|
DAMASCUS: Thought by many historians to be the oldest continuously occupied city in the world, Damascus was the Persian capital of the Assyrian Empire from the 6th to the 4th century B.C.E. in what is present-day Syria. It fell without a fight to Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E. For the next several centuries the Seleucids and the Tigranes of Armenia held the city before being conquered by the Romans around 64 B.C.E. During the years of Roman rule, the city prospered as a commercial center noted for its woolen cloth and grain, converting to Christianity in the century after the death of Christ. It was on the road to Damascus that the Paul was dramatically converted to Christianity, thereafter spreading the Christian faith through much of the land. The city became the provincial capital of the Byzantine Empire after the division of the Rome Empire, and it eventually fell to the Muslim rulers of Arabia in 635. Most of the city’s residents converted to Islam, and the city became the seat of the Umayyad’s caliphate (successors to Muhammad) in 661. The Muslim rulers of Damascus constructed in 705 the Great Mosque of the Umayyads--the family from whom most of the early successors to Muhammad were drawn. This majestic building, erected on the site of the grand Christian church constructed originally by Emperor Theodosius (on the site of the Hittite Temple of Zeus), was Byzantine in design and built by 1200 workers from Constantinople. When the Abbasid caliphs defeated the Umayyad family around 750, they moved the capital of their Muslim empire to Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River in what is now Iraq. Over the next 1200 years the city of Damascus was occupied by a succession of rulers, most of whom became converts to the Islamic faith: Egyptians, Karmathians, Seljuk Turks, Saracens, the Mongols, and the Ottoman Turks. From the time of Muhammad to the occupation of Damascus by the British in the 20th century, travelers and merchants journeyed in great caravans to the bazaars of Damascus to trade their goods for the city’s brocades, woolen materials, beautiful furniture inlaid with mother of pearl, and exquisite swords and other metal wares. |