FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER X
[410] “Apologeticus,” i. 37.
[411] “Catech. Lect.,” xix. 8, delivered in the new Church of the Anastasis in 348 A. D. Cyril was a semi-Arian.
[412] “Life of Constant.” (in Greek), iii. 25.
[413] “Demonstr. Evang.,” vi. 18.
[414] “Life of Constant.,” iii. 30.
[415] “Life of Constant.,” iii. 28.
[416] “Catech. Lect.,” xiii. 9.
[417] “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” vol. , pp. 316, 330; “Mem. East Pal. Survey,” p. 244. In the latter instance there are several groups of rock-sunk graves.
[418] Onomasticon, s.v. Golgotha; Bordeaux Pilgrim; St. Silvia (385 A. D.).
[419] Eusebius, “Life of Constant.,” iii. 34–9; Willis, “Ch. of Holy Sep.,” 1849; de Vogüé, “Églises de la Terre Sainte,” 1860; Prof. Hayter Lewis, “Holy Places of Jer.,” 1888.
[420] “Catech. Lect.,” xix. 1-xxi. 4. See Tertullian, “In Prax.,” 26, “De Corona,” 3.
[421] “Primitiva et ecclesiarum mater sancta Sion,” “Will. Tyre.,” xv. 4; Eucherius (c. 427–40 A. D.), “Ut fertur ab apostolis fundata”; Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.), “Mater omnium ecclesiarum.”
[422] See back, [pp. 14–17].
[423] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1; Julian, “Epist.,” xxix., xxx.; Greg. Nazianzen, “Orat.,” iv.
[424] Antoninus Martyr (c. 570 A. D.), “The [east] gate of the city which adjoins what was once the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, the thresholds and posts of which still stand.” See Prof. Hayter Lewis, “Holy Places of Jerusalem,” 1888, p. 94. This statement may be explained by the conclusion reached by de Vogüé (“Temple de Jérusalem,” chap. v.) that remains of an earlier gate are traceable at the Golden Gate.
[425] See back, [p. 91]; Bliss, “Excav. at Jer.,” 1898, pp. 9–128.
[426] Ant. Mart., xxv. Theodorus (530 A. D.) places the site outside the “Galilee Gate.” He also says that Siloam “is within the wall.”
[427] John ix. 11.
[428] Nâṣr-i-Khosrau, 1047 A. D.
[430] Ant. Mart., xxiv.
[431] The great corner tower on south-west seems to be that at the present Protestant Cemetery. The other chapels may be the House of Caiaphas, the Church of St. Giles (near the Causeway), and that of the Spasm in the Via Dolorosa.
[432] The arched cornices at the Double and Golden Gates are attributed by de Vogüé to about the sixth century. The different style of the interior gate-house at the latter gate, and of the Byzantine pillars in the Aḳṣa, may be explained by the work having been begun by the Patriarch Elias, and finished by Justinian in a style more like that in use at Byzantium.
[433] “De Ædificiis Justiniani,” v. 6; Antoninus Mart., xxiii.
[434] Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” i. pp. 296, 384.
[435] Prof. Hayter Lewis, “Holy Places of Jer.,” 1888, pp. 74–9.
[436] The suggestion that the Bethlehem basilica is later than Constantine’s age seems to be only true in part. Much of the building is undoubtedly later. The mosaics date only from the twelfth century, and the roof of the transept from 1482. But the pillars of the basilica appear to be of Constantine’s age, and to be still in situ (see “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” 1883, vol. iii. p. 85).
[438] Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.), “Pretorium Pilati ... ibi est ecclesia Sanctæ Sophiæ”; Antoninus Mart., xxiii.
[439] Cyril of Scythopolis, “Vita Sabæ.”
[440] Ḳorân, xxx. 1.
[441] See Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” i. p. 387.
[442] Eutychius, “Annales,” ii.; John of Würzburg (c. 1160 A. D.); “Citez de Jhérusalem”; “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 68. The pool is perhaps the Beth Mamil of the Talmud (Tal. Bab., Erubin, 51 b; Sanhed., 24 a; Bereshith, Rabḅa, ch. li.) though some pilgrims connect it with St. Babylas. The legend of the pious lion who buried these martyrs may have arisen from a corruption of the name Mamilla (“filled”) as M’aun-el-lawi (“den of the lion”). The cemetery near the pool is now Moslem, but the Ḳubbet el ’Abd, or “slave’s dome,” is an old Crusader’s tomb in its midst.
[443] Leontius, “Life of John Eleemon.”
[444] There is also a short Armenian account, probably of the seventh century. N. Bain in Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, Oct. 1896; “Archives de l’Orient Latin,” ii. p. 394. The rotunda is here stated to have had an upper arcade of twelve pillars.
[445] St. Willibald (c. 754 A. D.).
[446] Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, Oct. 1907, p. 297, Oct. 1908, pp. 298–310, report by Mr. A. C. Dickie.
