The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

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.