The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

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.