[448] So Arculphus in 680 A. D.; but in 754 A. D. Willibald describes it as being square.
CHAPTER XI
THE ARABS
Among the texts, from the Ḳorân, of the mosaics in the Dome of the Rock occurs one which reads, “Jesus the son of Mary is one sent by God, and His Word whom He sent upon Mary, and His Spirit.”[449] Muḥammad did not regard our Lord as being simply a human being, and Carlyle was not wrong in calling Islâm a kind of Christianity. But it was the Christianity of Syrian and Arab Gnostics, not of the Gospels, just as Muḥammad’s ideas about the faith of Israel were taken from Talmudic Jews, and not from the Old Testament. Islâm was a revolt, not only from the savage superstitions of Arabia but from the formalism of Jews and Byzantine Christians, who, as Muḥammad said truly, had corrupted the truth by teaching the traditions of men. He denied all the doctrines concerning the Trinity which, in his time, preoccupied the minds of Christians, and which had rent the seamless robe into seven pieces, by the schisms of Latins, Greeks, Armenians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Syrians, and Copts, who had replaced the Catholic Church of Constantine. Politically, Islâm set free the Semitic race from the feeble tyrannies of Greeks and Persians. History repeated itself, for the Arab is always eager to swarm from his deserts when the rulers of the rich lands to the north are weakened by strife among themselves. About 650 B. C., when the king of Assyria was fighting Babylon, the Arabs conquered Eastern Palestine for a few years till driven back by Assur-bani-pal. In the time of our Lord, the Arab king of Petra ruled also in Damascus, and among the earliest Christian converts were the Beni Ghassan Arabs of Bashan. Thus, when Muḥammad had united Arabia, there was already a large Semitic population ready to join the Moslems in the north, and a large Gnostic and Ebionite school of thought as weary as were the Jews of oppression by monks and bishops, weary also of endless disputes among the churches, and ready to accept a simpler belief in one God, and in a living prophet who said that there was but one faith taught by all who came before him, and common to Christian and Jew. It was not a persecuting faith, and the tolerance of Islâm, under the Arab khalifs, was not changed into fanaticism till later Turks arose to give their captives the stern choice between the sword and the Ḳorân.
OMAR
It needed, therefore, only one great defeat for the decayed power of Byzantium to crumble away, and for the ruined Sassanians to lose their sway over races mainly Semitic. This victory was won on the precipitous banks of the Yermûḳ stream in Bashan, four years after the death of Muḥammad, which took place in his house at Medînah on June 8, 632 A. D. The capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Omar, in 637 A. D., was merely an incident in that story of wonderful conquests, which, within three-quarters of a century, united West Asia, North Africa, and Spain under the Arab khalîfah of Damascus, as “successor” of the prophet.
We have, however, no contemporary account of the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted at least four months. The Moslem histories were—at earliest—written six centuries later, though based on older sources. The earliest Christian account is that of Theophanes, two hundred years after the event, and the narrative of Eutychius (about 930 A. D.) is inaccurate: this writer was chiefly interested in showing that Heraclius was defeated because he had become a Maronite, deserting the orthodoxy of the Greek Church.[450] There is, however, a general agreement as to the main features of the story. When the patriarch Sophronius capitulated to Abu ’Obeidah, a lean Arab about fifty-five years of age, clad in a coarse cotton shirt and sheepskin jacket, was seen approaching on his camel, accompanied by his victorious general on a little dromedary with a rude halter of hair, his camel-hair cloak folded on the wooden saddle. Such was the early simplicity of the conquerors of Asia—of Abu ’Obeidah, and of his master Omar the second khalîfah. To the patriarch it was a sure sign of the end of the world, and Theophanes says that he exclaimed, “This is of a truth the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place.” Eutychius preserves what seems to be the original written promise to the city, faithfully fulfilled by Omar: “In the name of God merciful and pitying, from ’Amr ibn el Khaṭṭâb to the dwellers in the city Ailia, that they may be safe as to their lives, their children, their possessions, and their churches, that these shall neither be pulled down nor occupied.” Yet a place must be set aside where Moslems should pray in future, and it was agreed that this should be at the site of Solomon’s Temple, which still stood desolate at the Ṣakhrah rock.[451]
Omar therefore entered the Ḥaram, and—according to tradition—entered by the “Prophet’s Gate” towards the south part of the west wall. He prayed in Justinian’s basilica of the Virgin, and the place now shown as his “station” (Maḳâm ’Amr) did not then exist, being the vestry of the later Templar Church adorned with twisted Gothic pillars.[452] He is said to have visited the Ṣakhrah, which he purified. Eutychius says that in Constantine’s time “the Rock and the parts adjacent thereto were ruinous, and were thus left alone. They cast dirt on the stone, so that a great dunghill was piled upon it, wherefore the Romans (or Byzantines) neglected it, and did not pay it the honour which the Israelites were wont to do, neither did they build a church over it, for that our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel, ‘Behold your House shall be left unto you desolate.’” Omar caused it to be purified, and “then some one said, ‘Let us build a temple with the stone for Ḳiblah’ (or direction for ‘fronting’ in prayer); but Omar answered, ‘Not so, but let us build the shrine so as to place the stone behind it.’ So Omar built a shrine and set the stone in its back part.” With this account the later Moslem historians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries A. D. agree.[453]
OMAR’S MOSQUE
As regards this Mosque of Omar, which no longer exists, a very common error is due to the mistakes of later Christian historians,[454] and the Dome of the Rock—which did not exist till half a century after Omar’s entry—is called the “Mosque of Omar” in popular literature. Theophanes says that “Omar began to restore the Temple at Jerusalem, for indeed the building no longer then stood firmly founded, but had fallen into ruin.” William of Tyre, in the twelfth century, thought that the old Ḳufic texts in the Dome of the Rock attributed the building to Omar. The Franks could not read them, or they would have found out their mistake. This great historian of their victories speaks of “mosaic work with most ancient monuments in letters of the Arabic idiom, which are believed to be of his [Omar’s] time.” But the first khalifs were warriors and not builders. Muḥammad’s mosque at Medînah was made of mud and palm-tree posts, and the real Mosque of Omar, which was still standing about 680 A. D., before it was replaced by the Dome of the Rock, was near the east wall of the Ḥaram. It is described by Arculphus in such a manner as to agree with the later statement of Eutychius, leaving no reasonable doubt on the question. As recorded by Adamnan, his guest (Arculphus) said: “Also in that famous place where, before, the temple had been magnificently built, the Saracens frequent a square house of prayer placed near the east wall, building it themselves—a poor work with upright beams and great planks—on certain remains of ruins; which house is said to hold as many as three thousand men together.”[455] This rude wooden mosque stood, therefore, east of the Ṣakhrah, amid the ruins of the Temple courts, of which traces only were left.
The triumphs of the khalifs of Damascus were preceded by fierce internal dissensions in Islâm. When ’Othmân, the third khalîfah, died, in 644 A. D., Muawîyah, the son of Abu Ṣofiân—Muḥammad’s old enemy, head of the elder branch of that Ḳoreish family to which the prophet belonged—was ruler of Syria. He refused to recognise ’Aly, the son-in-law of Muḥammad, as the fourth khalîfah, and war between the two parties ensued. In 660 ’Aly was assassinated at Ḳufa by the poisoned sword of an anarchist, and his son Ḥasan abdicated six months later in favour of Muawîyah. The Persian legend of Ḥasan and Ḥosein has no true foundation. Ḥasan was poisoned by his wife in 667 A. D., at the instigation, it is said, of Yezîd, son of Muawîyah. The latter was still khalîfah at Damascus till 680 A. D. Ḥosein, whom the Persian story represents as being a boy, was about fifty-four when he fell at the battle of Kerbela in the same year. Ḥasan is said to have left fifteen sons and five daughters, and among these were the children of Fâṭimah, the prophet’s daughter, from whom the later Khalifs of Egypt claimed descent. The struggle between the two parties of the Ḳeis and the Yemini—or Syrians, and Arabs of the Yemen—went on yet later, and the memory of these factions is indeed not yet dead[456] even to-day in Palestine. ’Abd el Melek was the fifth khalîfah of Damascus (685–705 A. D.) of the family of Muawîyah, and for eight years before his accession Islâm was rent by internecine quarrels. ’Abd-Allah ibn Zobeir led the Yemen faction, and Arabia and Africa refused to acknowledge the Omawîyah family as khalifs. It was at this time that ’Abd el Melek conceived the idea of making Jerusalem the Ḳiblah for the faithful, and—as he had no access to the Black Stone at Mekkah—of inducing them to perambulate the Ṣakhrah rock instead. It was then probably that Muḥammad was first said to have been miraculously borne by the lightning cherub to Jerusalem, and to have ascended from the holy rock to heaven. The legend grew out of a single verse in the Ḳorân: “Glory to Him who carried His servant by night from the Ḥaram place of prayer to the place of prayer that is more remote.”[457] This probably referred to the Medînah mosque, but was now understood to mean the one at Jerusalem—the great enclosure where Justinian’s church still stood, as a Moslem place of prayer; and it thus received the name Masjid el Aḳṣa, or “the more distant mosque.” These events preceded, and account for, the building of a Moslem shrine over the site of the Temple itself, which had been unoccupied for six hundred years.
