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.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER XI
[449] De Vogüé, “Temple de Jérusalem,” 1863, p. 84; see Ḳorân iv. 169, xix. 34–7.
[450] Extracts from Eutychius, “Annales,” bk. ii., in the series of Pal. Pilgrims’ Texts Society, 1895.
[451] Besant and Palmer, “Jerusalem,” 1871, p. 71; Theophanes, “Chronographia” (see Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” i. p. 389); Eutychius “Annales,” ii.
[452] See Suyûti, as quoted by Guy le Strange, “Pal. under Moslems,” 1890, p. 112.
[453] Guy le Strange, “Palestine under the Moslems,” 1890, pp. 138–44.
[454] Ibid., p. 91; Theophanes, “Chronographia”; William of Tyre, I. ii., “Ex opere musaico Arabici idiomatis, literarum vetustissime monumenta quæ illius (Omar) tempore esse credentur.”
[455] “Ceterum in illo famoso loco ubi quondam templum magnifice constructum fuerat, in vicinia muri ab oriente locatum, nunc Saraceni quadrangulam orationis domum quam subrectis tabulis et magnis trabibus super quasdam ruinarum reliquias construentes, vili fabricati sunt opere, ipsi frequentant, que utique domus tria hominum millia simul ut fertur capere potest.”