F. E. Peters. " The Holy House: The Muslims Come to Jerusalem"

from his Jerusalem, chapter 5

THOUGH there is some small disagreement about the date, the Muslims took Jerusalem in an almost matter-of-fact manner, apparently in A.D. 638. As may be seen in the two following accounts by early authorities-there are no eyewitness report -- the city, still called by its Roman name of Aelia, was not a primary strategic or psychological target of the advancing Muslim armies:

After he had conquered Qinnisrin and its districts [in northern Syria] in 16 [A.D. 637], Abu Ubaydah came to Amr ibn al-As while this latter was besieging Aelia, which was the same city as the Holy House. It is said that from Aelia, Amr had sent him to Antioch whose inhabitants had defaulted in its terms of submission. After Antioch was retaken, Abu Ubaydah returned to stay two or three days. Then the people of Aelia requested of Abu Ubaydah security and peace according to the conditions offered to the (other) cities of Syria, that is to say, of paying tribute, the tax, and being treated the same as others like them. With this special condition that the chief present at the conclusion of the treaty be Umar ibn al-Khattab himself. Abu Ubaydah wrote to Umar on this subject. Umar came to the camp of Jablya of Damascus. From there he journeyed to Aelia and conduded peace with the inhabitants by a written document The conquest of Aelia took place in 17 IA.D. 6381. (Baladhuri, Conquest Of the Countries, 138)

On his return into Jordan, Abu Ubaydah besieged the people of Aelia, which is the Holy House. They prolonged their resistance and Abu Ubaydah wrote to Umar to inform him of the delays and of the patience of the people of Aelia. Some say that the people of Aelia requested of him that it be the caliph himself who concluded peace with them. Abu Ubaydah assured himself of their sincerity by demanding of them promises by a solemn treaty, and then he informed Umar, who left for Syria after naming Uthman ibn Affan as his deputy in Medina. He honored Khalid in joining the latter to himself and by conferring the command upon him. This latter put himself at the head of the advance guard. That was in Rajab of the year 16 [A.D. 637]. Umar came to the region of Damascus, then he went to the Holy House, took it without struggle and sent the inhabitants the following written message. "ln the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. This is a writing of Umar ibn al-Khattab to the inhabitants of the Holy House. You are guaranteed your life, your goods, and your churches, which will be neither occupied nor destroyed, as long as you do not initiate anything blameworthy." He had it confirmed by witnesses.... (Ya'qubi, History II, 161, 167)

If Sophronius' Christmas Eve sermon of A.D. 634 is an accurate reflection of what the Christian residents of Jerusalem thought they might expect at the hands of the approaching "Saracens," there must have been thanksgiving and relief when the Muslims took the city without bloodshed and imposed what can only be construed as generous terms on the conquered. But the Christians' uncertainty ran deeper. By all reports, there was a great deal of confusion in Christian minds on the precise religious beliefs of the invaders, a confusion that became only more densely virulent with time.

The new Muslims did not enter Jerusalem brandishing copies of the Quran over their heads-the standard text of the Muslim Book of Revelations was not completely codified for another decade-so Christians might well have wondered at the increasingly apparent connection of Islam with their own Holy City of Jerusalem. A connection there assuredly was: we shall see it in the Muslims' own actions in the city, and we, unlike the seventh-century Christians in Jerusalem, can attempt to puzzle it out from the pages of the Quran. Here, in the Quran's classic oblique style, almost devoid of context and references, is what the later Islamic tradition unanimously understood to be an allusion to the twin destructions of the Jewish Temple in the Holy City:

And We gave guidance to the Children of Israel in the Scripture: Truly, twice will you work evil on the earth, and you will become mightily arogant.

So when the time of the first of the two came to pass, We sent against you Our slaves of great might who ravaged (your) country, and it was a threat fulfilled.

Then We granted you once again your turn against them. We gave you wealth and children and made you more numerous in manpower.

If you do well, you do well of yourselves, and if you do evil, (you do it) against yourselves. So, when the time of the second (of the warnings) came, (We sent against you others of Our slaves) to ravage you, and to enter the Temple, even as they entered it the first time, and to lay waste all that they conquered with an utter wasting. (Quran 17:47)

Thus the Muslims of Muhammad's generation knew of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and knew that it had suffered a quite exemplary destruction because, as the Quran itself suggests, of the sins of the Jews. It was not, however, the Romans who were recalled as the agents of God's displeasure by the later commentators on this passage but rather "Bukhnassar," the redoubtable Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. Thus when the tenth-century Muslim scholar Biruni comes in his Chronology to discuss the significance of the Ninth of Ab for the Jews, he notes:

Ninth of Ab: Fasting, because on this day they were told in the desert that they should not enter Jerusalem and they were sorry in consequence. On this day Jerusalem was conquered and entered by Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed it by fire. On this day it was destroyed a second time and its soil ploughed over.

Twenty-fifth of Ab: Fasting, because the fire was extinguished in the Temple. On this day Nebuchadnezzar left Jerusalem and the conflagration in its storehouses and temples was put an end to. (Biruni 1879: 276)

It is not, then, Herod's Temple that lived on in the mind of the early Muslims-indeed Jewish history of the postbiblical period was largely unknown or ignored by them-but Solomon's. Solomon himself has an important place in the Quran, a true prophet given by God control over the supernaturally gifted jinn, who "made for him what he willed, prayer niches and statues, basins like wells, and boilers built into the ground" (Quran 34:13), which is possibly a composite picture of the Temple.

Later generations of Muslims fleshed out their knowledge of the Temple site and its importance in the careers of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Jesus, but Muhammad, or at least the Quran, is far more allusive. Syria and Palestine did constitute a "Holy Land" (Quran 5:21), but chiefly, as later commentators explained, because it was the principal home of prophecy, and Jerusalem was "the Holy House" or "the City of the Holy House," phrases which by the tenth century at Ieast were being abbreviated as simply The Holy," in Arabic, then as today, al-Quds. The usage is almost certainly Jewish rather than Christian, a conclusion we can draw not only from parallel literary usage but from the Muslims' very first acts in the newly conquered city.

Muhammad and his Muslim contemporaries or his pagan audience were thus all least generally aware of the biblical tole of Jerusalem, whether they derived that knowledge from the Bible itself or from oral traditions circulating in Jewish citcles in westem Arabia in the early seventh century. But for Muhammad at least there was more than a simple awareness involved. Early in his career, certainly before he made his celebrated "emigration" (hijra) to Medina in A.D. 622, he followed the Jewish custom, though assuredly not the Christian one, of turning toward Jerusalem in prayer. We know this not because the Quran tells us so but because it notes an important change in the direction of prayer, in Arabic qibla, likely a year or so after he arrived at Medina:

The foolish among the people will say: What has turned them from the qibla which they formerly observed? Say: to God belong the east and the west He guides whom He will in a straight path.

So we have appointed you a middle nation, that you may be withesses for mankind, and thall the messenger may be a withess for you. And we have appointed the qibla which you formerly observed only that we might test him who follows the messenger from him who turns on his heels. In truth, it was a hard (test), save for those whom God guided. But it was not God's purpose that your faith should be in vain, for God is full of kindness, Most Merciful.

We see the turning of your face to heaven (for guidance, O Muhammad). And now We shall make you turn (in prayer) toward a qibla which will please you. So turn your face toward the Inviolable Sanctuary, and you (O Muslims), wheresoever you may be, turn your faces (when you pray) toward it. The People of the Book know that (this Revelation) is the truth from their Lord. And God is not unaware of what they do.

And even if you were to bring to the People of the Book all kinds of signs, they would not follow your qibla, nor can you be a follower of their qibla; nor are some of them followers of the qibla of others. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come to you, then surely you are one of the evil-doers. (Quran 2:142-145)

There was a substantial Jewish community at Medina, and Muhammad's decision to change the qibla of prayer from Jerusalem to the Ka'ba in Mecca may have been the result of a falling out with the Medinan Jews. Or, as the Muslim commentators suggest, it may have been done to placate or reconcile the Jews, though this would appear unlikely if it had been Muhammed's custom at Mecca, where there were no Jews that we know of, to pray toward Jerusalem. We are given only a tantalizing glance at that practice in the eighth-century Life of the Prophet, from which most of our biographical information on Muhammad derives. In this passage some of the early converts to Islam at Medina set out to Mecca to make the ritual hajj or pilgrimage to the Ka'ba there. The time is sometime before 622, since Muhammad is still residing in Mecca:

We went out with tbe polytheist pilgrims of our people, having prayed and learned the customs of the pilgrimage. With us was al-Bara' ibn Ma'rur, our chief and senior. When we had started our journey from Medina, al-Bara' said: "I have come to a conclusion and I don't know whether you will agree with me or not. I think that I will not turn my back on this building [the Ka'ba] and that I shall pray toward it." We replied that as far as we knew our prophet prayed toward Syria and we did not wish to act differently. He said: "l am going to pray toward the Ka'ba." We said: "But we will not." When the time for prayer came we prayed toward Syria and he prayed toward the Ka'ba until we came to Mecca. We blamed him for what He was doing, but he refused to change.

When we came to Mecca, he said to me: "Nephew, let us go to the Apostle and ask him about what I did on our journey. For I feel some misgivings since I have seen your opposition." So We went to ask the Apostle. We did not know him and hall never seen him before. We met a man of Mecca and we asked him about the Apostle; He asked if we knew him and we said we did not. Then do you know his uncle, al-Abbas' We said we did because he was always coming to us as a merchant. He said: when you enter the mosque he is the man sitting next to al-Abbas."So we went into the mosque and there was al-Abbas with the Apostle beside him; we saluted them and sat down.... al-Bara' said: "0 Prophet of God, I came on this joumey, God having guided me to Islam, and I felt I could not turn my back on this building [the Ka'ba.], so I prayed toward it; but when my companions opposed me, I felt some misgivings. What is your opinion, O Apostle of God," He replied: "You would have had a qibla if you kept to it. " So al-Bara' resumed to the Apostle's qibla and prayed with us toward Syria. But his own people assert rather that he prayed toward the Ka'ba until the day of his death. But this was not so. We know more about it than they. (Ibn Ishaq 1955: 202)

There was no great agreement among the Muslim quranic commentators on how to construe this verse on the change of the qibla from Jerusalem. The classical Commentary of Tabari (d. 923), for example, gives the reader a number of choices, no one of them greally different from the other:

On the authority of lkrima and Hasan al-Basri: The first injunction which was abrogated in the Quran was that concerning the qibla. This is because the Prophet used to prefer the Rock of the Holy House of Jerusalem, which was the qibla of the Jews. The Prophet faced it for seventeen months [after his arrival in Medina] in the hope that they would believe in him and follow him. Then God said: "Say, 'To God belong the east and the west....' "

Al-Rabi' ibn Anas relates on the authority of Abu al-Aliya: The Prophet of God was given his choice of turning his face in whatever direction he wished. He chose the Holy House in Jerusalem in order that the People of the Book would be conciliated. This was his qibla for sixteen months; all the while, however, he was turning his face towards the heavens until God turned him toward the House [that is, the Ka'ba].

It is related, on the other hand, on the authority of Ibn Abbas: When the Apostle of God migrated to Medina, most of whose inhabitants were Jew, God commanded him to face Jerusalem, and the Jews were glad. The Prophet faced it for some time beyond ten months, but he loved the qibla of Abraham [the Ka'ba]. Thus he used to pray to God and gaze into the heavens until God sent down (the verse) "We have seen you Trurning your face toward heaven" (2:144). The Jews became suspicious and said, "What has turned them away from their qibla, toward which they formerly prayed'" Thus God sent down (the verse) "Say, 'To God belongs the east and the west....' " (Ayoub 1984: 168-169)

All these reports attempt to reconcile the quranic verses with what was understood to be the position of Muhammad vis-a-vis the Jews of Medina. It was not the only way of approaching the problem, of course, and the following from Nisaburi (d. 1327) illustrates the more "spiritual" reading of history favored by Sufi authors:

It is that the servant must turn his face toward the king and serve him. It is also in order that unity and harmony among the people of faith may be established. It is as though the Exalted One says, "O man of faith! You are my servant, the Ka'ba is my House and the prayers are my service. Your heart is my throne and Paradise is my noble abode. Turn your face toward my house and your heart to me, so that I may grant you my noble abode. The Jews faced the west, which is the direction of the setting of lights.... The Christians faced the east, which is the direction of the rising of lights . . . but the people of faith faced the manifestation of lights, which is Mecca. From Mecca is Muhammad, and from him were lights created, and for his sake the circling spheres were set on their course. The west is the qibla of Moses and the east is the qibla of Jesus; between them is the qibla of Abraham and Muhammad, for the best of things is that which is in the middle position.... " (Ayoub 1984: 169)

For us, as for those early Muslim authorities, there are no readily apparent answers to why Muhammad in the early years of his religious calling prayed facing Jerusalem, or, as the Ibn Ishaq narrative put it, "toward Syria," that is, the Holy Land. The later Muslim response, when there was a far greater familiarity with Jerusalem, was that the earlier prophets, most notably David, had prayed toward the Jewish Temple. But the custom of facing Jerusalem in prayer was, in any event abrogated for Muslims in 623 or thereabout as we have seen, and Muhammad's early practice was not much reflected upon by later generations. What attracted far more notice, however, was another, more singular and dramatic connection of the Prophet with the Holy City. The event is mentioned quite briefly at the opening verse of Sura 17 of the Quran:

Glory be to Him who carried His servant by night from the holy shrine to the distant shrine, the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of our (miraculous) signs. He is the One who hears, the One who sees.

The verse seems straightforward enough: God transported His servant Muhammad by night from one holy shrine to another in order to show him some miraculous signs. Difficulties arose, however, as soon as Muslims began to identify those two shrines mentioned in the text. The following is derived from another of the classical Muslim commentaries on the Quran, that by al-Zamakhshalli (d. 1144), who lived in an age when there was at least a popular consensus on the problem but whose commentary still reflects the early uncertainties of the community:

",,, Who carried His servant by night. " One may ask: Since the (word) "carried" in itself alreally means "to undertake a Night Journey," then what does the stipulation "by night" add to the meaning of the statement? To this I reply: With the expression "by night" God wishes to indicate the duration of the Night Journey as short, saying that within a (single) night He and His servant accomplished the journey from Mecca to the Syrian lands, which usually requited forty nights.... There is disagreement regarding the place from which the Night Journey originated. Some say it was the holy mosque (of Mecca) itself This is likely since it is mentioned in the following account from the Prophet: "While I was between being asleep and awake in the apartments near the Ka'ba at the holy mosque, Gabriel came to me with the steed Buraq." Others say, however, that the journey of Muhammad originated from the dwelling of (his cousin) Umm Hani, the daughter of Abu Talib In this case the expression "holy mosque" would indicate the holy precinct of Mecca, since this area includes the mosque and can thus be referred to by this designation. According to Ibn Abbas, the entire haram is a mosque....

Zamakhshari then goes on to show how the Night Journey is connected with another event mentioned in the Quran (53:4-10), Muhammad's Ascension into heaven:

In the same night (in which the journey to Jerusalem occurred), Muhammad was (also) raised up to heaven, that is, his Ascension took its departure from Jerusalem. Muhammad told the Quraysh also of the wonderful things he had seen in heaven, that He met the prophets there and went as far as the house visited (by the pilgrims) and the Zizyphus tree at the far End of heaven.

There is also disagreement concerning the date of the Night Journcy. While some say that it occurred one year after the hijra, according to Anas ibn Malik and al-Hasan al-Basri, it took place (even) before the mission (of Muhammad as a Prophet). (Furthermore), there is disagreement concerning whether the Night Journey occurred (while Muhammad was) in the state of being awake or asleep. The following is (related) from A'isha: "By God, the body of the Messenger of God was not missed [during the Night Journey]; rather, the Ascension to heaven occurred with his spirit." According to Mutawiya (also) it took place only with the spirit. On the other hand, according to al-Hasan (al-Basri) it was a vision which Muhammad had in his sleep; yet most traditions stand in opposition to this contention.

" . . the distant shrine . . . ": This is Jerusalem. At that time no mosque existed fatther away (from Mecca) than the one at Jerusalem.

" . . The precincts of which We have blessed ...":: God means the blessing of religion and of the present world, for Jerusalem hall been since the time of Moses the place of worship of the prophets and the place to which (divine) inspiration was restricted (before the time of Muhammad), and it is surrounded with flowing rivers and fruit-bearing trees.

Though Zamkhshari and the trallition He represents had alreally settled on Jerusalem as the site of this "distant shrine" or "farthest mosque" (al- masjid al-aqsa) to which Muhammad was taken by God at night, that interpretation had by no means been unanimous. If the Night Journey was combined with the Ascension as a single event, as here, then it was plausible that the "distant shrine" was a reference to "heaven," as a number of early Muslims in fact understood it. The identification with Jerusalem, which is presently the standard interpretation of the phrase, was a secondary and somewhat later one. By the eighth century, however, the Jerusalem connection prevailed, as it does in the account preserved in the Life of the Prophet, though with reservations expressed by its author Ibn Ishaq at the very outset:

The following account reached me from Abdullah b. Mas'ud and Abu Sa'id al-Khudri and A'isha the Prophet's wite and Mu'awiya b. Abi Sufyan and al-Hasan al-Basri and Ibn Shihab al-Zulm and Qatada and other traditionists as well as Umm Hani, daughter of Abu Talib. It is pieced together in the story that follows, each one contributing something of what he was told about what had happened when the Prophet was taken on the Night Journey. The matter of the place of the journey and what is said about it is a searching test and a matter of God's power and authority wherein is a lesson for the intelligent; and guidance and mercy and strengthing to those who believe. It was certainly an act of God by which He took him by night in whatever way He pleased to show him signs which He wished him to see so that he witnessed His mighty sovereignty and power by which He does what He wishes to do.

I was told that al-Hasan al-Aasri /A.D. (S42-728/ said that the Apostle of God said: While I was sleeping in the Hijr [a kind of semicircular stone porch close by the Ka'ba], Gabriel came and stirred me with his foot. I sat up but saw nothing and lay down again. He came a second time and stirred me with his foot. I sat up but saw nothing and lay down again. He came to me the third time and stitred me with his foot. I sat up and he took hold of my arm and I stood beside him and he brought me out to the door of the shrine and there was a white animal, half mule and half donkey with wings on its side with which it propelled its feet, putting down each forefoot at the limit of its sight, and he mounted me on it. Then he went out with me, keeping close by my side. "

In his story al-Hasan continued: "The Apostle and Gabriel went their Way until they arrived at the shrine at Jerusalem. There he found Abraham, Moses and Jesus among a company of the prophets. The Apostle acted as their Ieader in prayer.... Then the Apostle returned to Mecca and in the morning he told the Quraysh what had happened. Most of them said: 'By God, this is a plain absurdity! A caravan takes a month to go to Syria and a month to return and can Muhammad do the return journey in one night?' At this many Muslims gave up their faith; some went to Abu Bakr and said: 'What do you think of your friend now, Abu Bakr? He alleges he went to Jerusalem last night and prayed there and came back to Mecca.' Abu Bakr replied that they were Iying about the Apostle. But they replied that he was at that very moment in the shrine telling the people about it Abu Bakr said: 'If he says so, then it must be true. And what is so surprising in that? He tells me that communications from God from heaven to earth come to him in an hour of a day or night and I believe him, and that is more extraordinary than that at which you boggle!' "

"Abu Bakr then went to the Apostle and asked him if these reports were true, and when he said they were, he asked him to describe Jerusalem to him. " Al-Hasan said that [as a small child] he was lifted up so that he could see the Apostle speaking as he told Abu Bakr what Jerusalem was like. Whenever Muhammad described a part of it, Abu Bakr said: That's true. I testify that you are the Apostle of God!" until He had completed the description, and then the Apostle said: "And you, Abu Bakr, are the Witness to Truth. "

Al-Hasan continued: God sent down the verse (Quran 13:62) concerning those who had left Islam on this account: We made you a vision which We showed you only for a test to men and the accursed tree in the Quran. We put them in fear, but it only adds to their heinous error. "' Such is al-Hasan's story.... (Ibn Ishaq 1955: 181-182)

