Ibn ʿAsākir said (1): I myself have seen that iron spit on the arches of the Maqṣalaṭ Church, which had been built atop the arches that stand today in the Great Market, near the soap-sellers and the perfumers. It was at that very spot that the armies of Islam gathered on the day Damascus was conquered: Abū ʿUbaydah entered from Bāb al-Jābiyah, Khālid from Bāb al-Sharqī, and Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān from the Lesser Bāb al-Jābiyah.

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Tamīmī said (2), on the authority of Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Muzanī (3): I heard a number of the senior shaykhs of Damascus say that in the roof of the mosque there are talismans fashioned by the sages in the ceiling adjoining the qiblah wall. Among them is a talisman against the ṣunūniyyāt—small birds that would otherwise enter and nest there, leaving their filth—so they never enter, nor does any crow. There is another talisman for mice, snakes, and scorpions; of these, people have seen nothing in the mosque except mice, and it is thought that the mice’s talisman has disappeared (4). There is also a talisman against spiders, so that they do not weave their webs in its corners, and dust and grime do not accumulate.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir added (5): I heard my grandfather, Abū al-Faḍl Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī, relate that before the fire he had observed in the mosque talismans that warded off every kind of insect, suspended from the ceiling above the linings on the side of al-Sabʿah. No insects were found in the mosque until it burned. When the mosque was burned—on the night of mid-Shaʿbān, after the ʿaṣr prayer, in the year 461 AH—the talismans were consumed as well.

There used to be many talismans in Damascus, and only one remains: the column in the ʿAlabiyyīn Market, on top of which is something like a large sphere. It is used for beasts of burden that suffer retention of urine; when an animal is led around the column three times, its bladder is relieved.

Our teacher, the eminent scholar Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him), used to say: “In truth, this is the grave of a defiant idolater who is buried there and is being punished; when the animal hears his screams it panics, and its retention is released. For the same reason people take their beasts to the graveyards of Jews and Christians when the animals are afflicted, and the animals are relieved—because they hear the voices of those who are being punished. Allah knows best.”

[Mention of the clocks upon its gate]

Qāḍī ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Zabr said (6): The southern gate of the mosque was called “the Gate of the Clocks” only because a set of clocks was installed there.