Alain George. The Great Mosque of Damascus in Umayyad times: Towards a reconstruction

Alain George
Dr Alain George is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. His research, for which he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2010, encompasses several intersecting themes. He is currently preparing a book on Qur’anic manuscripts and religious books in The al- Sabah Collection. He is also working on a book about the Great Mosque of Damascus in which he seeks to retrace the background for its construction, its relation to the Christians in contemporary society and its complex meaning within the nascent civilisation of Islam.
The Great Mosque of Damascus in Umayyad times: Towards a reconstruction
The Great Mosque of Damascus is one of the major landmarks of Islamic architecture, and the earliest mosque still standing in something close to its original state, having been built less than a century after the Hijra. But as with any monument that has stood for so long, it has undergone numerous phases of destruction, decline, repair and rebuilding over the centuries. What, then, is really “Umayyad” about the mosque that we see today? What did the original building look like? This lecture will set to explore the above questions through the study of the extant monument and its confrontation with textual sources, whilst making use of new possibilities offered by 3D architectural modelling.