Why is John the Baptist's Head in a Mosque in Syria?

The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus or formerly the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist, located in the old city of Damascus, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. It is considered by some Muslims to be the fourth-holiest place in Islam.

After the Arab conquest of Damascus in 634, the mosque was built on the site of a Christian basilica dedicated to John the Baptist (Yahya). The mosque holds a shrine which today may still contain the head of John the Baptist, honored as a prophet by both Christians and Muslims alike, and is believed to be the place where Isa (Jesus) will return at the End of Days. The tomb of Saladin stands in a small garden adjoining the north wall of the mosque.

during the Iron Age. The Arameans of western Syria followed the cult of Hadad-Ramman, the god of thunderstorms and rain, and erected a temple dedicated to him at the site of the present-day Umayyad Mosque.

when the Romans conquered Damascus in 64 CE they assimilated Hadad with their own god of thunder, Jupiter.[   The Roman temple, which later became the center of the Imperial cult of Jupiter, was intended to serve as a response to the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem. Instead of being dedicated to one god, the Roman temple combined (interpretatio graeca) all of the gods affiliated with heaven that were worshipped in the region.

Towards the end of the 4th century, in 391, the Temple of Jupiter was converted into the Cathedral of Saint John by the Christian emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395). During its transformation into a Christian cathedral it was not immediately dedicated to John the Baptist; this was a later association, which came about in the 6th century. Legend had it that Saint John's head was buried there.[11] It served as the seat of the Bishop of Damascus, who ranked second within the Patriarchate of Antioch after the patriarch himself.

Damascus was besieged and captured by Muslim Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid in 634. Decades later, the Islamic Caliphate came under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, which chose Damascus to be the administrative capital of the Muslim world. The sixth Umayyad caliph, al-Walid I (r. 705–715), commissioned the construction of a mosque on the site of the Byzantine cathedral in 706.[13] Prior to this, the cathedral was still in use by the local Christians, but a prayer room (musalla) for Muslims had been constructed on the southeastern part of the building. Al-Walid, who personally supervised the project, had most of the cathedral, including the musalla, demolished. The construction of the mosque completely altered the layout of the building. The new house of worship was meant to serve as a large congregational mosque for the citizens of Damascus and as a tribute to the city. In response to Christian protest at the move, al-Walid ordered all the other confiscated churches in the city to be returned to the Christians as compensation. The mosque was completed in 715.

According to 10th-century Persian historian Ibn al-Faqih, somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 dinars were spent on the project. Coptic craftsmen as well as Persian, Indian, Greek and Moroccan laborers provided the bulk of the labor force which consisted of 12,000 people.  Ibn al-Faqih also relays the story that during the construction of the mosque, workers found a cave-chapel which had a box containing the head of St. John the Baptist, or Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā in Islam. Upon learning of that and examining it, al-Walid I ordered the head buried under a specific pillar in the mosque that was later inlaid with marble.

The Umayyad Mosque underwent major restorations in 1929 during French Mandate rule over Syria and in 1954 and 1963 under the Syrian Republic.

In the 1980s and in the early 1990s, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad ordered a wide-scale renovation of the mosque.[58] The methods and concepts of al-Assad's restoration project were heavily criticized by UNESCO, but the general approach in Syria was that the mosque was more of a symbolic monument rather than a historical one and thus, its renovation could only enhance the mosque's symbolism.

In 2001 Pope John Paul II visited the mosque, primarily to visit the relics of John the Baptist. It was the first time a pope paid a visit to a mosque.

On March 15, 2011, the first significant protests related to the Syrian civil war, began at the Umayyad Mosque when 40–50 worshipers gathered outside the complex and chanted pro-democracy slogans. Syrian security forces swiftly quelled the protests and have since cordoned off the area during Friday prayers to prevent large-scale demonstrations.

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque}