Historical place profile
Damascus
Damascus is one of the oldest continuously occupied urban centres of the Near East and a decisive location in the conversion and early mission of Paul.
Historical layers
- Aramean and imperial city
- Hellenistic and Roman Damascus
- Paul’s conversion and early preaching
- Late-antique bishopric
- Umayyad capital and later Christian minority
Church-history significance
Acts 9 and Paul’s own references in Galatians and 2 Corinthians anchor the Christian significance of Damascus. Later identified houses and routes require separate archaeological evaluation.
Primary and geographic sources
- Pleiades place 678106
- Acts 9; Galatians 1; 2 Corinthians 11
- Late-antique ecclesiastical and pilgrimage records
Map semantics
The coordinate at 33.511612, 36.309102 is a representative_point_not_boundary. It anchors the place for research and does not assert one unchanging urban, political or ecclesiastical boundary across all periods.
Catalogue record
- Research ID
- catholon:place:pleiades:678106
- Catalogue ID
- pleiades:678106
- Place type
- settlement
- Precision
- precise
- Provenance
- Barrington Atlas: BAtlas 69 D2 Damascus