Jerusalem. The Biography

dome echoes those of the Holy Sepulchre and Hagia Sofia in Constantinopleyet its circular walkways designed for circumambulation recall the Kaaba of Mecca.
    The Rock was the site of Adam’s paradise, Abraham’s altar, the place where David and Solomon planned their Temple later visited by Muhammad on his Night Journey. Abd al-Malik was rebuilding the Jewish Temple for the true revelation of God, Islam.
    The building has no central axis but is encircled thrice – first by the outside walls, next by the octagonal arcade and then right under the dome, bathed in sunlight, the arcade around the Rock itself: this declared that this place was the centre of the world. The dome itself was heaven, the link to God in human architecture. The golden dome and the lush decorations and gleaming white marble declared this was the new Eden, and the place for the Last Judgement when Abd al-Malik and his Umayyad dynasty, would surrender their kingdom to God at the Hour of the Last Days. Its wealth of images – jewels, trees, fruit, flowers and crowns – make it a joyful building even for non-Muslims – its imagery combined the sensuality of Eden with the majesty of David and Solomon.
    The Dome’s message was therefore also imperial: since he had not regained Mecca from his rebels, he was declaring the grandeur and permanence of his dynasty to the Islamic world – and possibly, if he had not retaken the Kaaba, he might have made this his new Mecca. The gold dome projected his glory as an Islamic emperor. But it had a wider audience: just as Justinian’s Hagia Sofia in Constantinople had surpassed Solomon, so Abd al-Malik was surpassing Justinian, and Constantine the Great too, a rebuke of the Christian claim to be the new Israel. Ironically, the mosaics were probably the work of Byzantine craftsmen, lent to the Commander by Justinian II during a rare peace between the empires.
    After it was finished in 691/2, Jerusalem was never the same again: Abd al-Malik’s astonishing vision seized the skyline of Jerusalem for Islam by building on the mountain, disdained by the Byzantines, which ruled the city. Physically the Dome dominated Jerusalem and overshadowed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – and that was Abd al-Malik’s purpose, believed later Jerusalemites such as the writer al-Muqaddasi. It worked: henceforth right up into the twenty-first century, the Muslims mocked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the
Kayamah
in Arabic – calling it the
Kumamah –
the Dungheap. The Dome both complemented and vanquished the rival yet related claims of Jews and Christians, so Abd al-Malik confronted both with the superior novelty of Islam. Circling the building, he placed 800 feet of inscriptions that denounce the idea of the divinity of Jesus with a directness that hints atthe close relationship between the two faiths of monotheists: they shared much but not the Trinity. The inscriptions are fascinating because they are our first glimpse at the text of the Koran which Abd al-Malik was having collated into its final form.
    The Jews were less important imperially but more important theologically. The Dome was maintained by 300 black slaves assisted by twenty Jews and ten Christians. The Jews could not help but see the Dome with hope: was it their new Temple? They were still allowed to pray there and the Umayyads created an Islamic version of the Temple rituals of purification, anointment and circumambulation of the stone. *
    The Dome has a power beyond all this: it ranks as one of the most timeless masterpieces of architectural art; its radiance is the cynosure of all eyes wherever one stands in Jerusalem. It shimmers like a mystical palace rising out of the airy and serene space of the esplanade which immediately became an enormous open-air mosque, sanctifying all the space around it. The Temple Mount became instantly – and still remains – a place for recreation and relaxation. Indeed the Dome created an earthly paradise that combined the tranquillity and sensuality of this world with the sanctity of the hereafter, and that was its genius. Even in its earliest years, there was, wrote Ibn Asakir, no greater pleasure than ‘eating a banana in the shade of the Dome of the Rock’. It ranks with the Temples of Solomon and Herod as one of the most sucessful sacred-imperial edifices ever built and, in the twenty-first century, it has become the ultimate secular touristic symbol, the shrine of resurgent Islam and the totem of Palestinian