to see the Greeks besieging its people." When he, however, learned that the town was built to check the Greek advance on Antioch, and that, in case it was destroyed, nothing would remain to stop the enemy from taking Antioch, he desisted and erected for its people a cathedral mosque in the Kafarbaiya quarter. In the mosque, he made a cistern whereon his name was inscribed. In the caliphate of al-Muʿtaṣim-Billâh, the mosque, which was called Masjid al-Ḥiṣn [the fort mosque], fell into ruins.
Hishâm ibn-ʿAbd-al-Malik built the part outside the city wall [Ar. rabaḍ]; and Marwân ibn-Muḥammad built, to the east of Jaiḥân,[1] al-Khuṣûṣ [wood houses], around which he erected a wall with a wooden gate, and dug a moat.
When abu-l-ʿAbbâs became caliph, he assigned stipends for 400 men to be added to the garrison at al-Maṣṣîṣah, and distributed fiefs among them. When al-Manṣûr became caliph, he assigned stipends for 400 men at al-Maṣṣîṣah. In the year 139, al-Manṣûr ordered that the city of al-Maṣṣîṣah, the wall of which had become shattered by earthquakes and whose population within the walls had become few in number, be well populated. Accordingly, in the year 140, he built the wall of the city, made its inhabitants settle in it and called it al-Maʿmûrah. Moreover, al-Manṣûr erected a cathedral mosque in it on the site of a heathen temple, and made it many times the size of the mosque of ʿUmar. Al-Maʾmûn enlarged the mosque in the governorship of ʿAbdallâh ibn-Ṭâhir ibn-al-Ḥusain over al-Maghrib. Al-Manṣûr assigned stipends for 1,000 men of its inhabitants. Besides, he transplanted [into it] the inhabitants of al-Khuṣûṣ, who were Persians, Slavs and Christian Nabateans—all of whom were settled in al-Khuṣûṣ by Marwân—gave them in it lots marked for dwell-
- ↑ Pyramus river.
