The Umayyad Mosque: A Dialogue of Centuries and the Trial of Stone Before Time

On a night of an incomplete moon a summons sealed in black wax arrives, and the Great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, speaking in its own voice, stands trial before Time, who wants its oldest name and not the one it carries today. Witnesses follow the centuries: a Roman who believed his columns would last because he would, the church linked to John the Baptist, known in Islam as Yahya, whose shrine still draws Muslims and Christians into a shared silence, the Muslim entry into Damascus, and al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, accused of trying to make stone compete with time, with the great workshop of masons and mosaicists he set in motion. The mosaics refuse to be called decoration and call themselves captured light, the courtyard, minaret, gate and mihrab testify, the name of Jerusalem silences the court, Saladin says the grave does not speak, and Fire enters uninvited to recall the nights it burned the mosque, before and after Timur's smoke, while the builders always return. Scholars such as Ibn Asakir, the travelers Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta, a poet, an architect with a ruler, an unknown worshipper, a mother who prays in the courtroom, a child and even artificial intelligence take the stand, and the mosque turns to put architects on trial, leaving them its counsel to understand what lies deeper than the arch and the mosaic. After Damascus answers that her children running in the streets prove she is alive, the mosque accepts its verdict, confesses that it is not eternal, and ends on the words that God remains and everything else passes.