’ABD EL MELEK
In the time of ’Abd el Melek Jerusalem remained much as it had been under Justinian, except that Eudocia’s wall seems to have been allowed to fall into ruins. It was probably found to be indefensible from catapults on the south cliff of Hinnom, and the Sion wall, as early at least as 680 A. D., ran on its present line on the south.[458] Perhaps, indeed, Hadrian’s wall had never been destroyed, and the great re-used Herodian blocks, which are now visible at the base of the Turkish wall, may have been there since 135 A. D. The city was smaller and less prosperous than it had been under the Christians: the smaller buildings of Modestus had replaced the great basilica of Constantine; and, by agreement with Omar, no new churches were built. ’Abd el Melek now attempted to make the Holy City the sacred centre of his empire. El Y’aḳûbi, who wrote two centuries later, says of this khalîfah that he “built a dome over the Ṣakhrah”; and Eutychius (in 930 A. D.) says the same.[459]
We do not, however, depend solely on any literary statement as to the origin of this building. Round its octagonal screen, above the arcade, run the original Ḳufic texts which preserve passages from the Ḳorân written, in mosaic letters, only about fifty-eight years after Muḥammad died.[460] The passages selected refer specially to the “unity” of God and to the nature of Jesus the Messiah, and seem to have been chosen specially for record in a Christian city. They are connected together by the ordinary “testimony” to the oneness of God and to Muḥammad as His messenger. Amid these texts comes the historic statement: “Built this dome the servant of God ’Abd [Allah the Imâm El Mâmûn], emir of the faithful, in the year seventy-two; may God accept it and be pleased with him. Amen. The restoration is complete, and glory be to God.” This text would seem to be evidence at first that the Dome was built by the ’Abbaside khalîfah El Mâmûn (808–33 A. D.); but the letters of his name are on a blue ground of a different shade to that of the original, and are squeezed into the space which was once occupied by the name of ’Abd [el Melek ibn Merwan], as is proved by the date 72 A. H. (or 690–1 A. D.), which has been left unchanged. The statement that “the restoration is complete” refers to El Mâmûn’s restoration of ’Abd el Melek’s original work. The ancient enmity between the Omawîyah and ’Abbas dynasties accounts for the obliteration of the real founder’s name.
THE DOME OF THE ROCK
El Muḳaddasi, in describing the Dome of the Rock three centuries later, says that he had “never heard tell of anything built in the times of ignorance that could rival the grace of this dome,” and it remains one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. The original chapel consisted of a great drum with a gilded dome supported on pillars and piers, with round arches above them. Round this circle, which covered the Ṣakhrah, is the octagonal arcade with similar round arches on similar pillars and piers. These arches are covered with glass mosaics, and the Ḳufic texts run above them, with gold letters on a blue ground, belonging to the original building. The mosaics of the drum, with their rich arabesque designs, are probably later, and the enamelled tiles of the interior bear the date answering to 1027 A. D. The dome itself fell down in 1016 A. D., and a fine text in the Ḳarmathian characters of this age records its restoration in 1022 A. D.[461] Another text in more modern Arabic mentions “renewal of the gilding” by Ṣalâḥ-ed-Dîn Yûsef (Saladin) in 1190 A. D.[462] The building thus bears witness to its own history, by dated inscriptions in various characters belonging to various ages; for the Ḳufic (used in the seventh century A. D.) is an older script than the Ḳarmathian, and this again is older than the Neskhi Arabic of Saladin’s time.
According to tradition, the small Dome of the Chain, immediately east of the Dome of the Rock, was the model first erected by ’Abd el Melek for the larger building.[463] This statement is, however, very late. The Dome of the Chain is in the proportion of 2 to 5 as compared with the Dome of the Rock in its original state, before the outer octagonal wall was built in 831 A. D.; but it is a decagon and not an octagon, and no great importance is to be ascribed to the tradition, though there is a considerable resemblance in general style between the two buildings. The pillars of the Dome of the Rock[464] are none of them in situ, but have all been taken from some former building. I made careful drawings of them in 1872, and found that of the twelve under the drum no two had similar capitals. The capitals do not belong, in some cases, to the shafts, nor do the bases, which are also of different forms, and their height made up by thick layers of lead. These pillars, moreover, once belonged to a Christian building, and the cross is still visible on one of the capitals. The columns were taken either from the ruined basilica of Constantine in the city, or more probably from the cloisters with which Justinian adorned the vicinity of his Church of the Virgin, according to Procopius; for the style is much that of the pillars in the part of the Aḳṣa which appears to have been originally Justinian’s basilica.
This robbery of a Christian building has given a somewhat Byzantine character to the Dome of the Rock, and the extensive use of glass mosaic work also recalls Byzantine art. The mosaics of the Dome of the Rock differ, however, in this respect, that they are entirely confined to arabesques, and never represent human (or animal) figures, such as appear in the Greek mosaics at Bethlehem and elsewhere: this shows that they were intended for a Moslem, and not for a Christian building. The Arabs had no native style of architecture. Muḥammad and Omar built rude wooden structures, and it is recorded of El Welîd—son of ’Abd el Melek—that he employed skilled workmen from Persia and Byzantium to build his great mosque at Damascus. Thus arose the Saracenic style, created by Greek and Persian architects, and using round arches even as late as the ninth century A. D., instead of those horseshoes which became distinctive later of Moslem art. The models for the Dome of the Rock are to be found in the Sassanian architecture of Persia, in the round churches built by Justinian and Modestus at Jerusalem, or the octagonal church of Zeno on Gerizim, and in the Byzantine decoration of St. Sophia at Constantinople; but the heavy wooden beams which tie together the pillars of the arcade, above the capitals, are not a Byzantine feature, but are found in early mosques at Cairo and in Spain. They are survivals of the wooden architecture of Omar’s age, and they are never found in Roman or Greek buildings.
THE AḲṢA MOSQUE
There is no early statement to the effect that ’Abd el Melek did any building in the mosque proper, or “covered part” (mughaṭṭah), of the Aḳṣa. An Arabic history of the fourteenth century gives what purports to be the report sent to ’Abd el Melek, at Damascus, as to the work done at Jerusalem: “God has vouchsafed completion to what the emîr of the faithful commanded, concerning the building of the Dome over the Ṣakhrah of the Holy City, and the Aḳṣa Mosque also, and not a word can be said to suggest improvement thereto”[465]; but the term masjid, or “mosque,” may refer—as elsewhere—to the Ḥaram enclosure generally, and the only definite statement (by the same authority), that “in the days of ’Abd el Melek all the gates of the mosque were covered with plates of gold and silver,” may (if true) have the same extended meaning. It seems probable that until the accession of the ’Abbas family, as khalifs at Baghdâd, the mosque proper at Jerusalem continued to be the ancient Church of the Virgin where Omar had prayed.
The Omawîyah, or descendants of Muawîyah, retained the khalifate for less than a century (661–750 A. D.); their strength lay in Syria and Egypt, and their weakness in Arabia and in the East. The battle of the Zâb was fatal to Ibrahîm, the thirteenth and last khalîfah of Damascus, and the white banner of this great house fell before the black ensign of Abu el ’Abbas, who was yet more closely connected with the prophet as a descendant of Muḥammad’s uncle. Thus the political centre of Islâm was transferred to Baghdâd, and the influence of Persia and India, under the ’Abbasides, began to mingle with that of Greek philosophy, which had been learned from the Syrian and Chaldean monks who preserved in their monasteries the works of Plato and Aristotle, which were lost in Europe. The Ṣûfi bore a Greek name (sophos, or “wise”), and the term originally denoted an Arab student of Greek science; but the mysticism of India attracted the cultivated Moslem, and undermined gradually the simple faith of the first century, causing a deep schism between the Sunnî, or follower of “tradition,” and the Persian Shi’ah, or “sectarian.” Philosophic scepticism, concealed at first, developed under the ’Abbasides with the growth of a culture learned by the Arab from the ancient Aryan races whom he had conquered, and was only repressed by the reaction which began when the Turks superseded the Arabs as masters of Islâm. The age of the ’Abbasides, for about a century (750–860 A. D.), was the culminating period of Moslem civilisation, at a time when Europe was sunk in Gothic barbarism; and though Spain never acknowledged the ruler of Baghdâd as suzerain, Egypt and the whole of Western Asia obeyed these khalifs till the rise of the Fâṭemite dynasty in 916 A. D. at Ḳairwân.
THE AḲṢA MOSQUE
The revolution of 750 A. D. was heralded and followed by earthquakes, which were no doubt regarded as omens. The Dome of the Rock, standing on sure foundations, appears to have escaped any serious damage, but the Aḳṣa Mosque was ruined, the west wall falling—according to later accounts[466]—about 746 A. D., and the east wall about 755 A. D. We may probably understand by these statements that the great apse and the atrium of Justinian’s church, not being founded on rock, were overthrown; and the mosque was still in ruins in 770 A. D. The restoration was begun by El Manṣûr, the second of the khalifs of Baghdâd, and was mainly carried out under his son and successor El Mahdy, after 775 A. D. The fourteenth-century account of this restoration states that El Mahdy made the building “shorter and broader”; and El Muḳaddasi, describing it two centuries after its restoration, says that “the more ancient portion remained like a beauty spot in the midst of the new, and it extends as far as the limit of the marble columns; for beyond, where the columns are of concrete (or plaster), the later building begins.” This account seems clearly to apply to the present Aḳṣa Mosque, which, as de Vogüé perceived,[467] was “preceded by a Christian church, of which the ruins were the nucleus for the Arab constructions.” For there is a marked contrast between what is called the “transept,” or south part of the mosque, and the ruder work of the northern nave and aisles. The building was made shorter by the disappearance of the great atrium on the west, and broader by building the nave on the north. The only subsequent alterations of plan were those of the Templars in the twelfth century. They added a great refectory to the west, on the site of the south part of the original atrium, with a fine Norman porch still standing on the north, and a long vestry on the south Ḥaram wall just east of the church.
The building, as it exists,[468] presents a dome supported by white marble Corinthian pillars, and this probably replaced the original dome of the Church of the Virgin. The pillars are of the same character with those in the Dome of the Rock. The north part of the mosque consists of a nave and six aisles, the roof supported by huge Byzantine pillars, which are certainly not in their original position, but have been re-used. Sir Charles Wilson remarks that “some of the building inside is very bad; in several places rough pieces of masonry have been built up by the side of the columns, to gain sufficient support for the piers” of the walls above. One column is enclosed in a polygonal pier, and some capitals are rude plaster imitations of the old Corinthian capitals on other pillars. The shafts of the pillars seem to have been cut shorter, and they thus present clumsy proportions. The arches of the arcades above them are pointed, and the clerestory has two rows of windows one above the other, but this superstructure may belong to the later restoration in 1187 A. D., or even to that recorded in an inscription, on the porch, as effected by ’Aisa, Saladin’s nephew, in 1236 A. D. The pillars are very rudely tied together by heavy wooden beams—as in the Dome of the Rock—and these may have belonged to the original work of El Mahdy. The history of this building, which is a patchwork of various dates, not to be compared for architectural beauty with the more purely Arab Dome of the Rock, seems clearly to be indicated by the preceding statements. The church of Justinian was partly ruined before 770 A. D., and El Mahdy restored it, using up the pillars of its atrium and cloisters to build a long addition to the mosque on the north, which addition was of very inferior workmanship as compared with that of the church to which it was annexed. Each of the six aisles and the nave—running north and south—had a double gate on the north, and each of the six bays had a double gate on the east.[469]
CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS
The justice and tolerance of the great khalifs of Baghdâd is admitted by Bernard, the pilgrim monk of the ninth century who visited Egypt and Palestine in the time of El Mut’azz, the thirteenth ’Abbaside khalîfah, just before the Turks became powerful in the East. He says that “the Christians and the pagans have there such peace between them that if I should go a journey, and in the journey my camel or ass which carries my baggage should die, and I should leave everything there without a guard, and go to the next town to get another, on my return I should find all my goods untouched. The law of public safety is there such that if they find in the city, or on the sea, or on the road, any man journeying by night or by day without a letter, or some mark of a king or prince of that land, he is at once thrown into prison, till such time as he can give good account whether he be a spy or not.” The Jerusalem Christians benefited by this peaceful rule in the East, and we have evidence of their undisturbed possession of property, in the Greek inscriptions of the rock tombs on the south precipice of the Hinnom Valley.
CHRISTIAN TEXTS
In these tombs there are fifteen inscriptions in Greek uncial characters, which have recently been copied again with great care by Mr. R. A. Stewart Macalister.[470] Their translation has puzzled many scholars, and remains still doubtful in some details; but the following interpretations may perhaps be found more satisfactory than those as yet proposed. The texts begin and sometimes end with Greek crosses, showing their Byzantine character. Five of them read only “of Holy Sion,” and two more “monument of Holy Sion.” These seven seem to mark tombs belonging to priests or monks connected with the ancient Sion Church. Another text in red paint is now illegible, but the remaining seven inscriptions are more important. Pilgrims from the West were numerous in this age: St. Willibald (about 722 A. D.) came from Hampshire, and Bernard the Wise (about 867 A. D.) was a Breton monk from Mont St. Michel; we are therefore not surprised to read over one tomb, “Private monument of Thekla, daughter of Mærwulf the German.” She may have been a pilgrim, or a nun who took this Greek name as her title in religion, and who died in the hospice about to be mentioned; or she may have come from Byzantium, where Teutonic mercenaries were employed, and no doubt married Greeks. The next text is that of “The private monument of Ouroros [perhaps for Auroros] of Holy Sion,” probably a monk, and possibly also a Teuton. Another, inscribed in red paint now much defaced by weather, is that of “The common tomb of the Patriarch’s Hospital,” which was apparently consecrated for pilgrims dying in Justinian’s hospital, or in that which was founded about 800 A. D. by Charlemagne, as will appear immediately. A fourth text is of great value, as giving a date: “Pachomios was buried singly in the year 718” A. D.[471] He was thus not consigned to the “common monument” with other pilgrims. The fifth inscription is also in red paint, over the door of a tomb, and is much defaced. It seems, however, to read, “The private grave of the beloved offspring of holy Sergius, beneath his own coffin.” The sixth text, inside the same tomb, refers to this beloved son, the words “nineteen years” being legible, and no doubt giving his age. It is probable that “holy Sergius” was the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem who died c. 858 A. D., or the second of the name dying 911 A. D. The seventh inscription is boldly cut on the front of the tomb, round a Greek cross,[472] and appears to run thus: “A private monument holding Thekla, abbess of the monastery of Job in the city [or, lot] of George.” De Vogüé (misreading the contracted word thes as seb) supposed this to be the tomb of Thekla Sebastê (or Augusta), the eldest daughter of Theodosius and Theodora, shut up in a convent by her brother Michael III. of Byzantium, and still alive under Basil the Macedonian (867–86 A. D.); but this now seems to be uncertain. If the contracted word As stands for “city,” her monastery must have been in Lydda, the city of St. George; but