It may be assumed likely, then, if not entirey certain, that the Muslims who took Jerusalem in 638 knew at least some of the biblical associations of the city but not yet of the city's connection with Muhammad's Night Journey. There are a number of different accounts of what happened next. Umar, the second caliph, or Successor of the Prophet (A.D. 634-644), figures prominently in many of them, although some Western scholars have wondered if he was ever in Jerusalem at all, just as they have wondered at the authenticity of a document incorporated in some of those same accounts which purports to be the surrender terms given to Jerusalem, more specifically to the Christians of Jerusalem, by Caliph Umar himself. The Christians, at any rate, subsequently flourished it when their interests in Jerusalem appeared threatened. This is the so-called Covenant of Umar, and it appears in one of its fullest forms in a text by the tenth- century Muslim historian Tabari (d. A.D. 923):

In the name of God, the Merciful Benefactor!
This is the guarantee granted the inhabitants of Aelia by the servant of God Umar, Commander of the Believers.
He grants them the surety of their persons, their goods, their churches, their crosses-whether these are in a good or a bad condition -- and the cult in general.
Their churches will not be expropriated for residencees nore destroyed; they and their annexes will suffer no harm and the same will be true of their crosses and their goods.
No constraint will be imposed upon them in the matter of religion and no one of them will be annoyed.
No Jew will be authorized to live in Jerusalem with them.
The inhabitants of Jerusalem will pay the poll-tax in the same manner as those in other cities.
It will be left to them to expel from their city the Byzantines and the brigands. Those of the latter who leave will have safe-conduct. Those who wish to stay will be authorized to do so, on condition of paying the same poll-tax as the residents of Aelia.
Those among the inhabitants of Aelia who wish to leave with the Byzantines, take with them their goods, leave behind their churches and their crosses, will likewise have a safe-conduct for themselves, their churches, and their crosses....
The peasants who are presently in the city ... can remain and pay the poll-tax on the same basis as the inhabitants of Aelia, or, if they prefer, can leave with the Byzantines and return to their families. They will not be taxed until they have gathered their harvest.
This writing is placed under the guarantee of God and the covenant [dhimma] of the Prophet, of the caliphs, and the Believers, on condition that the inhabitants of Aelia pay the poll-tax that is incumbent upon them.
Witnessed by: Khalid ibn al-Walid, Amr ibn al-As, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, who have signed it, here, in the year 15. [Tabari, Annals, I, 2405]

We need not comment here on the authenticity of this document except to note that the clause excluding the Jews from Jerusalem -- or better, continuing to exclude, since the Christians themselves had long banned the Jews from the city -- is contradicted by all the other evidence we possess. The Jews, it seems certain, were not only permitted to reside in Jerusalem but were shown certain signs of favor by the Muslim conquerors.

The center of the action in all the accounts of the Muslim occupation of Jerusalem is the Temple mount on the eastern side of the city. At first it appears an odd landscape; there are now different names and different evocations for the area and its buildings, many of which will be explained on the pages that follow. When we look at the sources, the reasons for this precipitously changed perspective become immediately apparent; all our informants on this important event are Muslims, and more to the point, they all date from an era much later than the events they are describing. We have no immediate eyewitnesses, no contemporaries, Muslim or otherwise, through whom we can trace the passage from a Christian to a Muslim holy place, the appropriation and renaming of shrines, the rethinking and recasting of traditions. Our historians all all fully accustomed to a thoroughly Muslim Jerusalem. For them, Herod's platform was nothing else but the "Noble Sanctuary," the Haram al-Sharif, and atop it there had alreally stood for hundreds of years the centrally located shrine called the "Dome of the Rock" and, at its southern end, the mosque cared al-Aqsa, both wrapped in centuries-old Muslim traditions.

But the accounts are not wordlless for that. The names and later sensibilities apart, they embody traditions that may well go back to Muslims of the first generation to live in Jerusalem. The following, for example, is a late and "classical" account of the Muslims' arrival in the Holy City, eclectic in its details and the product of many centuries of refinement; it appears to embody, nonetheless, some very early Muslim perceptions about Jerusalem. It is reported here as it appears in a fourteenth-century work entitled Muthir al-Ghiram, which was then copied almost vertbatim by most later authors:

Al-Walid states on the authority of Sa'id ibn Abd al-Aziz that the letter of the Prophet [calling on world Ieaders to acknowledge his prophethood] had come to the emperor (Heraclius) while he was residing in the Holy Ciy. Now at that time there was over the Rock in the Holy City a great dungheap which completely masked the prayer niche of David and which the Christians had put there in order to offend the Jews; and further, even the Christian women were wont to throw their (menstrual) cloths and clouts in the place so that there was a pile of them there. Now when the emperor had read the letter of the Prophet, he cried out: "O men of Rum, you are the ones who will be slain on this dungheap because you have desecrated the sanctity of this Sanctuary. It will be with you just as it was with the Children of Israel who were slain because of the blood of John, son of Zakariyya. "

Then the emperor commanded them to clear the place, as they began to do, but when the Muslims invaded Syria only a third of it had been cleared. Now when Umar came to the Holy City and conquered it, and saw how there was a dungheap over the Rock, he regarded it as horrible and ordered that the place be entitely cleaned. To accomplish this they forced the Nabateans [or native peasantry] of Palestine to labor without pay. On the authority of Jabit ibn Nafir, it is related that when Umar frst exposed the Rock to view by removing the dungheap, He commanded them not to pray there until three showers of heavy rain should have fallen.

It is related as coming from Shadad ibn Aws, who accompanied Umar when he entered the Noble Sanctuary of the Holy City on the day when God caused it to be reduced by capitulation, that Umar entered by the Gate of Muhammad, crawling on his hands and his knees, he and and those who were with him, until he came up to the Court of the Sanctuary. Then looking around to the right and the left and glorifying God, he said: "By God, in whose hand is my soul, this must be the Sanctuary of David of which the Apostle spoke to us when he said 'I was conducted there in the Night Journey.' " Then Umar advancing to the front (or southern) part of the Haram area and to the western part thereof, said: "Let us make this the place for the Sanctuary [masjid].

On the authority of al-Walid ibn Muslim, it is reported as coming from a shaykh of the sons of Shadad ibn Aws, who had heard it from his father, who held it from his grandfather, that Umar, as soon as he was at leisure from the writing of the Treay of Capitulation made between him and the people of the Holy City, said to (Sophtonius) the patriarch of Jerusalem: "Take us to the Sanctuary of David " And the patriarch agreed to do so. Then Umar went forth girt with a sword and with four thousand of the Companions (of the Prophet) who had come to Jerusalem with him, all likewise wearing swords, and a crowd of us Arabs who had come up to the Holy City followed them, none of us bearing any weapons except our swords. And the patriarch walked before Umar among the Companions, and we came behind the caliph. Thus we entered the Holy City.

And the patriarch took us to the church which is called the 'Dung Heap," and he said: "This is David's Sanctuary." Umar looked around and pondered, then he answered the patriarch: "You are Iying, for the Apostle described to me the Sanctuary of David and this is not it." Then the patriarch went with us to the Church of Sion and again he said: "This is the Sanctuary of David. " But the caliph replied to him: "You are Iying." So the patriarch went on till he came to the Noble Sanctuary of the Holy City and reached the gate later called the Gate of Muhammad. Now the dung which was then all about the Noble Sanctuary had settled on the steps of this gate so that it even came out into the street in which the gate opened, and it had accumulated so greatly on the steps as to reach almost Up to the ceiling of the gateway. The patriarch said to Umar: "lt is impossible to go on further and enter, except crawling on one's hands and knees." So the patriarch went down on hands and knees, preceding Umar and we all crawled after him, until he hall brought us out in the court of the Noble Sanctuary of the Holy City. Then we arose from our knees and stood upright. Umar looked atound him, pondering for a long time. Then he said: "By Him in whose hands is my soul, this is the place described to us by the Apostle of God. "

It is (also) reported . . . that when Umar was caliph he went to visit the people of Syria. Umar halted first at the village of al-Jabiya, while he dispatched a man of the Jallila tribe to the Holy City, and shortly after Umar possessed the Holy City by capitulation. Then the caliph himself went there, and Ka'b [al-Ahbar] with him. Umar said to Ka'b: "0 Abu Ishaq, do you know the position of the Rock?" Ka'b answered: "Measure from the well which is in the Valley of Gehenna so and so many ells; there dig and you will discover it," adding, "at this present day it is a dung- heap." So they dug there and the rock was laid bare. Then Umar said to Katb: 'Where do you say we should place the Sanctuary, or rather, the qibla'" Ka'b replied: "Lay out a place for it behind [that is, to the north of the Rock and so you will make two qiblas, that, namely, of Moses and that of Muhammad." And Umar answered him: "You still lean toward the Jews, O Abu Ishaq. The Sanctuary will be in front [that is, to the south of the Rock. Thus was the Mosque (of al-Aqsa) erected in the front part of the Haram area.

Al-Walid relates further, as coming from Kulthum ibn Ziyall, that Umar asked of Ka'b; "Where do you think we should put the place of prayer for Muslims in this Holy Sanctuary?" Ra'b answered: "In the further (northern) part of it, near the Gate of the Tribes." But Umar said: "No, since the fore part of the Sanctuary belongs to us." . . . Al-Walid relates again, on the authority of Ibn Shaddad, who had it from his father, that Umar proceeded to the fore part of the Sanctuary, to the side adjoining the west, and there began to throw the dung by handfuls into his cloak and all of us who were with him did likewise. Then he went with it, and we followed along and did likewise, and threw the dung into the wadi which is called the Wadi Jahannam. Then we returned to do it again and yet again, both Umar and the rest of us, until we had cleared the whole of the place where the mosque (of al-Aqsa) now stands. And there we all made our prayers, Umar himself praying in our midst.

