older than the calendars that count it.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the oldest and largest mosques in the world, built between 705 and 715 by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I on a site that had already served as a Roman temple to Jupiter and a Byzantine basilica of John the Baptist. The shrine in the prayer hall still holds, by tradition, the head of John. The courtyard is paved in stone that morning light catches differently every season. from the studio
Umayyad Mosque, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Umayyad Mosque, called in Arabic al-Jami' al-Umawi, stands at the centre of the old walled city of Damascus, Syria. It was commissioned by the sixth Umayyad caliph al-Walid I and built between 705 and 715 CE, on a site continuously sacred since the Iron Age — first as an Aramaean temple to the storm-god Hadad, then a Roman temple to Jupiter raised under Augustus, then the Byzantine cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. The mosque occupies roughly 157 by 100 metres within the old city's Roman-era street grid.
The outer walls follow the foundation of the earlier Roman temple precinct, much of whose ashlar masonry was reused. The three minarets are of different periods: the Minaret of the Bride on the northern wall, in its present form from the 12th century; the Minaret of Jesus on the south-eastern corner, rebuilt in 1340; and the Minaret of Qaitbay on the south-western corner, built by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay in 1488. Inside the prayer hall, a small green-domed shrine is identified by tradition as the resting place of the head of John the Baptist.
The courtyard, about 122 metres long, is paved in pale stone polished by centuries of barefoot circulation and catches the Damascus light through every hour of the day. The west portico carries a long surviving stretch of the original 8th-century gold mosaic — the Barada Panel — which depicts a paradise of trees and rivers and pavilions in glass tesserae against a gold ground, considered one of the great surviving works of Umayyad art. Morning is the quiet hour; the afternoon courtyard fills with families and the air keeps an even warmth.