Religious, Spiritual sights in Homs
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A
Khaled ibn al-Walid Mosque
Built as recently as the first decade of the 20th century, Homs' best-known monument, Khaled ibn al-Walid Mosque , is an attractive example of a Turkish-style mosque. The black-and-white Mamluk-style stone banding in the courtyard is particularly striking. Inside the prayer hall, over in one corner, is the domed mausoleum of Khaled ibn al-Walid, the military strategist and hero who conquered Syria for Islam in AD 636.
You can enter the mosque if dressed modestly. Women have to borrow a 'yishmak' (as they call the abeyya, or woman's cloak, here), cover their hair and also must enter through the small side door on the right to see the marble tomb. Do not enter during prayer…
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B
Church of the Girdle of Our Lady
From the Christian Quarter along Sharia Abi al-Hawl, continue due east, straight over the crossroad, until you see a small gateway topped by a cross - this leads through a grey stone wall to the Church of the Girdle of Our Lady . In 1953 the patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius Aphraim, declared a delicate strip of woven wool and silk, found in the church six months earlier, to be a girdle worn by the Virgin Mary.
The story is that it had survived intact since the ascension of Mary into heaven, preserved in one container or another in a church on this spot. The church is an attractive little grey-stone building with a red pantile roof, and is still an active centre for Syrian O…
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C
An-Nuri Mosque
A little way south of the roundabout at the eastern end of Sharia Shoukri al-Quwatli and tucked down a laneway is the unassuming 20th-century façade of the An-Nuri Mosque, which is actually much older than first appearances might suggest. Just north of the prayer hall, the mosque courtyard contains a curious long, low platform, and an ancient capital is embedded in the western end of the platform.
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