Sophronius is already known to us, and it is the Jerusalem patriarch who quite naturally looms large in two Christian accounts of the same events in Jerusalem in 638. The first, from about A.D. 876, is by the Christian historian Eutychius, the later patriarch of Alexandria, who lived under Islam and was well instructed on the Arab tradition:

Then Umar said to him [Sophronius]: "You owe me a rightful debt. Give me a place in which I might build a sanctuary [masjid]." The patriarch said to him: "I will give to the Commander of the Faithful a place to build a Sanctuary where the kings of Rum were unable to build. It is the Rock where God spoke to Jacob and which Jacob called the Gate of Heaven and the Israelites the Holy of Holies. It is in the center of the world and was a Temple for the Israelites, who held it in great veneration and wherever they were they turned their faces toward it during prayer. But on this condition, that you promise in a written document that no other Sanctuary will be built inside of Jerusalem. "

Therefore Umar ibn al-Khattab wrote him the document on this matter and handed it over to him. They were Romans when they embraced the Christian religion, and Helena, the mother of Constantine, built the churches of Jerusalem. The place of the Rock and the area around it were deserted ruins and they [the Romans] poured dirt over the Rock so that great was the filth above it. The Byzantines [Rum], however, neglected it and did not hold it in veneration, nor did they build a church over it because Christ our Lord said in his Holy Gospel "Not a stone will be left upon a stone which will not be ruined and devastated." For this reason the Christians left it as a ruin and did not build a church over it. So Sophronius took Umar ibn al-Khattab by the hand and stood him over the filth. Umar, taking hold of his cloak filed it with dirt and threw it into the Valley of Gehenna. When the Muslims saw Umar ibn al-Khattab carrying dirt with his own hands, they all immediately began carrying dirt in their cloaks and shields and what have you until the whole place was cleansed and the Rock was revealed. Then they all said: "Let us build a Sanctuary and let us place the stone at its heart. " "No," Umar responded. "We will build a Sanctuary and place the stone at the end of the Sanctuary." Therefore Umar built a Sanctuary and put the stone at the end of it.

The other Christian version comes from the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, writing in the safer and more polemical atmosphere of early ninth century Constantinople:

In this year Umar undertook his expedition into Palestine, where the Holy City having been continuously besieged for two years (by the Arab armies), he at Iength became possessed of it by capitulation. Sophronius, the leader of Jerusalem, obtained from Umar a treaty in favor of all the inhabitants of Palestine, afrer which Umar entered the Holy City in camel-hair garments all soiled and tom, and making a show of piety as a cloak for his diabolical hypocrisy, demanded to be taken to what in former times hall been the Temple built by Solomon. This he straightway converted into an oratory for blasphemy and impiey. When Sophronius saw this he exclaimed, "Truly this is the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet, and it now stands in the Holy Place," and He shed many tears."

Umar's other informant in the Muslim accounts of the capitulation of Jerusalem is the notorious Ka'b al-Ahbar, or "the Rabbi," an early Jewish convert to lslam into whose mouth are put many of the traditions concerning the history and the practices of the Jews of which the Muslims were becoming increasingly aware. In the text already cited, the context is a polemical one: Ka'b counsels Umar to build his mosque north of the rock so that the Jerusalem Muslims will be willy-nilly facing the Temple site when they pray toward Mecca. Umar scents Ka'b's advice for the Judaizing ploy it is and commands the Muslim prayer hall, the Aqsa Mosque, to be built south of the newly uncovered Rock. The story represents possibly a conscious Muslim repudiation of its Jewish antecedents, and in the very place it most needed doing, atop Mount Moriah.

The Jewish tradition had, however, quite another recollection. This version comes from Isaac ben Joseph, a visitor to Jerusalem in A.D. 1334:

It was on Mount Moriah that in the olden days the Temple of Solomon (to whom be salvation) was reared; and from that august Temple it received its name of the Mountain of the Temple Alas, by reason of our sins, where the sacred building once stood, its place is taten today by a profane temple built by the king of the Ishmaelites when he conquered Palestine and Jerusalem from the uncircumcised The history of the event was in this wise.

The king, who had made a vow to build up again the ruins of the sacred edifice, if God put the Holy City into his power, demanded of the Jews that they should make known the ruins to him. For the uncircumcised [that is, the Christians] in their hate against the people of God, had heaped rubbish and filth over the spot, so that no one knew exactly where the ruins stood. Now there was an old man then living who said. "If the king will take an oath to preserve the wall, I will discover unto him the place where the ruins of the Temple were." So the king straightway placed his hand on the thigh of the old man and swore an oath to do what he demanded. When he had shown him the ruins of the temple under a mound of defilements, the king had the ruins cleared and cleansed, taking part in the cleansing himself, until they were all fair and clean. After that he had them all set up again, with the exception of the wall, and made them a very beautiful temple, which he consecrated to his God.

It is this wall which stands before the temple of Umar ibn al-Khattab, and which is called the Gate of Mercy. The Jews resort thither to say their prayers, as Rabbi Benjamin [of Tudeia] has already related.

This is history recollected, the setting down of an oral tradition still in circulation among the Jews of fourteenth-century Jerusalem. It is possible to get much closer to the event, however. Among the debris of documents preserved in the storeroom of the medieval synagogue of Cairo is a poem that provides an apocalyptic vision of what it was like when the Arabs, here as often the "Ishmaelites," suddenly descended on the Holy City in the seventh century. It is couched in the familiar opaque language of apocalypses, but the references are sufficiently clear-to the Byzantines or Romans as "Edomites," for example-to enable us to date it very close to A.D. 638:

On that day when the Messiah, son of David, will come
To a downtrodden people
These signs will be seen in the world and will be brought forth:
Earth and heaven will wither,
And the sun and the moon will be blemished,
And the dwellers in the Land [of Israel] wll1 be struck silent.

The king of the West and the king of the East
Will be ground one against the other,
And the armies of the king of the West will hold firm in the Land.
And a king will go forth from the land of Yoqtan [Arabia]
And his armies will seize the Land,
The dwellers of the world will be judged
And the heavens will rain dust on the earth,
And winds will spread in the Land.
Gog and Magog will incite one another
And kindle fear in the heart of the Gentiles.
And Israel will be freed of all their sins
And will no more be kept far from the house of prayer.

Blessings and consolations will be showered on them,
And they will be engraved on the Book of Life.
The Kings from the land of Edom will be no more,
And the people of Antioch will rebel and make peace
And Ma'uziya [Tiberias] and Samaria will be consoled,
And Acre and Galilee will be shown mercy.
Edomites and Ishmael will fight in the valley of Acre
Till the horses sink in blood and panic.
Gaza and her daughters will be stoned
And Ascalon and Ashod will be terror-stricken.

Israel will go forth from the City and turn eastwards.
And taste no bread for five and four days.
And their Messiah will be revealed and they will be consoled.
And they will share pleasant secrets with their King
And they will raise praises to their King;
And all the wicked will not rise up in the Judgment.

The happy optimism of this poem grew somewhat tempered in time, but if we are to beleve the testimony of Salman ben Yeruham, a Keraite author writing about A.D. 950, the Muslims, like Antiochus III many centuries before, repaid Jewish cooperation by granting access not merely to Jerusalem but to the Temple mount itself:

As it is known, Jerusalem remained under the rule of the Rum [the Byzantines] for more than 500 years, during which they [the Jews] were not abk to enter Jerusalem. Anyone who was discovered entering was killed. When by the mercy of the God of Israel the Rum departed from us and the kingdom of Ishmall [the Arabs] appeared, the Jews were granted permission to enter and reside there. The courts of the [House of] the Lord were handed over to them, where they prayed for a number of years.

There was, of course, a condition already familiar to us, as Salman explains in another place:

There were men of the Children of Israel among them who showed them [the Muslims] the place of the Temple and settled in with them from then until the present day. The Muslims stipulated that if the Children of Israel would keep the Temple [precinct] in a clean state, they would be entitled to pray at its gates and no one would prevent them from doing so.

Later a change took place, caused, according to Salman, by reports brought to the caliph of "insolent behavior . . . the drinking of wine and intoxicants" by certain Jews, and for the Karaite Salman that could mean only his arch-foes, the Rabbanite Jews of Jerusalem.

So he [the caliph] ordered their expulsion from all but one of the Temple compound gates, where they prayed; they were not, however, enjoined from using the other gates [for going in and out]. This practice lasted for a number of years. When they stepped up their acts of disobedience, a ruler turned on us and expelled us from the [one permitted] Temple compound gate....

Then in Salman's own time, worse threatened to follow:

They [the Muslims] pray in its courts for the dead, and five times daily they recall the memory of the idol and of the false prophet; Israelites, priests and Levites and singers, of blessed memory, are expelled from it. After all this, they [the Christians] now want to expel us from Jerusalem and impose an iron yoke upon our necks.

According to this extraordinary report, then, the Jews of Jerusalem were at one time permitted, and availed themselves of the opportunity, to pray on the Temple mount itself. This was in the earliest days of the Muslim occupation of the city, perhaps before Abd al-Malik's construction of the Dome of the Rock and the subsequent consecration of the entire Temple mount as the "Noble Sanctuary." Once the Dome was constructed, the character of the area must have changed substantially; it was more likely that change, rather than the depraved practices of the rabbis, which excluded the Jews from the Haram and confined them to prayer at one of its gates.

For all three groups who claimed descent from Father Abraham-Jews, Christians, and Muslims-the fall of Jerusalem in 638 was a theological event, and all three read it as the Christians' chastisement for sin. In the Christian version the sin was rather generalized, a falling-off from the Christian ideal by the Christian people; the Jews, for their part, needed no citation by chapter and verse on the wickedness of the "Edomites." But the Muslim theology of the event was considerably more pointed, as we have seen, and spoke directly to the condition of the Temple mount in pre-lslamic times: the Christians had not destroyed the Temple, but it was they who had defiled it by heaping rubbish and filth of the most degrading kind on the place where the Temple had once stood. It is all spelled out, now with convincing historical detail, by medieval Jerusalem's chief Muslim historian, Mujir al-Din, writing in A.D. 1496:

After the ascension of Jesus into heaven, the city of the Holy House remained prospetous for forty more years. The Israelites were governed by a series of Roman kings down to the time of Titus the Roman. The capital of his kingdom was Rome, in the land of the Franks. In the first year of his reign he came to the City of the Holy House, fell upon the Jews, massacred them and took the survivors captive, all save those who managed to hide themselves. He destroyed the Holy City and gave it over to plunder. He put the Temple to the torch and burnt their sacred books. The Israelites were banished from the Holy City, which was in a state where it could no longer be inhabited. From this time onward the Jews no longer had the power to govern.

