The Great Mosque of Hama

Hama’s oldest place of worship, and the spot where the city’s layers show in a single courtyard. The ground held a Roman temple in the 3rd century. Around the 6th it became a church, and in the first centuries of Islam a mosque — the same story as the great mosques of Damascus and Aleppo, at a smaller scale. In 1982 it was almost completely destroyed along with the historic centre of Hama; the rebuilding, led by the antiquities department, was complete by 2001. What you see today is largely a reconstruction, and the building does not hide it.

Getting there

In the west of the old town, a street back from the Orontes. From the Azm Palace it is a 900-metre walk west along the river; the al-Muhammadiyah noria stands 400 metres further west. It is the natural stop on the norias walk.

How long it takes

Half an hour covers the courtyard, the arcades and both minarets. If you arrive at prayer time, wait in the courtyard and enter the prayer hall once it empties.

What you see

An arcaded courtyard, a domed prayer hall and two minarets from two different ages: the square one dated 1124, patterned in black and white stone; the octagonal one Mamluk work of 1427. In the middle of the courtyard stands the domed treasury pavilion (bayt al-mal) raised on antique columns — the same tradition as the one in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus. In the walls and over the doors you can pick out carved stones reused from Roman and Byzantine buildings.

Do not miss

The lintel above the main door. The stone, carved with vine scrolls and rosettes, is reused from the pre-Islamic building — the whole story of the mosque reads in that single stone.