List of Famous people born in Damascus, Syria

Fereydoon Hoveyda was an Iranian diplomat, writer and thinker. He was the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations from 1971 until 1979.

Haitham al-Maleh is a Syrian human rights activist and former judge. He is a critic of the current Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad and has been imprisoned by the Syrian government because he was calling for constitutional reforms. Maleh became an important opposition figure in the Syrian Civil War.

Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement; he is considered by several Ba'athists to be the principal founder of Ba'athist thought. He published various books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Battle for One Destiny (1958) and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution (1975).

Youssef Absi is the current patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church since June 21, 2017.

Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb al-Zurʿī l-Dimashqī l-Ḥanbalī , commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya or Ibn al-Qayyim for short, or reverentially as Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim is today best remembered as the foremost disciple and student of the controversial fourteenth-century Sunni theologian Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ibn Taymiyyah's famous incarceration in the Citadel of Damascus.

Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik was the tenth Umayyad caliph who ruled from 724 until his death in 743. When he was born in 691 his father named him after his mother.

Walid Mohi Edine al Muallem was a Syrian diplomat and Ba'ath Party member who served as foreign minister from 2006 to 2020 and as deputy prime minister from 2012 to 2020.

Shams ad-Din Turanshah ibn Ayyub al-Malik al-Mu'azzam Shams ad-Dawla Fakhr ad-Din known simply as Turanshah was the Ayyubid emir (prince) of Yemen (1174–1176), Damascus (1176–1179), Baalbek (1178–1179) and finally Alexandria where he died in 1180. He is noted for strengthening the position of his younger brother, Sultan Saladin, in Egypt and playing the leading role in the Ayyubid conquests of both Nubia and Yemen.