st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

1 8 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
contending parties were scandalised or edified by a
prayer that the Son of God would defend His servants,
and vindicate His truth." 1 All was in vain. The
impetuous Kaled, "the sword of God," repulsed a
night attack in which the Christians had put forth
their last energies ;
and as he forced an entrance at
the eastern gate, Abu Obeidah entered, by capitula
tion, at the western. The story that Kaled, and his
more temperate colleague the one bent on sacking
the conquered city, the other prepared to deal merci
fully with it met in the great church of St. John the
Baptist is now discredited. 2 But there is no doubt
that from this point the partition of Damascus began;
the share of the Arabian conquerors gradually extend
ing, at the expense of their Christian subjects. The
metropolitan church itself, the venerable structure
that had been restored more than two centuries
before by Arcadius, and whose bishop had counted
fifteen dioceses under his sway, was divided for a
time between the victors and the vanquished. The
former took the eastern end ;
the latter had left to
them the western, an emblem of their setting glories.
Little more than seventy years after. Walid I., the
sixth caliph of the Omeiyades, revoked even this
concession, and extorted from the Christians the
share they had been permitted to retain in the church.
Originally a heathen temple, it passed once more to
a worship other than Christian. It is now the Mosque
of the Omeiyades, and near it is the tomb of the
great Saladin. The fate of the cathedral church is a
" 1
Decline and Fall,"
ch. li.
2 Porter "Five Years in Damascus," p. 72.