nor higher than it, among all the edifices known in the world. It possessed two leaves (1) of yellow brass, studded with protruding nails of the same metal—one of the marvels of creation and among the foremost beauties and landmarks of Damascus, wrought to perfection. The Arabs have celebrated it in their poetry, and people have woven it into their proverbial sayings (2).
The gate is attributed to a king called JAYRŪN ibn Saʿd (3) ibn ʿĀd ibn ʿAwṣ ibn Adām ibn Sām ibn Noah. He is said to have built it, and its construction predates Abraham (peace be upon him); indeed, it is earlier than the peoples of Thamūd and Hūd as well, as Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir states in his History and others corroborate. A mighty fortress and a lofty palace once rose above it.
Another view maintains that the name derives from the rebel jinn who built it for Solomon (peace be upon him), that jinni also being called Jayrūn, but the first opinion is the clearer and more widespread. According to that view, the gate has thus stood for nearly five thousand years.
Its downfall did not come of itself but by hostile hands, after it was seized by a tongue of fire that reached it from a blaze which broke out on the morning of Monday, the sixteenth of Ṣafar, 753 AH. The Mosque Administration rushed to the scene, dismantled its structure, and shattered its framework (4), stripping away its copper skin from the body of pinewood—as though the craftsman had only just finished it that very day. I myself watched axes hacking at it, hardly making headway except with great effort. Exalted is He who created the men who first built it, and who then decreed that the people of this age could demolish it after such long centuries and so many nations had passed. Yet every term has a fixed appointment, and there is no god but the Lord of all servants.
Statement on the antiquity of this gate: its age exceeds four thousand years and indeed approaches five. Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir (6) relates at the beginning of his History, in the chapter on the founding of Damascus, with his chain of transmission from the judge Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah (7) al-Batlahī (8), who ruled there in earlier times—and that judge was among the students of Abū ʿAmr (9) al-Awzāʿī—who said: