A short stroll through the throbbing streets of the heart of downtown Amman and the glittering famous gold souq takes you to the Grand Husseini Mosque. This Ottoman style mosque was rebuilt using striking pink-and-white stone in 1924 by the late King Abdullah I on the site of an ancient mosque built originally in 640 AD by Omar Ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam and is thought to be the site of the Cathedral of Philadelphia. The historic mosque went through phases of reconstruction, and all its features suggest that its origin was Umayyad, since its masonry and arches are typically similar to those of the early period of the Umayyad era such as the ‘Dome of the Rock’.
