The Amud al-Talghraf (the Telegraph Column or Telegraph Monument), is a monument in the form of a column that sits in the center of Marja Square in Damascus. Designed in 1900 by the Italian architect Raimondo D'Aronco, who served as palace architect for Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II, and constructed in either 1904 or 1905, the monument commemorated the completion of a telegraph line between Damascus and Mecca. Surmounting the column is a model of the mosque of the Yildiz Palace Complex in Istanbul, also commissioned by Abdülhamid II.
Sources:
Weber, Stefan. Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation (1808-1918), Vol. 2, p. 255 (cat. 406). 2 Vols. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009.