if it stands for Aisa, “lot” (the diphthongs being often omitted in texts of this age), it is more probable that the grave was in the property of the Church of St. George in Jerusalem. There was more than one Monastery of Job in Palestine, the most famous being that in Bashan, while another (Deir Aiyûb) was on the Jaffa road near the foot of the mountains. There may have been a third at Jerusalem itself, for in 1129 A. D. the “Casale of St. Job” belonged to the Church of the Virgin’s Tomb,[473] and this might be near the “well of Job,” not far East of the tomb. Another possible explanation is that the “Lot of George” was the property of the patriarch George, who died about 807 A. D., before the time of Thekla Augusta. Whatever be the true explanation of this and of the other texts, we see at least that in the eighth and ninth centuries the patriarchs of Jerusalem and the priests and monks of St. Sion held peaceful possession of their properties under the Moslems, and that the pilgrims from the Christian hospitals were buried, not only in a “common tomb” such as the great excavation at Aceldama, which existed[474] for their use at least as early as 680 A. D., but also in “private monuments” hard by.
CHARLEMAGNE
The “golden prime of good Hârûn er Rashîd” brought East and West into friendly intercourse.[475] Charlemagne sent ambassadors to him, and they distributed alms in Jerusalem. The khalîfah received them courteously, and granted their requests in favour of his Christian subjects, sending them back with his own envoys, who bore rich presents of vestments and spices. He made over to the new Emperor of the West the charge of the Holy Sepulchre; and the keys of Jerusalem were sent to him as an emblem of possession of the sacred Christian sites. Hârûn, at Charlemagne’s request, is said to have sent to him the only elephant he possessed, which arrived in Europe in 802 A. D. Alms continued to be sent to the Holy City by Charlemagne, and by his son and grandson, and the famous hospital of Charles the Great was now founded in the centre of Jerusalem. Bernard the Wise in 867 A. D. says, “We were received in the hospital of the most glorious emperor Charles, where are lodged all those who go to that place for devout cause and speak the Roman tongue; near which is a most noble church in honour of St. Mary, having, by the zeal of the aforesaid emperor, a library together with twelve mansions, fields, vineyards, and gardens, in the Valley of Josaphat. Before the hospital itself is the forum (or market) where every one who deals there pays two aurei yearly to him who supplies it.” The hospital therefore faced the bazaar, and occupied apparently the same site where the Benedictines of Amalfi were afterwards found by the Crusaders. It is not clear whether the Church of St. Mary was that built by Modestus south of the Holy Sepulchre rotunda, or—as is more probable—was on the site of St. Mary Latin, built by Amalfi merchants beside their hospice. This church has now become the German Cathedral, and the hospital of the great German emperor was the original foundation which developed into the famous home of the Knights of St. John. The historic fact of this foundation originated the legend according to which Charles the Great himself visited Jerusalem to see the monastery, as we read in the “Chanson du Voyage de Charlemagne,” written in 1075 A. D., of which there is also an Anglo-Saxon version.[476]
| Mult fu liez Charlemagne | Very glad Charlemagne |
| De cel grant beltet | Of this great beauty |
| Vit du clères colurs | Saw in clear colours |
| Le mustier painturet | The monastery painted |
| De Martyrs et de Virgenes | With Martyrs and Virgins |
| Et de Granz Majistez | And the Great Majesty |
| E les curs de la lune | And the moon’s courses |
| E les festes anvels | And annual festivals |
| E les lavacres curre | And running fountains |
| E les peisons par mer. | And fish at sea. |
EL MÂMÛN
The son of Hârûn er Rashîd was the last of the great ’Abbasides and the same Mâmûn (808–833 A. D.) whose name is found in the Dome of the Rock, not only in the Ḳufic text over the arcade, but also on the four fine bronze gates of the outer octagonal wall, where it accompanies his true date, answering to 831 A. D. The beams of the roof above this wall bear a yet later date, answering to 913 A. D., and it seems probable that El Mâmûn built this wall, and that it did not form part of ’Abd el Melek’s original design. It certainly existed in 985 A. D., and is noticed by Ibn el Fâḳîḥ in 902 A. D., but El Y’aḳûbi says that ’Abd el Melek “built a dome over the Ṣakhrah and hung it round with curtains of brocade,” on the occasion when—according to the letter preserved by later writers—this khalîfah desired “to build a dome over the Holy Rock in order to shelter Moslems from the inclemency of the weather.”[477]
The outer wall in question is adorned with fine windows, which were filled with coloured glass in 1528 A. D. It has a parapet with round arches, supported by coupled dwarf pillars, and with recesses under the arches, as was discovered in 1873. These, and the upper part of the wall outside, were covered with glass mosaics of which traces have been found; while the lower part, according to various accounts from the tenth to the twelfth century, was adorned as now with marble.[478] The arcade of the parapet was still visible in 1486 A. D., when Breidenbach made his sketch of the building; but the whole of the upper part of the wall and parapet was covered over later with the beautiful Kishâni tiles, which bear the date 1561 A. D. In its original condition the octagonal wall and the arcaded parapet resembled in style the Sassanian buildings at Ctesiphon and Takht-i-Bostân in Persia; and an exactly similar arcade with recessed panels, under round arches on coupled dwarf pillars, exists in the beautiful kiosque at ’Ammân in Gilead, which—in plan—is similar to the Persian buildings above mentioned. This kiosque is probably Moslem work, and an early mosque exists close by.[479] Thus while the original work of ’Abd el Melek shows the influence of Byzantine art, the additions made by the Baghdâd khalîfah El Mâmûn, in 831 A. D., very naturally show Persian style.