Destroyed by Titus, the City of the Holy House was, after the persecution of the Jews, rebuilt little by little. It remained prosperous until the departure of Helena, mother of Constantine the Victorious, for this City of Jerusalem. Her son was first king at Rome, then he transferred his capital to Constantinople, had its wall constructed and became a Christian. The name of this city was Byzantium but he gave it that of Constantinople. Helena, the mother of Constantine, thus left for Jerusalem in search of the cross of Christ, the cross on which the Christians pretend that Jesus was crucifed. Once she was in Jerusalem she had the wood of the cross discovered and to this end instituted the Feast of the Cross and had built the church of at-Qumama over the tomb in which, according to the Christians' pretensions, Jesus had been buried. She also had built the place opposite the Qumama known to this day as the Dargah [probably the patriarchal residence]; the church at Bethlehem, the one on the Mount of Olives at the place of the ascension of Jesus; and among others the one in Gethsemene where the tomb of Mary is located. She had the Temple of Jerusalem leveled down to the ground-it was that which was in the sanctuary-and she ordered that the filth and scourings of the city be thrown on its place. The place of the Noble Rock was transformed into a stable. That state of affairs remained unil the arrival of Umar ibn al-Khattab, who took the noble City of Jerusalem.

When Umar had cleared the area at the top of the Temple mount, he built the first assembly-mosque for the Jerusalem Muslims at the southern end of Herod's platform. It was not an exceedingly impressive structure, as we are told by the Christian pilgrim Arculf, who saw the original Aqsa when he was in Jerusalem in 680. It was, however, large enough to hold what must have been the total Muslim population of Jerusalem at the time:

In that famous place where the Temple once stood near the (City) wall on the east, the Saracens now frequent an oblong house of prayer, which they pieced together with upright planks and large beams over some ruined remains. It is said that the building can hold three thousand people.

The debate between Umar and Ka'b about the positioning of the Muslim place of congregational prayer in Jerusalem assumed it would be on the Temple platform; it was simply a question of where. And that question was debated not in terms of any particular holy place but simply in terms of where the mosque would stand in relation to the chief, and perhaps at that stage the only genuine, holy place atop the platform, the outctopping of bedrock situated near the center of the precept Haram al-Sharif. We have heard mention of a Rock before, but not in connection with Herod's Temple: the already cited descriptions of that compkx by both Josephus and the Mishnaic tractate Middoth make no mention of it; moreover, the Holy of Holies and the altar of Herod's Temple were both so large that they would have totally concealed the Muslims' Rock. Where such a Rock does appear, however, is in the account of the fourth century Bordeaux pilgrim cited in Chapter Four, where it is related that the Jews came annually to Jerusalem to mourn the destruction on the Temple and that their ceremonies centered around a "pierced rock."

We know little more than that, except for the obvious fact that when the first Muslims arrived in Jerusalem they were quickly drawn to a Rock atop the Temple mount and that it was identified for them as connected in some fashion with the Jewish Temple, Solomon's, as they thought. Who first made that identification or when, we simply do not know. The second-century A.D. Mishnaic treatise Yoma already cited in Chapter One briefly mentions a stone connected with Solomon's Temple. Although neither the Bible nor Josephus mentions it, the Mishna claims to know that it went back to the time of the "early Prophets," that is, to David and Solomon.The account is not clear, however, about whether this "stone of foundation" was still in place after the destruction of the Temple:

After the Ark was taken away, a stone remained there (in the Temple) from the time of the early Prophets, and it was called "foundation". It was higher than the ground by three fingerbreadths....

The passage in Yoma was an obvious invitation to exegetical embroidery, and the Jewish mystical and midrashic tradition responded avidly, feeding upon and into the parallel Muslim mythology about the stone under Abd al-Malik's magnificent dome atop the Temple mount: that it marked the navel of the world, that the tablets of the Ten Commandments were hewn from it, that the Divine Name was inscribed upon it, and more.

Whatever the history of the Rock, the Muslims built over that outcropping an extraordinary octagonal shrine. According to the inscription preserved within, this shrine was the work of Caliph Abd al-Malik and was completed in A.D. 692. We have, moreover, an explanation of the caliph's motives offered about A.D. 874 by the historian Ya'qubi. Abd al-Malik was faced by a serious challenge to his power by the rebel Ibn al-Zubayr, who then controlled Mecca:

Then Abd al-Malrk forbade the people of Syria to make the pilgrimage [to Mecca], and this by reason that Abdullah ibn Zubayr was wont to seize on them during the time of the pilgrimage and force them to pay him allegiance-which, Abd al-Malik having knowledge of, forbade the people to journey forth to Mecca. But the people murmured thereat, saying "How do you forbid us to make the pilgrimage to God's house, seeing that the same is a commandment of God upon us." But the caliph answered them, "Has not Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri [the traditionist who knew many of the Companions of the Prophet] told you how the Apostle of God did say 'Men shall journey to but three mosques, the Holy Shrine (at Mecca), my mosque (at Medina) and the mosque of the Holy City (of Jerusalem)'' So this last is now appointed to you (as a place of worship) in place of the Holy Shrine of Mecca. And this Rock, of which it is reported that the Apostle of God set his foot when he ascended into heaven, shall be to you in the place of the Ka'ba. " Then Abd al-Makk built above the Rock a dome and hung it around with cutrains of brocade, and he instituted doorkeepers for the same, and the people took up the custom of circumambulating the Rock, even as the hall paced around the Ka'ba, and the usage continued thus all the remaining days of the dynasty of the Umayyads [from A.D. 692 to 750].

This explanation for the construction of the Dome of the Rock, which is repeated by a number of later Muslim authors and has become canonized in all Western accounts, suffers from a number of fatal flaws that render it extremely suspect. Not the least of them is that no other contemporary or near contemporary authorities seem aware of tnis singular piece of religious blasphemy on the part of the caliph, to wit, the usurpation of the quranically mandated hajj to Mecca, with its prescribed circumambulation of the Ka'ba, by a similar ritual to be held in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Indeed, one who was distinctly in a position to know, the historian Muqaddasi, himself a native of Jerusalem, not only is ignorant of this extraordinally act on Abd al-Malik's part but offers an entirely different explanation. He tells of discussing with his uncle the Great Mosque of Damascus, built by Abd al-Malik's son al-Walid:

Now one day I said, speaking to my father's brother, ĝO my uncle, truly it was not well of Caliph al-Walid to spend so much of the wealth of the Muslims on the mosque at Damascus. Had he expended the same on making roads or for caravanserais or in the restoration of fortresses, it would have been more fitting and more excellent of him. " But my uncle said to me in answer, "O my little son, you have not understanding! Truly al-Walid was right and he was prompted to do a worthy work. For he beheld Syria to be a country that had long been occupied by the Christians, and he noted herein the beautiful churches still belonging to them, so enchantingly fair and so renowned for their splendor; even as are the Holy Sepulcher and the churches of Lydda and Edessa. So he sought to build for the Muslims a mosque that should prevent their admiring these and should be unique and a wonder to the world. And in like manner, is it not evident how Caliph Abd al-Malik noting the greatness of the Dome of the Holy Sepulcher and its magnificence, was moved lest it should dazzle the minds of Muslims and so erected, above the Rock, the Dome which is now seen there."

What is here suggested is a more likely motive, if not nearly so dramatic as Ya'qubi's charge, for Abd al-Malik's construction of the singular shrine that yet stands atop the Temple mount, and in much the same form he built it. But the Caliph did more than simply put up the building; he also endowed it with attendants:

The shrine is served by special attendants; their service was instituted by Caliph Abd al-Malik, the men being chosen from among the fifth owed to the sovereign out of the captives taken in war and hence they are called "the Fifths. " None besides these are employed in the service and they take their watch in turn beside the Rock.

All of that [construction] took place during the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. This prince appointed to guard the shrine three hundred black slaves in residence whom he had bought for the sanctuary out of the funds belonging to the "fifth" of the Community Treasury. Whenever one of them died he was replaced in his duties by his son, by his grandson, or someone else of his family, and that was the procedure to be followed for as long as they had offspring.... Ten Jews, who were exempted from the poll-tax, were also employed in its service, and they and their children numbered twenty in all. They were charged with cleaning up whatever filth occurred at the time of the pilgrimage, summer and winter, and to keep in order the public places around the shrine. Ten Christians, members of the same family who had this as a hereditary charge, were attached to the shrine to remove the rubbish and to take care of the conduits that brought water to the cisterns [of the Haram] and the cisterns themselves. There were also a certain number of Jewish servants who busied themselves with the glasswork, the various types of lamps, and other such. They were not subject to the poll-tax, nor were those who prepared wicks for the lamps. This exemption applied to themselves and their families in perpetuity, as long as they hall descendents, from the period of Abd al-Malik onward.

One Jewish apocalyptic poem has already been cited in connection with the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. There is another such "unveiling," which probably dates from around the end of the Umayyed dynasty in A.D. 750, the dynasty of which Caliph Mu'awlya (661-681), the fifth of the Successors of the Prophet, was the effective founder and to which Abd al-Mali!; also belonged. This text takes the form of a vision of the future given to Simon ben Yohai, an early rabbinic sage whose grave is still shown near Merom in Galilee:

He saw the Kenite. When he saw the kingdom of Ishmael [the Arabs] that was coming, he [Simon] began to say: "Was it not enough what the wicked kingdom of Edom [Rome/Byzantium] did to us, but must we have the kingdom of Ishmael too?" At once (the angelic prince) Metatron, the prince of the countenance, answered and said: "Do not fear, son of man, for the Holy One, blessed be He, only brings the kingdom of Ishmael in order to save you from this wickedness (of Edom). He raises up over them a Prophet [Muhammad] according to His will and will conquer the land for them and they will come and restore it in greatness, and there will be great terror between them and the sons of Esau." Rabbi Simon answered and said: "How do we know that they are our salvation'" He answered: "Did not the Prophet Isaiah say thus [21:13], that he saw a troop with horsemen in pairs, etc. Why did he put the troop of asses before the troup of camels, when he need only have said: 'A troup of cameb and a troup of asses', But when he goes forth riding a camel the dominion will arise through the rider on an ass. Again 'a troup of asses,' since he rides on an ass, shows that they are the salvation of Israel, like the salvation of the rider on an ass [i.e., the Messiah]. " . . .

