Sayyidah Ruqayya Mosque

According to Shia tradition, Ruqayya was the youngest daughter of Husayn, by his wife Umm Ishaq according to the Arabic Wikipedia. She witnessed the Battle of Karbala in 680 and was then taken with the captive women and children to Yazid in Damascus, where they were lodged in a ruin near his palace. When the child woke at night crying for her father, Yazid had his head brought to her; she died soon after, on 7 Safar 61 AH according to the Arabic article, aged three or four, and was buried on the spot. The English Wikipedia relates a tradition that her body was later moved to the present site after her grave was flooded.

The Arabic Wikipedia attributes a first structure over the grave to an Ayyubid sultan in 526 AH, followed by a small dome in 768 AH. Renovations are recorded for 1280 AH (elsewhere in the same article 1125 AH) and 1323 AH, the latter by Ali Asghar Khan, grand vizier of Iran. From 1399 AH (1980) the shrine, until then no larger than 60 square metres, was expanded over several years into a complex of about 4,000 square metres; the English Wikipedia dates the building of the mosque around the mausoleum to 1985.[1][2]

The new building follows a Persian-influenced style with marked symmetry, extensive mirror and gold work and tilework, while keeping elements of Islamic architecture such as a courtyard, arcades and ornament. It encloses the grave and the old dome, with a prayer area, an ambulatory and a courtyard of about 600 square metres alongside. A ribbed dome rises over the tomb. The cenotaph is surrounded by a new shrine screen (zarih), made according to the Arabic article by forty craftsmen and inscribed with hadith and verse. Gilded poems, including one by Mustafa Jamal al-Din, run around the grave.[1][2]

The complex serves as a place of prayer and above all as a Shia pilgrimage site, visited by tens of thousands according to the English Wikipedia. Commemorations are held especially in Muharram and Safar, and Ruqayya's story is recalled each year at Ashura. For Shia Muslims she stands for the suffering of the Prophet's family after Karbala. The Arabic Wikipedia names pilgrims from Iran, Iraq, the Gulf states, Lebanon and Pakistan, as well as foreign delegations coming to see its Islamic architecture and heritage.[1][2]

According to the Arabic Wikipedia, the shrine lies about 100 metres behind the Umayyad Mosque, close to the shrine of the head of Husayn and next to Bab al-Faradis in Suq al-Amara; the English article also notes its proximity to the al-Hamidiyah Souq.[1][2]

The sources used contain no dated information on damage or restoration after the expansion of the 1980s. The English Wikipedia mentions, without a date, construction work connected with the war.[1][2]