The same Mâmûn also restored the Aḳṣa Mosque and the Ḥaram generally at the same time. Nâṣr-i-Khosrau (in 1047) says[480] that this khalîfah sent from Baghdâd, for the Aḳṣa, a beautiful bronze gate looking like gold, set in “fired silver,” and chased. It thus resembled those which still bear his name in the four porches of the Dome of the Rock. The Ḥaram contained several other small domes which still exist on the platform, and which date back to this great age of Moslem civilisation and prosperity. These include the “Dome of the Prophet” and the “Dome of Gabriel,” to the north-west of the Ṣakhrah chapel; but the “Dome of Spirits,” farther north, is not noticed in early accounts, for the “Dome of Solomon” is probably the building on the east wall of the Ḥaram north of the Golden Gate, now called the “Throne of Solomon,” to which a legend attaches (borrowed from the Talmud) concerning Solomon’s power over demons, and his burial on the spot seated on his throne, so that his death was not perceived by the genii, whom he ruled by aid of his ring, until a worm gnawed the wood of his staff and the corpse fell to the ground. The “Dome of the Roll” in the south-west corner of the platform seems to have disappeared, unless the reference is to the underground chamber at this corner, which in 1873 was inhabited by a Moslem hermit.
MOSLEM LEGENDS
Many legends had grown up during the two centuries since Omar visited the Ḥaram. The Holy Rock was believed—no doubt because of the Talmudic legend which made it the foundation of the Temple and of the world—to be a rock of Paradise, wondrously suspended over the abyss. Upon its surface was shown the footprint of Muḥammad, and in the cave beneath he was said to have prayed with all the prophets who preceded him from Abraham downwards. Through the pierced shaft in the roof of the cave he ascended to Heaven. The rock would fain have followed him back to Paradise, but the finger-marks of Gabriel show how it was held down. In the last days the Black Stone of Mekkah—according to Syrian Moslems—is to fly to Jerusalem to greet the Ṣakhrah, and the “tongue of the rock” is that which it will use to salute its sister of Paradise. North of the rock itself are still shown the tomb of Solomon, and the nails in a slab (perhaps once covering a Templar’s grave) which fall through into the abyss, and mark the lapse of centuries preceding the last day. Beneath the cave there was said to be a well descending to Hades, called the “Well of Souls” (Bîr el Arwâḥ) to the present day. The “Well of the Leaf” (Bîr el Waraḳah), a tank under the Aḳṣa, was so called because—according to a tradition mentioned by Mejîr ed Dîn—a certain Arab, descending to find his bucket in Omar’s time, found here also an entrance to Paradise, and brought back with him a leaf from the “Tree of the Limit” on which the fates of men are written. In the gatehouse towards the south part of the west Ḥaram wall was shown—as now—the ring to which, in the “Gate of the Prophet,” the wondrous cherub horse with wings was haltered, to await the return of Muḥammad from Heaven, and to carry him back to Mekkah. This steed (El Boraḳ, “the glittering”) had the wings and tail of a peacock, and a shining face. The “Dome of the Chain” was named from a legend of the chain that David hung in it, which none but those who told the truth could grasp. Nâṣr-i-Khosrau speaks of the “print on stone of the great shield of Ḥamzah,” which was not apparently the Persian mirror shown in the Dome of the Rock down to 1886, and said to be now at Constantinople, which used to be called “Ḥamzah’s Buckler.”
Such was Jerusalem—Christian and Moslem—in the peaceful days of Islâm under El Mâmûn. But many troubles were to come before the pilgrims, who now began to be more numerous, could find security once more under Latin rulers; and to the history of their oppression by Turks and Egyptians we must now turn.