The second king who arises from Ishmael [Mu'awiya will be a lover of Israel; he restores their breaches and the breaches of the Temple. He hews Mount Monah and makes it all straight and builds a mosque there on the Temple rock, as it was said: "Thy nest is set in the Rock" [Num. 24.21]. He makes war against the sons of Esau and kills his armies and takes many captives from them, and He will die in peace and great honor. And a great king will rise from Hazarmaveth [Gen. 10: 27] [Hadramawt.?: a reference to Ali?] and rule for a short time, and the strong men of the sons of Kedar will rise up against him and kill him.

They will raise up another king whose name is Marwan, and they will take him from the sheep and the asses and raise him to the kingship, and for arms will rise from him and they will repair the Temple [the Dome of the Rock and Aqsa]. At the end of the kingdom of the four arms another king will arise and reduce the weights and measures and spend three years in peace. And there will be great strife in the world in his days and He will send great armies against the Edomites and there they will die in hunger and they will have much food with them and he withholds from them and none will He give them, and the sons of Edom will rise up against the sons of Marwan and kill them and the sons of Ishmail will rise up and burn the food and those who remain will flee and go forth.

Then the great king [Hisham] will arise and will rule nineteen years. These are his signs: reddish, cross-eyed, and with three birthmarks, one on his brow, one on his right hand, and one on his left arm. He will plant young trees and build ruined towns and burst open the abysses to raise the water to irrigate his trees. The grandsons of his sons will eat much, and whoever rise up against him will be delivered into his hand. The land will be quiet in his days and he will die in peace....

Not all the identifications offered here are either easy or certain, though the reference to Marwan by name makes it certain that we are dealing with members of the Umayyad house. What chiefly concerns us here is the beginning of that house and the "second king" from Ishmael- Mu'awiya was long governor of Syria and Jerusalem before he became caliph in 661-who is "a lover of lsrael" and who "hews Mount Moriah and maks it all straight and builds a mosque there on the Temple Rock.

Neither Muslim tradition nor the dedication inscription preserved inside the Dome of the Rock credits him with such, but it is not inconceivable that Mu'awiya at least began the Muslims' work on and around the Temple platform, particularly if the extension of the Haram platform northward from an original Herodian square was an early Muslim undertaking. It would have been an immense and time-consuming labor, that leveling off of the northern scarp upon which the Fortress Antonia once sat, and one that had necessarily to be completed before the Dome could be begun.

The argument that the present platform of the Haram al-Sharif was not entirely the work of Herod is simply put: the Jewish testimony that the Herodian Temple platform was square, while the Haram is an immense irregular rectangle; the certainty that the southern edge of the present platform is Herodian, corner to comer, which enables us to construct such a square, whose dimensions, in turn, correspond more closely, though by no means exactly, to those offered by Josephus and the Mishna; and finally, the absence of definite evidence that would establish that the northem side of the present Haram, like the southern, is Herodian in construction.

The hypothesis for the Muslim extension of the Herodian platform has gained support since excavations were begun outside the southern wall of the platform in 1967. What was unearthed there was a large palace complex, unmistakably Muslim and dated by its excavators to the Umayyad period. The palace was connected at roof and ground levels with the Aqsa mosque which it abutted on the south; and it quite obviously formed part of a single religio-administrative complex together with the buildings atop the Haram. Someone, it is clear, had rather grandiose plans for Muslim Jerusalem, and they were not simply religious. If this person intended to rule the entire Abode of Islam from Jerusalem, Mu'awiya is a highly likely candidate.

Mu'awiya, it appears, changed his mind and chose Damascus over Jerusalem as his political capital, but the idea did not entirely disappear from Umayyad consciousness. The following is a late report-it comes from the fifceenth-century Jerusalem historian Mujrt al-Din -but we have no reason to doubt its authenticity:

When Sulayman, son of Abd al-Malik succeeded his brother al-Walid on throne of the caliphate in the year 96 [A.D. 715], he came to Jerusalem where numerous deputations came to recognize him. Never had one seen a richness so considerable than that which hastened to greet the new caliph. Seated under one of the domes that ornament the platform of the Sanctuary around the Rock in Jerusalem, perhaps that called the Dome of Sulayman by the Gate of the Dawardiyya, it is there that he held audience. They extended before the dome where he was a carpet on which they placed cushions and lounges. As soon as he had taken his place, he ordered his attendants to seat themselves. These latter took their places on the cushions and the lounges; at his side were sums of money and the pension registers. Sulayman had conceived the plan of living in Jerusalem, of making it his capital and bringing together there great wealth and a considerable population....

There are few actual eyewitness reports of the Muslims' establishing residence in Jerusalem in the seventh and early eighth centuries. Most of what we have, whether from Muslim, Christian, or Jewish sources, are later recollections, often and transparently edited to serve the political and religious needs of a later generation. One exception is the European pilgrim Arculf who has already been cited in connection with the earliest version of the al-Aqsa Mosque. He was in Jerusalem and the Holy Land sometime about 680, and if his interests are chiefly in the Christian holy places, which were the goal of his joumey, his narrative does reveal something of the topography of Jerusalem in the era of the Umayyads and perhaps something as well, if only by silence or implication, of the Muslim attitude toward the still predominantly Christian population.

The narrative is often in the third person because Arculf's recollections were set down by another, Adomnan, abbot of lona, who was visited by Arculf on the latter's return to Britain:

In the great wall which surrounds the city [ofJerusalem] Arculf counted eighty-four towers and six gates, which are situated in this order around the city: first, the Gate of David on the west side of Mount Sion; second is the gate of the Fuller's Field; third is St. Stephen's Gate; fourth, the Gate of Benjamin; fifth is a portula or "Little Gate" from which one descends by stairway to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and the sixth is the Gate of Tekoa.

This then is the order as one goes around the wall connecting these gates and towers. From this Gate of David it turns northwards and then to the east. Though there are six gates in the wall, only three are reckoned to be important as main thoroughfares, the one on the west, the one on the norrh, and the last on the east. Thus we see that one section of the wall with its towers has no gates, the section that extends across the northern edge of Mount Sion (which overlooks the City from the south), from the above mentioned Gate of David as far as the face of the mountain which looks eastward and ends in a cliff.

We cannot make complete sense of this, but at least some of the landmarks are clear: David's Gate, now called the Jaffa Gate, the main entry on the western side of the city; St. Stephen's Gate, the present Damascus Gate, on the northern side, not far from the place where Stephen was martyred and Eudocia built her church; and the Gate of Benjamin, likley the gate curtently and mistakenly called St. Stephen's on the eastern side of the city just north of the Haram. These are, as the text comments, the entries into the chief thoroughfares of the city. Following the sequence as Adomnan or Arculf sets it out, the Fuller's Field Gate would be somewhere in the northwest corner of the city, though a persistent tradition places the Fuller's Field in the southeast, near the Pool of Siloam, and the "little gate" somewhere along the eastern side of the city. Since this "portula" has no name in the text and yet fulfills the topographical definition of the Golden Gate-"descends by a stairway to the Valley of Jehoshaphat"-it is possible to think that at this stage the Golden Gate, which now entered directly into the enlarged Haram, was already sealed closed except for the small postern referred to here. The Tekoa Gate, finally, must have been somewhere on the south side of the city, probably in the southwestern corner.

Some additional details are supplied on an area that seems to be just inside the Damascus Gate. This gate was commonly known in the Muslim tradition as the Gate of the Column by reason of the tall column set up there in Roman days and still visible on the Madaba mosaic. It is to that well-known landmark that Arculf appears to be referring in the following passage:

We must speak briefly here of a very tall column which stands in the middle of the city, where it is seen by every passer-by coming northward from the holy places. This column was set up in the place where the Cross of the Lord was placed on a dead man and he returned to life. At the summer solstice when it is noon a marvelous event occurs. When the sun reaches mid-heaven, the column casts no shallow, but as soon as the solstice, that is, the twenty fourth of June, is past, and after three days the day begins to get shorter, it first casts a short shadow and then as the days pass a longer one.... Which demonstrates that the city of Jerusalem is situated in the center of the eatth. This explains why the Psalmist used these words to sing his prophecy of the holy places of the Passion and Resurrection which are in this Aelia, "But God, our King, before the ages worked salvation in the midst of the earth, " that is, in Jerusalem, which is called the "Navel of the Earth. ''

What follows from Arculf is far clearer, a description of the same feast of the Encaenia or the Dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher noted by Egeria in the fourth century. It appears to have been a major market day in Jerusalem, even under the Muslims:

Each year on the fifteenth of the month of September a great crowd always comes to Jerusalem. They come from almost every country and many nationalities to hold a fair, to buy and sell to each other. Thus these crowds from various countries have necessarily to spend some days in the inns of the city, while a great many of their camels and horses, asses and oxen, for their various baggages, cover the city streets with their revolting dung. Not only does the smell of this clogging filth cause a considerable nuisance to the citizens, but it even makes walking about difficult.

Then a truly wonderful thing occurs. On the night after this aforementioned festival an immense abundance of rain pours down on the city and washes all the disgusting dirt off the streets and makes them free of filth. For God made the terrain of Jerusalem a slope going gradually down from the northem ridge of Mount Sion towards the lower ground by the northern and eastem walls. In this way it is impossible for the heavy rain to collect in the streets but it rushes downhill from the higher to the lower ground. The flood of water from the heavens flows out through the eastern gates and down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the Brook Kedron, taking with it all that revolting dung. And once Jerusalem has been thus "baptized" the downpour stops....

Arculf is at his explicit best on the subject of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, even supplying sketches of its plan. This is our first literary view of the church since its reconstruction by Patriarch Modestus after the Persian destruction of A.D. 614:

When I asked Arculf about the houses in that city, he replied: "I remember how often I used to see and visit many buildings in the city and look at the numerous large stone houses filling the space within the city walls. They are wonderfully well built. But for the present let us pass them all over except the marvelous buildings in the holy places, to wit, of the Cross and the Resurrection. " I carefully questioned Arculf about those places, and especially about the Lord's Sepulcher and the church built over it, and Arculf drew its shape for me on a wax tablet.

