The Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front has won a symbolic victory over Assad’s forces in Alleppo. They have seized the historic Umayyad Mosque.
Rebels seized control of the Umayyad Mosque in Syria’s second city of Aleppo on Thursday after days of fierce clashes that damaged the historic building, a watchdog reported.
Regime troops were forced to withdraw at dawn, taking up positions in buildings around the landmark structure, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
I wonder what Obama has to say about al-Qaeda being decimated?
Tags: al Nusra Front, Aleppo, Syrian War, Umayyad Mosque
Umayyad mosque? I didn’t know an Umayyad mosque survived in Aleppo. Off to the internet I go!
… ‘k, back.
The site was the Cathedral of Saint Helena, also said to be the site of Zachariah the father of Saint John the Baptiser. Sulayman bin `Abd al-Malik saw what his brother al-Walid did to Saint John’s cathedral in Damascus around 706 AD, and got envious. So when Sulayman was caliph in 715 AD, he took over the Cathedral in Aleppo and turned it into a mosque.
The `Abbasids hated Syria, so when they took over in the 750s they stripped the Umayyad mosques of pretty much everything, excepting maybe those in Damascus and Jerusalem.
[Source: Finbarr Barry Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayad Visual Culture (Brill, 2001), 126, 217f.]
Add some renovations by Seljuks and Mamluks, and factor in the Mongols and what is in Aleppo now is not really an Umayyad construction anymore. But I guess the Umayyads get the credit for, um, burgling another big church.