John the Baptist in Damascus

In the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus you'll find a shrine to John the Baptist. I didn't know this before entering the mosque and so was wondering what could be inside the shrine that so many people were praying in front of.

Well when I say praying, they were actually rubbing their hands on the grill of the shrine and then rubbing themselves as if they were hoping to be inspired or helped in some way by the shrine, that's said to hold the head of John the Baptist.
Before I went to Syria I thought it was a pure Muslim country and didn't know that there's about the 10% of the population that's Christian. I found this statue in the Christian quarter of Damascus.

I noticed some differences between Aleppo and the capital city of Damascus. Damascus seems to be a more liberal and cosmopolitan city. For instance in Damascus, you'll see a lot more tourists and you'll also see that not all the local women are covered up.

Maybe that's just capital cities in general - they're usually more liberal in their attitudes and not as conservative as rural or provincial cities, because they're like a melting pot of different cultures and identities. They usually have such a high concentration of diverse people and diverse ideas.