This is a very large church made entirely of stone and built on a remarkable round plan. Three walls rise from the foundations, and they have a single lofty roof, with a broad pathway between one wall and the next. There are also three altars arranged in particular emplacements in the middle wall. This lofty round church, with the above mentioned altars, one looking toward the south, another to the north, and a third on the west, rests on twelve columns of remarkable size. It has eight doors, or entries, in the three walls divided by the width of a street. Four of them are on the northeast, also called the Caecias wind, while the other four are on the southeast.

In the center of the round space enclosed by this church there is a small building cut out of a single rock. Nine men can stand praying inside it, and a man of ordinary height has one and a half feet clearance between his head and its roof. The entrance to this small building faces east. Its whole exterior is covered with choice marble, and the roof is decorated on the ourside with gold and supports a large gold Cross.

Inside this small building is the Lord's Tomb, which has been cut into the same rock on the north side. The pavement of this building is, however, lower than the position of the Tomb, and the distance between the floor and the edge of the Sepulcher on the side is about three palms. This information was given me by Arculf who had often been to visit the Lord's Tomb and measured it accurately.

Further to the east has been built, another very large church on the site which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. From the roof hangs a large bronze chandelier with lamps suspended from it by ropes. Below it stands a great silver cross, fixed in the same socket as the wooden cross on which the Savior of mankind once suffered. There is a cave in this same church, which has been cut into the rock below the place of the Lord's Cross. Here there is an altar on which sacrifice is offered for the souls of certain specially honored persons. Their bodies are laid in the court in front of the door of this Church of Golgotha, until the Holy Mysteries for the dead are completed. This rectangular stone construction built on the site of Calvary has adjoining it on the east the stone basilica built with great reverence by King Constantine. It is also cared the Martyrium, and people say it was built on the site where, by the permission of the Lord, after 233 years had gone by, the Cross of the Lord was discovered hidden underground, together with the two Crosses of the thieves. Between these two churches comes the renowned spot where the patriarch Abraham set up an altar, and arranged a pile of wood on it, and took up his drawn sword to sacrifice his own son Isaac Now a large wooden table stands there, on which the alms for the poor are offered by the people. I questioned Arculf further and he added: "There is a small court between the Anastasis, that is, the round church we have described above, and the Basilica of Constantine. It extends as far as the Church of Golgotha and lamps are burning continuously in it day and night."

Somewhat more direct, though considerably less circumstantial, is the account of the Holy Sepulcher/Calvary complex incorporated in the Life St. Willibald, the biography of a German cleric who was in Jerusalem in A.D. 724:

From there he [Willibald] came on to Jerusalem, to that place where the Lord's Holy Cross was found. That place is called "The Place of Calvary" and there is now a church there. Earlier this place was outside Jerusalem, but Helena put the place inside Jerusalem after she discovered the Cross. Now there are three wooden Crosses standing there outside the church, on the east of it near the wall, in memory of the Holy Cross of our Lord and of the others who were crucifed with him. At present they are not inside the church, but stand outside under a roof. Nearby there is that garden in which was the Savior's tomb. The tomb had been carved out of a rock, and the rock juts up out of the ground; at the bottom it is square but it is tapered toward the top. The tomb is now surmounted by a Cross, and there is now a remarkable house over it. On the east of the rock of the tomb a door has been made, through which people enter the tomb to pray. Inside there is a bed [or shelf] on which the Lord's body lay. Fifeeen golden bowls stand on the shelf. They are filled with oil and burn day and night. The shelf on which the Lord's body lay is inside the rock of the tomb on the north side, that is, on the the right side of the tomb as one enters the tomb to pray. There also, in front of the tomb door, lies a large square stone, like the earlier stone which the angel rolled away from the tomb door.

Another church that attracted Arculf's attention, and for which he also provided a sketch plan, was the Imbomon, built over the spot of Jesus' Ascension atop the Mount of Olives. In shape and in purpose it was far closer to the Muslim Dorne of the Rock than to the Church of the Resurrection across the city:

Nowhere on the whole of the Mount of Olives is there a higher Spot than the one from which it is said that the Lord ascended into the heavens. A great round church stands there, which has round it three porticoes with vaulted roofs. But there is no vault or roof over the central part of the church; it is out of doors open to the sky, though on its eastern side there is an altar with a small roof over it.

There is no roof over the interior of the building so as not to prevent those who pray there from seeing the way from the last place where the Lord's feet were standing when he was carried up to heaven in a cloud At the time when they were building this church I have just been describing, it was impossible, as you will find written elsewhere, to extend the paved part over the place of the footprints of the Lord. Indeed the earth was unused to bear anything human and cast back the coverings in the face of those who were laying them. Moreover, the footmarks on the dust on which God stood provides a testimony which is permanent, since his footprints are to be seen in it, and even though people flock there, and in their zeal take away the soil where the Lord stood, it never becomes less, and to this day there are marks on the earth like footprints.

The sainted Arculf was an attentive visitor at this place, and he reports that it is situated, as we have explained, inside a large circular bronze railing, which is about the height of a man's neck, according to the measurements. In the center of it there is a sizable opening through which one looks down and sees the uncovered marks of the feet of the Lord plainly and clearly impressed in the dust. On the west of the railing is a kind of door, so that any entering by it can easily approach the sacred dust, reach their hands down through a hole in the railing and take in them some particles of the sacred dust.

Thus the account of our friend Arculf on the place of the Lord's footprints agrees exactly with what others have written, namely, that they could not be covered in any way, either with a roof, nor with any other sort of lower and closer covering, so they can always be seen by all who enter and the prints of the Lord's feet can be clearly pointed out there. A great lamp hangs above the circular railing from pulleys and lights the footprints of the Lord, burning day and night.

If the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Ascencion were provocativley similar in form and function, each building was also notoriously visible to the worshippers in the other:

On the western side of the round building described above are eight upper windows paned with glass. In these windows, and in corresponding positions, are eight lamps suspended from chains in such a way that each one of them seems to hang neither above nor below its window, but just inside it. These lamps shine out from their windows on the summit of the Mount of Olives with such brilliance that they light up not only the part of the Mount to the west, near this round stone church, but also the steps lealling all the way up from the Valley of Jehoshaphat to the city of Jerusalem, which are lighted in a wonderful manner, however dark the night. Most of the nearer part o fthe City [which would be, of course, the Haram al-Sharif] is lighted as well. The remarkable brilliance of these eight lamps shining out by night from the holy Mount and the place of the Lord's Ascension brings to the hearts of belevers a greater readiness for the love of God and strikes awe in their mind and deep compunction in their soul.

Arculf has little to say about Christian-Muslim reations in Jerusalem, but a recent rather curious controversy in the city did catch his interest:

A certain trustworthy Jewish believer, immediately after the Resurrection of the Lord, stole from his Tomb the sacred linen cloth and hid it in his house for many days. But by the grace of the Lord it was found again after the lapse of many years and brought to the notice of the whole people about three years ago . . .

The original thief had given the cloth to his son, it appears, and it was passed on secretly in the family for generations.

The Cloth of the Lord was handed on from father to son and from one belever to another it passed on by inheritance until the 95th generation. But many years had gone by, and after the 95th generation there were no more beleving [that is, Christian] heirs in the family. So the Holy Cloth was handed on to some Jews who were not believers. Unworthy though they were to receive such a gift, they nevertheless treated it with respect, and by the divine generosity were much blessed with riches of many kinds. But when the believing Jews heard among their people the true story about the Lord's Cloth, they began a violent dispute over it with the non-Christian Jews, seeking with all their might to get possession of it.

This contention, once it started, divided the people of Jerusalem into two factions, one the Christian believers and the other the non-Christian infidels. Both parties appealed to Mu'awiya, king of the Saracens, to adjudicate between them. In the presence of the Christian Jews he addressed as follows the unbeleving Jews, who were still persistently keeping the Lord's Cloth in their possession. "Put the Holy Cloth which you have in my hand!" They obliged the king, took it out of its box and laid it on his lap. With great reverence the king took it and commanded that a great fire be made in the courtyalld in the presence of all the people. When it was fully alight he rose, approached the fire and said to the two contending parties: "Now let Christ, the Savior of the world, who suffered for mankind, whose head, when he was entombed, was covered by this Cloth which I hold to my breast, judge by fire between you...."

The caliph threw the cloth into the fire. It rose up, fluttered, and descended among the Christians.

Then with deep respect they took the Lord's Cloth, a venerable gift from heaven.... and placed it in a church casket, wrapped in another cloth. One day our brother Arculf saw it taken out of its box, and among the great many people who kissed it, he did likewise. It measures about eight feet in length.

Arculf's attention remained strictly focused on the Christian holy places that he had come to visit in the East, but Willibald, who seems to have travelled more widely and in a somewhat more leisurely fashion, has a revealing anecdote on what the early eighth century traveller might expect in that society:

. . . They walked to a city which is called Emesa, twelve miles distant. There is a large church, which St. Helena built in honor of St. John the Baptist, and his head, which is now in Damascus, was there for a long time. There were at that point seven other people making the pilgrimage with Willibald. The Saracens, who had discovered that some strange and unknown men had arrived, suddenly arrested them and took them prisoner. Not knowing what country they had come from, they took them as spies. They took their prisoners along to a rich shaykh so that he could have a look at them and see where they had come from. So the shaykh asked where they had come from and what kind of business they were on. They replied by telling him from the beginning the exact reason for their whole journey. Then the shaykh answered as follows: "Many times have I seen people coming here, feflow-tribesmen of theirs, from those parts of the world. They mean no harm. All they want to do is fulfill their law. Then they left him and went to ask for a permit to go to Jerusalem, but The moment they arrived there, the govemor said they had been spying and ordered them to be kept prisoner till he found out from the king what he should do with them. . . .

