THE MOSQUE OF OMAR.
PIERRE LOTI.
I am enchanted to-day by the spell of Islam, by the newly-risen sun, by the Spring which warms the air.
Moreover, we will direct our steps this morning towards the holy spot of the Arabs, towards the Mosque of Omar, accounted marvellous and honoured throughout the world.—Jerusalem, city sacred to Christians and Jews, is also, after Mecca, the most sacred Mohammedan city.—The French consul-general and Father S——, a Dominican, celebrated for his Biblical erudition, gladly accompanied us, and a janizary of the consulate preceded us, without whom even the approaches of the Mosque would have been forbidden.
We walked along the narrow streets, gloomy notwithstanding the sunlight, and between the old windowless walls, made of the débris of all epochs of history and into which Hebraic stones and Roman marbles are fitted here and there. As we advanced towards the sacred quarter everything became more ruined, more devastated, more dead,—infinite desolation, which even surrounded the Mosque, the entrances to which are guarded by Turkish sentinels who prohibit passage to Christians.
Thanks to the janizary, we clear this zone of fanatics, and then, by a series of little dilapidated doors, we pass into a gigantic court, a kind of melancholy desert where the grass pushes up between the stones as it does in a meadow where no human foot ever treads:—this is Harâm es Sherif (The Sacred Enclosure). In the centre, and very far from us, there rises a solitary and surprising edifice, all blue, but of a blue so exquisite and rare that it seems to be some old enchanted palace made of turquoise; this is the Mosque of Omar, the marvel of all Islam.
How wild and magnificent is the solitude that the Arabs have succeeded in preserving around their Mosque of blue!
On each of its sides, which are at least five hundred metres long, this square is hemmed in with sombre buildings, shapeless by reason of decay, incomprehensible by reason of restorations and changes made at various epochs of ancient history: at the base are Cyclopean rocks, remnants of the walls of Solomon; above, the débris of Herod’s citadel, the débris of the prætorium where Pontius Pilate was enthroned and whence Christ departed for Calvary; then the Saracens, and, after them, the Crusaders, left everything in a confused heap, and, finally, the Saracens, again having become the masters of this spot, burned or walled-up the windows, raised their minarets at haphazard, and placed at the top of the buildings the points of their sharp battlements.
Time, the leveller, has thrown over everything a uniform colour of old reddish terra-cotta, and given to all the buildings the same vegetation, the same decay, the same dust. This bewildering chaos of bits and fragments, formidable in its hoary age, speaks the nothingness of man, the decay of civilizations and races, and bestows infinite sadness upon this little desert beyond which rises in its solitude the beautiful blue palace surmounted by its cupola and crescent,—the marvellous and incomparable Mosque of Omar.
As we advance through this desert broken by large white stones and grass, giving it the feeling of a cemetery, the casing of the blue Mosque becomes more defined: we seem to see on its walls jewels of many colours and brilliantly cut, equally divided into pale turquoise and a deep lapis-lazuli, with a little yellow, a little white, a little green, and a little black, soberly combined in very delicate arabesques.
Among some cypresses, nearly sapless, several very ancient and dying olives, a series of secondary edicules more numerous towards the centre of the great court, lead to the Mosque, the great wonder of the square. Dotted about are some little marble mihrabs, some light arches, some little triumphal arches, and a kiosk with columns, which also seems covered with blue jewels. Yet here in this immense square, which centuries have rendered so desert-like, so melancholy, and so forsaken, Spring has placed amid the stones her garlands of daisies, buttercups, and wild peonies.