Early Phases of the Evolution of Islamic Architecture (Part Two)
The second category of the early architecture of Muslims, especially outside Madinah, was the one adopted completely from the local population that was not always Muslim. This applies, more than anything, to transforming churches and temples into mosques and sometimes even sharing them with the followers of other native religions. This Muslim interim architectural preference existed mainly in the established cities and settlements to which the Muslims came and where they eventually settled, like, for example, Damascus, Homs and Aleppo in Syria, Jerusalem in Palestine, and some Persian cities in Iraq.[1] K.A.C. Creswell went so far as to allege, baselessly though, that there is no reason for believing that any mosque was built as such in Syria until the time of the Umayyad caliph al-Walid b. Abd al-Malik or possibly his father Abd al-Malik b. Marwan.[2] The only thing that the Muslims had during that period of time were the churches which they had turned into mosques.