History
Ma'arat al-Nu'man developed as a major caravan stop on the north-south corridor between Aleppo and Damascus and later became an Arab stronghold on the eastern side of the Orontes valley opposite the western string of Crusader castles. The mosque signified a rapidly growing site of political and geographical importance. All that remains of the mosque today is the square minaret that bears a close resemblance -in form and ornamentation- to the minaret of the Great Mosque of Aleppo. The architect Hassan Ben Mukri al-Sarman, built the mosque in Ma'arat al-Nu'man to rival the Great Mosque in Aleppo. In 1099, however, during the Crusader siege of Ma'arat al-Nu'man a massacre of 20,000 of its residents severely diminished the town's aspirations of further development.
Read more about this topic: Great Mosque Of Maarrat Al-Numan
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)