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| The southwest corner of the Mosque of Damascus, the earliest work found |
The following text is an excerpt from Phené Spiers' magnum opus "Architecture East and West" pp 223-225:
The earliest building on the site is the porticus, which now forms the western enclosure wall of the mosque and its precincts, 314 feet long, with returns 34 feet deep on the north and south sides. With the exception of a break (1) of about 35 feet in the centre of west wall, filled with the triple archway built by the Khalif al Walid, it still remains more or less intact, except that the architrave and cornice only are preserved under the superstructure of the south-west minaret. Beyond the fact that it is pre-Roman, and belongs to that type of Syro-Greek work which is found throughout Palestine, it is impossible to fix a date for it, and we have assumed that it may have been erected by Antiochus Cyzicenus (2), because he seems to have been the first of the Seleucidae to make Damascus his capital, and is likely, therefore, to have carried out these important works there, especially as his brother Grypus was exerting himself to make his capital Antioch a rival town. The wall surface of this porticus is decorated or broken up with pilasters, 34 feet 10 inches high, 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches wide, projecting from 7 inches to 9 inches, and carried on a plain plinth which projects 6 inches in front of pilaster, the inter-spaces averaging 11 feet 3 inches.
1. A reference to the west entrance of the Omayyad Mosque known as Bab al-Barid.
2. Antiochus IX (reign 116-96 BC).
Phené Spiers. Architecture East and West 1905.
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