The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

As we walk about the fence examining the rock our turbaned guide shows us its wonders. “Here,” says he, pointing to a round hole in one of the sides, “is the mark of Mohammed’s heel. It was from that spot that the holy Prophet ascended to heaven, and as he rose the rock started to go up with him holding fast to his heel. The Angel Gabriel had to put his hand upon it to keep it down, and here,” pointing to five curious marks, “are the places where Gabriel’s fingers rested when he did so.”

Moslem pilgrims pray at the Mosque of Omar, which occupies the site of Solomon’s Temple. It is said that no faithful Jew will enter its inclosure, for fear of treading on the spot where once was the Holy of Holies

Every Friday devout Jews weep under the walls of the Mosque of Omar, mourning the loss of their temple. They repeat for hours their litany: “For the temple that is desolate.... We sit in solitude and mourn”

A little farther on the guide tells us that this rock is the centre of the earth, and that some believe it to be the gate of hell. He shows us a plate of jasper as big as a checker board, in which are three golden nails, saying that the plate originally contained nineteen nails which Mohammed had driven into it. One nail drops out at the end of each age of the Moslem cycle, and when the last nail is gone the end of the world will occur. The guide offers to let me pull out the last three nails for a dollar apiece, but I have no desire to hasten the Judgment Day, and therefore refuse. In that way I save the world.

“The devil got at this plate one day,” so our consular kavass tells me, “and was jerking out the nails at a great rate when the Angel Gabriel caught him and pulled him away.”

These stories are silly, but they are only a few of many which are told us when we are inside the mosque. Nevertheless, the average Mohammedan of this side of the world believes them, and we see bearded, gowned, and turbaned men and white-sheeted, veiled women praying over these holy places. They kiss the marks of Mohammed’s footprints and run their handkerchiefs and beads over the rock. They pray as they do so, for the Prophet said that one prayer here is worth a thousand uttered anywhere else, and he prayed here himself.

The greatest interest of Mount Moriah, however, arises from the fact that we know this was the actual site of Solomon’s Temple as well as that of the two other Jewish temples which succeeded it. The first house of God erected by the Israelites was the Tabernacle. This was constructed at the direction of Moses just after he had received the Commandments. It is said to have been just about half the size of the Temple of Solomon, although there are passages in the Scriptures which lead us to think the latter must have been very much larger. The Tabernacle was a movable building. It was about fifty feet long and sixteen or seventeen feet wide. The roof and walls were formed of curtains made of linen or wool beautifully sewed and fastened in places with gold buckles. There were also curtains of goat’s hair and of ram’s wool dyed red. Some suppose the roof of the Tabernacle to have been flat, and others that it was ridged like a tent, with a cube inside about sixteen feet square, which was the Holy of Holies. In the latter were the Ark of the Covenant and the Tables of the Law.

Solomon’s Temple was planned by David, who collected much of the material used. Solomon himself made a bargain with Hiram, King of Tyre, to aid him in supplying the timber and certain classes of the mechanics. Hiram was a Phœnician king who lived up the coast and who controlled the forests of Lebanon. He gave Solomon a concession of certain tracts of cedar and fir, and the Hebrew king sent men in parties of ten thousand each to go to the mountains and cut down the trees. The servants of Hiram helped them, and they carried the lumber to the shores of the Mediterranean and floated it down to Jaffa, whence it was brought up to Jerusalem. The Bible says that Solomon gave King Hiram every year two thousand measures of wheat and twenty measures of oil as his part of the contract, and that the two kings were associated together.