The churches of Damascus shared the common fate; they were equally distributed between the Christians and the conquerors. [Sidenote: Cathedral of St. John the Baptist turned into a Mosque.]The Cathedral church of St. John the Baptist was treated differently. It was divided into two parts--in one half the rites of the ancient faith were still celebrated, and the gospel of Jesus read; in the other half, carefully detached, the Corân was recited, and the service of Islam observed; while from the dome the Muedzzin proclaimed daily the supremacy of the Arabian prophet.[239] For seventy or eighty years the great Cathedral continued thus to blend under one roof the symbols and the practice of the two religions. That which was reasonable in the first beginnings of Islam, however, became intolerable in the rapid advance of arrogance and bigotry. One and another of the Caliphs sought, by the offer of large payments, to obtain surrender of the entire Cathedral; but in vain. At last Welîd, about the ninetieth year of the Hegira, took the law into his own hands, and summarily ejected the Christian worshippers. They complained against the injustice of the act, and Omar II. listened to their reclamation. But the doctors of Islam declared it impossible to restore to Christian worship a place once consecrated by the Idzân and the prayers of the Faithful; and so at last the Christians consented to take, instead, the churches of the city and its suburbs which had been confiscated under the equal partition of Abu Obeida. All that appeared Christian, therefore, in the style or decoration of the Cathedral church, was now removed or defaced. But this wonderful edifice retains to the present day marks of the different religions to which it has been from time to time devoted. In the massive foundations may be traced its origin as a pagan Temple; these are surmounted by the beautiful architecture and embellishment of Byzantine art; and over the great entrance may still be deciphered, clear and uninjured, the grand prophecy of the Psalmist, which yet may be realised in the worship of the Temple itself:-- THY KINGDOM, O CHRIST, IS A KINGDOM OF ALL AGES; AND THY DOMINION IS FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION.[240] [Sidenote: Romans at Beisân held in check by Abul Aûr at Fihl. A.H. XIV. Spring, A.D. 634.]