Damascus, the capital of Syria, is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was the seat of the Aramean kingdom of Aram-Damascus and later a Roman city. According to the Book of Acts, Ananias received the newly converted Saul (Paul) there, and the city remains the seat of several Eastern churches. Damascus was the capital of the Umayyad caliphate from 661 to 750, and under the Seljuks, Ayyubids and Mamluks its many madrasas made it a leading centre of Islamic learning; it was under Ottoman rule from 1516. Jews lived there from at least Roman times, and the kabbalist Hayyim Vital settled in the city in 1594.
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Damascus through the eras
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Acharonim
Damascus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a thriving Ottoman provincial capital where Jewish merchants, craftsmen, and scholars flourished under relatively stable Ottoman rule. The city's Jewish community was substantial and prosperous, enriched by trade networks that stretched across the Mediterranean and into the Levantine interior, and they enjoyed the protection afforded by Ottoman law to dhimmi communities. The intellectual life was animated by Kabbalah and halakhic study; Rabbi Chaim Vital, who moved between Safed and Damascus, brought with him the mystical fervor of Isaac Luria's teachings, which kindled intense study circles among local scholars seeking to unlock the secrets of divine creation. The Great Mosque of the Umayyads stood as a permanent landmark dividing the city into quarters, and in the Jewish quarter narrow streets opened onto courtyards where families gathered around small synagogues and study halls. Though not rivaling Safed's reputation as the supreme center of Kabbalah, Damascus held its own as a seat of serious mystical learning, and its position as a commercial hub gave its Jewish scholars both leisure and resources to pursue their spiritual investigations.
Late Antiquity
A Byzantine episcopal see (metropolis of Phoenicia Secunda) under Antioch's patriarchate until Arab forces under Khalid ibn al-Walid took the city in 634, Damascus became the Umayyad Caliphate's capital from 661 — yet remained largely Christian. The theologian John of Damascus (born c. 675) came from a family that had served the caliphal court: his father held high office under the early Umayyad caliphs, and John himself briefly served before withdrawing to the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem, where he forged the Church's great defense of icon veneration.