This city, founded before the days of Abraham,[230] enjoys the singular pre-eminence of having survived, through all the vicissitudes of dynasties and nations, the capital of Syria. The Ghûta, or great plain on which it stands, is watered by the Barada and other streams issuing from the Lebanon and adjoining mountain ranges; and the beautiful groves and rich meadows around have given it (perhaps with a better title than the delta of the Euphrates) the name of ‘the garden of the world.’ An _entrepôt_ of commerce between the East and West, it has from age to age, with varying fortune, been ever rich and populous. The city wall, twenty feet high and fifteen broad, still displays in many places stones of cyclopean size, which must have been venerable ages even before our era. Turrets for defence are placed at stated intervals, and over the gates and at other spots there are structures to accommodate the garrison on duty. The Eastern gate still leads into ‘the street which is called Straight,’ as it did in the days when St. Paul passed through it.[231] The Cathedral church of St. John the Baptist rears its great dome, towering above the other buildings; and besides it there were, at the time of the invasion, fifteen churches in Damascus and its suburbs. The city, not long before, suffered severely from the alternating fortunes of the Persian war; but it had now, in great measure, recovered its prosperity. Such was the capital of Syria, ‘the Queen of Cities,’ which--embedded in groves and gardens, and hemmed in (excepting towards the eastern desert) with distant but lofty mountains, some tipped with snow--now burst on the gaze of the Arab warriors. One here and there amongst them may perchance have visited it, trading to the north; but, as a whole, the army had heard of it only by report; and in beauty, richness, and repose, fancy could hardly have exceeded the scene which now lay before them. [Sidenote: The city invested. Shawwâl, A.H. XIII. December, A.D. 634.]