But in Syria, following a brief interlude after the fall of Mr Assad ... throughout key phases of Islamic history, such as the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled the Islamic empire from Damascus ...

Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa was born in October 1982 in Saudi Arabia, where he spent the first seven years of his life. In a rare ...

It saw significant growth under the Umayyads, who ruled the Muslim world ... For several centuries, the emirate and later the ...