There was in the city a merchant who wished to pay their ransom and free them from prison as an act of almsgiving and for the redemption of his own soul, and in that way they might be free to go as they wished. He was not successful, but instead sent them dinner and supper every day, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays sent his son to the prison to take them out to have a bath and bring them back again. And on Sundays he took them to church through the market so that they could see what goods were for sale, and whatever pleased them, these he then bought for them at his own expense, whatever it might be that caught their fancy. All the people of nearby towns were filled with curiosity and came out to look at them there. They were young and handsome men, well turned out and with good clothes.

The charge, or at least the suspicion, that foreign visitors or pilgrims in the Islamic world were there as spies was to have a long history in the Near East, but Willibald and his companions were eventually released through the intervention of a Spanish merchant-Spain was already in the hands of the Muslims-who was in Emesa and whose brother served as a chamberlain to Hisham (caliph A.D. 724-743), the "Saracen king, whose name was Mirmumnus." This connection with the Amir al-Mu'minin, or "Commander of the Faithful," as the caliphs were addressed, was more than adequate, and Willibald continued on to Damascus and eventually Jerusalem:

Our bishop [Willibald] arrived there [in Jerusalem] on the feast of St. Martin [November II]. But as soon as he reached the place he fell ill, and lay sick until a week before the Lord's nativity. Then, when he was feeling somewhat recovered and felt he had got the better of his illness, he got up and went off to visit the church called Holy Sion, which stands in the middle of Jerusalem. He prayed there and went on to Solomon's porch. There is there a pool, and sick people lie there waiting for the water to be moved and for the angel to come and move the water: then the first to get down into it is cured. It is where the Lord said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up your bed and walk. "

He [Willibald] also said that there was a great column standing in front of the city gate, which hall on top of it a Cross as a sign and to remind people of the place where the Jews wanted to carry off the body of St. Mary. For as the eleven Apostles were carrying the body of St. Mary and taking it down from Jerusalem, as soon as they reached the City gate the Jews wanted to seize it from them. But any one of them who reached out to take hold of the bier found that his arms were pinned and stuck to the bier, and that they could not pull them free till, by the grace of God and the prayers of the Apostles, they had been released. Then they left them alone. St. Mary departed this life right in the middle of Jerusalem at the place cared Holy Sion....

From there Bishop Willibald went down and came into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It is situated next to the city of Jerusalem on its eastern side. In the valley is the Church of St. Mary which contains her tomb, not because her body is buried there, but to commemorate her. After he prayed there he went up the Mount of Olives. There is now a church on the Mount of Olives at the place where the Lord prayed before his Passion and said to his disciples, "Watch and pray so you may not enter into temptation." From there he went to the church on the mountain itself, where the Lord ascended into heaven. In the center of it is a square brass thing [candelabrum.?] which is beautifully engraved. It is in the center of the church where the Lord ascended into heaven. In the middle of the brass thing is a square lantern with a small candle inside, the lantern encloses the candle on all sides. It is enclosed in this way so it will continue to burn, both in rain and sunshine. That church is open at the top and has no roof. Inside it, against the north and south walls, stand two columns, to remind people of the two men who said "Men of Galilee, why do you gaze into Heavenly?" And anyone who can creep between the wall and the column is freed from his sins.

. . . From there he went to Bethlehem, where the Lord was born, seven miles from Jerusalem. The place where Christ was born was originally an underground cave, and now it is a square room cut in the rock. All around it the earth has been dug our and thrown away, and over it a church has now been built. Over the actual place where our Lord was born an altar now stands, and they have also provided a smaller altar, so that when people want to celebrate Mass inside the cave, they can fetch the smaller altar and carry it there for the time when the Mass is being celebrated, and then carry it away again. The church [above the place] where the Lord was born is a splendid building constructed in the form of a Cross.

Before he departed, Willibald had two more encounters with the Muslim authorities:

From Jerusalem he went more than three hundred miles to the city of Emesa in Syria, and from that came to the city of Salamiyya all the far end of Syria. He spent the whole of Lent there since he fell sick and could not travel. The companions who were travelling with him went to the Saracen king called Mirmumnus wishing to ask him for a letter giving them permission to travel. 8ut they could not find the king since he had fled abroad from that district to escape the sickness and plague which devastated the district. Failing to find the king, they returned to stay together in Salamiyya till the week before Easrer. Then they returned to Emesa and begged the governor to give them a letter. So he divided them into pairs, and gave each pair a letter, since they could not go all together but had to travel in pairs because in that way it would be easier for them to find food.

Eventually the pilgrims reached Tyre, there to await a ship to take them to Constantinople and then home. But first the problem of "customs" had to be faced:

Earlier on, when he was in Jerusalem, Bishop Willibald had bought himself some balsam and put it into a container. Then he took a cane which was hollow, and put the container down inside, filling it with mineral oil.... And when they came to the City of Tyre the citizens arrested them and searched their baggage to discover if they had any concealed contraband, and if they had found anything, they would have at once inflicted on them the death penalty. So they made a thorough search of everything, but found nothing apart from this one container belonging to Willibald. They opened it and smelled to find what was inside it. But when they smelled the mineral oil, which was on top, inside the cane, but failed to find the balsam, underneath the mineral oil, in the container, they let them go.

Though Willibald was unaware of it, the city that had drawn him to the East had already been dealt a morbid political wound. In A.D. 716, the same Caliph Sulayman we saw sitting in state in Jerusalem founded out of the ruins of Christian Lydda the new city at Ramle near the Mediterranean coast and made it the administrative capital of Palestine. It was the Umayyads' Caesarea, their own place and so a better place from which to rule Palestine than an all too Christian Jerusalem. The founding of Ramle did not affect the sanctity of Jerusalem, merely its claim to secular power and, of course, the secular prosperity that would follow. How prosperity followed political power is all too clear in Muqaddasi's description of Ramle in A.D. 875, a mere century and a half after its foundation:

Al-Ramle is the capital of Palestine. It is a fine city and well built; its water is good and plentiful; its fruits are abundant. It combines manifold advantages, situated as it is in the midst of beautiful villages and lordly towns, near to holy places and pleasant hamlets. Commerce here is prosperous and means of livelihood easy. There is no finer mosque in Islam than the one in this city.... The capital stands among fruitful fields, walled towns, and serviceable hospices. It possesses magnificent hostelries and pleasant baths, dainty foods and various condiments, spacious houses, fine mosques and broad roads.... The chief mosque of al-Ramle is in the market, and it is even more beautiful and graceful than that of Damascus. It is called al-Abyad (the White Mosque).... I have heard my uncle relate that when the caliph [Hisham, A.D. 724-743] was about to build the minaret, it was reported to him that the Christians possessed columns of marble, then Iying buried beneath the sand, which they had prepared for the church of al-Bali'a [the later Abu Gosh]; thereupon Caliph Hisham informed the Christians that either they must show him where the columns lay or he would demolish the church at Lydda in order to use its columns for his mosque. So the Christians pointed out where they had buried their columns and they were very thick and tall and beautiful....

The earliest Muslim achievement in Jerusalem would be neither eroded nor even dimmed by Ramle or any other place. The Haram al-Sharif is an Umayyad monument as spectacular in its space, arrangement, and principal edifaces in the seventeenth century as in the seventh when it was designed and built. Over the course of the Islamic centuries in Jerusalern the Haram platform has been framed on its western and northem sides with graceful porticoes and the attractive facades of schools and convents, but the eye is still drawn to the space they enclose, and within it, the two domes of the Aqsa and the Rock. We have no description of the place from the Umayyads themselves, but the earliest preserved description of the Haram, that written by Ibn al-Faqih in A.D. 903, still reflects the original achievement:

It is said that the length of the Noble Sanctuary at Jerusalem is 1,500 feet, and its width 1,050 feet. There are (in its buildings) 4,000 beams of wood, 700 pillars (of stone), and 500 brass chains. It is lighted every night by 1,000 lamps, and it is served by 140 slaves. The monthly allowance of olive oil is 100 kists [about 150 quarts] and yearly they provide 400,000 yards of matting, also 25,000 water jars. Within the Noble Sanctuary are sixteen chests for volumes of the Quran set apart for public service, and these manuscripts are the admiration of all men. There are four pulpits for volunteer preachers and one set apart for a salalried preacher; and there are also four tanks for ablutions. On the various roofs, in place of clay, are used 45,000 sheets of lead. To the right of the prayer niche (in the Aqsa Mosque) is a slab on which, in a circle, is written the name of Muhammad=God's blessing be upon him-and on a white stone behind the qibla [that is, the southern] wall, is the inscription: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Muhammad is God's Apostle. Hamzah [the Prophet's uncle] was his helper." Within the mosque are three enclosures for the women, each enclosure being 105 feet in length. There are within and without [the Haram] altogether fifty gates (and doors).

In the middle of the Haram area is a plafform measuring 450 feet in length, 60 feet across, and its height is 13 1/2 feet. It has six flights of stairways leading up to the Dome of the Rock. The Dome rises in the middle of this platform. The ground-plan of the same measures 150 feet by 150 feet, its height is 105 feet and its circumference is 540 feet. In the Dome every night they light 300 lamps. It has four gates roofed over, and at each gate are four dours, and over each gate is a portico of marble. The stone of the Rock measures 51 feet by 40 1/2 feet and beneath the Rock is a cavern in which people pray. This cavern is capable of containing sixty-two persons. The [building of the] Dome is covered with white marble and its roof with red gold. In its walls and high in the drum are fifty-six openings, glazed with glass of various hues; each measures 9 feet in height and 6 spans across. The Dome, which was built by Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, is supported on twelve piers and thirty pillars. It consists of a dome over a dome [that is, an inner and an outer], on which are sheets of lead and white marble.

To the east of the Dome of the Rock stands the Dome of the Chain. It is supported by twenty marble columns and its roof is covered with sheets of lead. In front of it [again on the east] is the prayer station of al-Khidr. The platform occupies the middle of the Haram area. To the north is the Dome of the Prophet and the prayer station of Gabriel; near the Rock is the Dome of the Ascension.

When these lines were written in the opening years of the tenth century, the Muslims had already for a long time enjoyed an untroubled and almost casual possession of their holy city in Palestine, a place which for them, as for the Christians before them, had no particular political significance that we can now discern. But this city which had passed from Christian to Muslim hands was even then taking on a different kind of importance in the minds of other Christians in lands and for reasons far beyond the thoughts and even the imaginings of the present masters of al-Quds.