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Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi

قصر الحير الغربي

Umayyad desert palace in the Homs steppe built by Caliph Hisham; its decorated gateway was moved to become the façade of the National Museum in Damascus.

In the heart of the Syrian steppe, southwest of Palmyra on its old road to Damascus, lie the ruins of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, an Umayyad desert palace built, according to inscriptions, under Caliph Hisham in the early 8th century.

It reused older structures, including a Byzantine tower that belonged to a monastery, and an elaborate water system with a dam, channels and cisterns that allowed farming.

The palace lies about 80 km south-west of Palmyra on the Damascus road, and an inscription over its entrance dates its building to 727. The complex held a palace, a bath house, industrial buildings for olive oil, an irrigated garden and a building thought to have been a caravanserai. It was a secondary lodging for the caliph, not his main residence, and the flat desert around it was used for hunting and racing. The Ayyubids and Mamluks used it later, and it was abandoned for good after the Mongol invasions.

The square palace had walls and towers around a courtyard and was famed for rich stucco and painted murals of hunting and figures, rare early Islamic wall paintings. In the mid-20th century its main gateway was moved to Damascus and rebuilt as the façade of the National Museum, where some murals are also displayed. The desert site keeps its walls, tower and water works.

Note: photos may not reflect the site's current condition.

For the visitor

Photos

Photos: Hovalp at en.wikipedia — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA) · Willem van de Poll — via Wikimedia Commons (CC0) · 8th century CE author — via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)