were in the ascendant; for their aim was that this temple should never be ruined nor deprived of worship, and that the adjoining residence, once erected, should never cease to be a seat of kingship and authority.

I say: As for the temple, it has indeed never lacked devotional rites.
Kaʿb al-Aḥbār said: “It will not be devoid of worship until the Hour is established.”

As for the royal residence—namely al-Khaḍrāʾ—Muʿāwiyah rebuilt it, but it was burned down in 461 AH, as we shall mention. It then disappeared, and its site has, for the most part, become the dwellings of the weakest and most contemptible of people down to our own day. Allah is the One whose help is sought.

The point is that the Greeks remained in the condition we have described in Damascus for exceedingly long periods—more than four thousand years—so much so that it is said the first to raise the four walls of this temple was Hud (may Allah have mercy upon him). Hud lived many ages before Abraham the Friend. Abraham (peace be upon him) later arrived north of Damascus at Barza ⦗1⦘, where he fought a group of his enemies, defeated them, and Allah granted him victory. His encampment for that battle was at Barza. The site associated with him there is plainly mentioned in the earlier scriptures and has been handed down, generation after generation, until our own time. Allah knows best.

Damascus was then a thriving, populous city inhabited by the Greeks, [and they were a multitude none can number but Allah]. They were adversaries of the Friend, and he debated them in several places about their worship of idols, the heavenly bodies, and so forth, as we have detailed in the Tafsīr and in the story of the Friend in this book of ours, al-Bidāyah wa-n-Nihāyah. All praise is due to Allah, and in Him we seek help.

In short, the Greeks continued to develop Damascus and to build colossal, astonishing structures there and in its dependencies—Hauran, the Beqaa, Baalbek, and elsewhere. Then, about three hundred years after the Messiah, the people of Syria embraced Christianity at the hand of the emperor Constantine son of Constantine. He founded in the Roman lands the renowned city that bears his name—Constantinople—and he codified laws for them, [for he, his people, and the majority of mankind at first were Greeks]. His Christian patriarchs fashioned for him an invented creed, compounded of the original Christian faith and elements of idol-worship. Under it they prayed facing east, lengthened the fast, made pork lawful, and taught their children what they call the “Great Trust”; in reality it is a great betrayal and a heinous, contemptible crime, though small in physical size. We have already spoken of this and clarified it.

That same emperor—after whom the Melkite sect of the Christians is named—built vast churches for them in Damascus and elsewhere; it is even said that he erected twelve thousand churches [and endowed them with abundant waqf revenues]. Among these are the Church of Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was built by his mother Helena the Khandaqaniyya, along with many others.