Jerash Umayyad Mosque

Mosque Name: Jerash Umayyad Mosque

Country: Jordan

City: Jerash

Year of construction (AH): 105

Year of construction (AD): 725

GPS: 32°16’44.96”N 35°53’28.71”E

Gibson Classification:: Petra

Rebuilt facing Mecca: Never

For a Link to the Qibla Tool Click Here

Description:

Excavations have revealed that this mosque was constructed by making use of building materials from the earlier Roman remains and architectural features of a Roman villa which once stood in its place. Not much remains of this mosque. There is some ground level pavement, bits of the first course of the columned inner courtyard, a niche still standing in situ around 1.5 m high, and some column drums which survived the earthquake in 749 AD. (Zayadine, 2000) This mosque faces Petra within 5.02° error. It is not aligned to the surrounding Roman road system, but has its own particular Qibla.

The date we have chosen is taken from: “FROM BATHHOUSE TO CONGREGATIONAL MOSQUE: FURTHER DISCOVERIES ON THE URBAN HISTORY OF ISLAMIC JARASH, Louise Blanke, Kristoffer Damgaard, Ian Simpson and Alan Walmsley, ANNUAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES OF JORDAN, Volume 51, 2007, page 196 “As, again, these, coins originate from very secure contexts, the construction of the mosque must post-date ca. 720. This agrees with the date already proposed for the foundation of the mosque some time in the reign of the caliph Hisham ibn Abd aI-Malik (1051724-12517 43) based on architectural comparisons (Walmsley and Damgaard 2005).“

Specifically dates relied on stratigraphy and parallels, as well as a coin in fill under hte foor (50-620) and two coins in parts of the bathhouse that predate the mosque (700-720).

The mosque is 44.5 x 38.9 meters.

It has a semicircular mihrab.

There may have been a second mosque built on this spot: 749-900 CE. There is a possible destruction layer from an earthquake in 749 CE.

Key to Image left: Detailed plan of surviving features of the mosque’s east wall in Phase 2, showing: ‎(1)‎ section of Jarash’s axial street, ‎(2)‎ line of a revetment wall for a platform (ziyādah) between the street and the mosque, ‎(3)‎ minaret foundations, ‎(4)‎ room postdating the minaret, ‎(5)‎ threshold of doorway into the room, ‎(6)‎ partially preserved semi-circular staircase into courtyard of mosque, built over a filled-in cutting for the northernmost shop wall, ‎(7)‎ line of five shops with internal bins built over an earlier mosaic (m) pavement, ‎(8)‎ room with stone paving and ‎a doorway (9)‎ into the east portico

Credit: Hugh Barnes and the Danish-Jordanian Islamic Jarash Project, modified by Alan Walmsley

References for Main Mosque:

Walmsley, Alan, 2018. “Urbanism at Islamic Jerash: New Readings from Archaeology and History”, in: Achim Lichtenberger and Rubina Raja (eds), The Archaeology and History of Jerash: 110 Years of Excavations, Turnhout: Brepols, 241-256.

Barnes, Hugh, Blanke, Louise, Damgaard, Kristoffer, Simpson, Ian, Low Sørensen, Mette, and Alan Walmsley, 2006. “From ‘Guard House’ to Congregational Mosque: Recent Discoveries on the Urban History of Islamic Jarash”, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 50: 285-314. http://publication.doa.gov.jo/Publications/ViewChapterPublic/1723

Blanke, Louise, Damgaard, Kristoffer, Simpson, Ian, and Alan Walmsley, 2007. “From Bathhouse to Congregational Mosque: Further Discoveries on the Urban History of Islamic Jarash”, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 51: 177-197. http://publication.doa.gov.jo/Publications/ViewChapterPublic/1665

Walmsley, Alan, and Damgaard, Kristoffer, 2005. “The Umayyad Congregational Mosque of Jarash in Jordan and its Relationship to Early Mosques”, Antiquity 79(304): 362-378. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/umayyad-congregational-mosque-of-jarash-in-jordan-and-its-relationship-to-early-mosques/9D853DAD1D85C9C7DA7B43DDDF9BDD22

Damgaard, Kristoffer, 2011. “Sheltering the Faithful: Visualising the Umayyad Mosque in Jarash”, ARAM 23: 191-210.

References for second Mosque:

Rattenborg, Rune, and Blanke, Louise, 2017. “Jarash in the Islamic Ages (c. 700–1200 CE): a critical review”, Levant 49(3): 312-332.

Walmsley, Alan, 2018. “Urbanism at Islamic Jerash: New Readings from Archaeology and History”, in: Achim Lichtenberger and Rubina Raja (eds), The Archaeology and History of Jerash: 110 Years of Excavations, Turnhout: Brepols, 241-256.

Also see:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/apaame/4908317734/in/album-72157623048597356/