Al-Nuqtah Mosque

Sitting on Mount Jawshan on Aleppo's western edge, this mosque takes its name ("Mosque of the Drop") from a stone Shi'a tradition holds was stained with blood from the severed head of Husayn ibn Ali as it passed through the city en route to Damascus after Karbala. According to the account, a Christian monk in Aleppo, seeing light emanating from the head, paid for it to rest with him overnight and placed it on the stone. Nearby stands a second, smaller shrine, Mashad al-Siqt ("Place of the Miscarriage"), marking where a stillborn child of one of Husayn's captive relatives was buried during the same journey. The mosque dates to 944 CE, suffered an explosion in 1920 after being used to store gunpowder, and was restored through the 1970s with its current roof added in 1991; it also sustained damage during the Syrian civil war and reopened in 2017 after repairs.