Carbon-14 dating analysis carried out at Tell Ramad, situated near Damascus, suggests that the site could have been populated since the latter part of the seventh millennium BC, around 6300 BC.
As per the accounts of the first-century historian Joseph ben Matityahu, the establishment of Damascus is attributed to Uz, a son of Aram, who is in turn the son of Shem, descended from Noah.
The earliest reference to the town's name, 'ta-ms-qu,' is discovered on a wall at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, inscribed during the reign of Thutmose II. This same spelling is also evident in a fourteenth-century list attributed to Amenophis II.
The names 'Dimaski' or 'Dimasqa' later appear in the Tell al-Amarna tablets on three occasions. Around 1260 BC, the Damascus region, like the rest of Syria, became a battleground between the Hittites from the north and the Egyptians from the south.
During the era of Alexander the Great, Damascus occupied a pivotal position as the most significant city in Syria and, remarkably, managed to largely avoid the ravages of war.
In the second and first millennia BC, Damascus emerged as a major city within a series of kingdoms.
In 635 AD, Damascus fell under the conquest of the formidable Muslim-Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid. Twenty-seven years after the city's capture, Muawiyah, the first khalifah of the Umayyad, designated it as the seat of his government and the capital of the Arab-Muslim Empire from 661 to 750.
Damascus History Unfolded
