In the centre of the town lie the recent ruins of the great mosque which was formerly the church of Saint John of Damascus, contemporary with the Hagia Sophia and the basilicas of Constantine and famous for its marble columns and golden mosaics. It then became one of the holiest sanctuaries of Islam, the third most venerated after those of Mecca and Jerusalem.

One midday, seven or eight months before, a fire somehow began in its dried-out frame, and suddenly in just a few minutes everything went up in flames like fireworks. Then, as soon as the roof had caved in, the columns were

unexpectedly affected, each one worth the price of a whole town and taken by the builders from ancient temples. Suddenly unstable, they fell one against another and shattered irreparably on the paving stones.

Since then, everything has been left as it was, as they wait for the caliph's decision. But nobody nowadays has the means to rebuild such magnificent buildings. Moreover, it is the Islamic way to submit, bowing the head before seemingly fatal acts of destruction.

The mosque courtyard which still exists is as extensive as the square of a large town between its rows of white archways. Out of piety, people take their shoes off to enter, despite the fact that it is strewn with stones and debris. Even today there are numerous faithful prostrating themselves, their foreheads pressed against the ground.

In the part of the mosque which was the Umayyads’ sanctuary, however, no one comes to pray any longer because of the piles of debris and fallen columns. Here and there, the remains of mosaics shine, decorating those arches still standing; on the gold-coloured Byzantine foundations are some ugly palm trees and simple flower stalks. Thousands of tiny sparkling fragments of which the mosaics had been so patiently arranged cover the ground and piles of plaster and blackened boards are scattered about. You would think a hailstorm had passed through here, hailstones of green, porphyry and golden marble. With our friend the pasha, we enter the outbuildings spared by the fire. At the end of a very mysterious funerary pavilion containing a miraculous spring of water, we are shown the silver reliquary where the head of Husain, the prophet and martyr, is preserved.