When Ibn Battutah visits Damascus, he focuses on a variety of aspects of the city, specifically the religious sites, activities, and people. He describes the main mosque in Damascus, called the Mosque of the Umayyads. He lists the history of the mosque, such as the architect and the history of its construction. He explains how the mosque was originally a church and how the Muslims negotiated and conquered to get the land. He continues by describing the architectural features like the measurements and details such as the fusaifisa. Ibn Battutah also mentions the Mosque of the Footprints, which is where Muslims believe Moses walked and left his footprints. Ibn Battutah also talks about the religious activities people did in Damascus while he was there. He mentions the Great Plague also known as the Black death and how the Muslim community fasted for three days to fight the plague. Members of all three religions, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, supplicated and were answered by God by having only two thousand die a day, as opposed from Cairo which had 24 thousand a day. Ibn Battutah praises how Damascus has a variety of charitable endowments in the city that help people in need like travelers and the poor. Beyond religious charities, Ibn Battutah talks about the religious academics who are active in Damascus. Ibn Battutah has multiple interactions with these academics, learning from them and observing their traditions.

Nearly all of Ibn Battutah’s observations about Damascus relate to religion. Ibn Battutah clearly cares deeply for the religious practices that occur in Damascus, recording his interactions and observations. This emphasis on religion demonstrates how important religion was to Ibn Battutah own life and culture. Some of Ibn Battutah’s emphasis on religion may come from his background. Ibn Battutah was related to Islamic legal scholars, and he attended a Muslim school where he learned Islamic law. This may have biases Ibn Battutah to record religious observations over others, but religion was an integral part of the life for people in Damascus.  Life in Damascus seemed to center around religion. People’s identities are connected to their religion and people are classified by their religious beliefs, as demonstrated in Ibn Battutah’s observations about actions during the Black Death and religious academics. It seems like religion is the most important identifier when it comes to a person. This circles back to how the mosque and religion seemed to the center of life, with religious groups sponsoring charities and schools. The idea of religion being the center of life is not unique to Damascus and the Middle East during the medieval period. Other places that were organized religion was prevalent, such as in Jewish communities and Christian communities. I wonder if when Ibn Battutah visits areas of the world where religion is less organized, will he be confused or disturbed. I predict that Ibn Battutah uncomfortable-ness with non-Islamic religions and polytheistic religions will outweigh his discomfort with less organized religions.