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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2017
The existing discussion regarding the motives for building the Dome of the Rock revolves around two suggestions: that the incentive for building was the fierce competition between ʿAbd al-Malik and ʿAbdallah b. al-Zubayr in Mecca, and that it was competition with local Christian monuments that moved ʿAbd al-Malik to building this outstanding edifice. This paper suggests that a third incentive lay in the political and ideological rivalry with Constantinople that was at its peak during that period. This rivalry drove ʿAbd al-Malik to build a monument that would outdo those of Constantinople, and especially that of the Hagia Sophia. Muslim tradition emphasized that Constantinople had contaminated the site of the Temple and had claimed to inherit its place as God's throne on earth. The building of the Dome of the Rock, the New Temple of Solomon, was thus meant to redeem the Temple of Jerusalem's honour as of old against the claims of Constantinople.
I would like to thank Prof. Amikam Elad for his helpful comments. Errors remain mine alone.
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24 Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, VI, 18; idem, Tricennalia 9, ed. Heikel, GCS VII (1902), 221; Linder, “Ecclesia and Synagoga”, 1032–33.
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39 Epistle 2: 9–10.
40 The far-reaching ramifications of this concept, according to which it is Byzantium and its capital Constantinople that are the distinct inheritors of the Jews as the Elect Nation, are discussed in a PhD thesis by Shay Eshel entitled “The concept of the elect nation in Byzantium: evolution of an identity and its socio-political implications” (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2016).
41 Magdalino, P., “The history of the future and its uses”, in Shepard, Jonathan (ed.), The Expansion of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 29–63 Google Scholar, esp. 37–8.
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44 Jerome, Commentarium in Sophoniam, 1: 15, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 76A (Turnhout, 1970), 672–3.
45 Jerome, Commentarium in Isaiam, 64: 10, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 73A (Turnhout, 1963), 740; PL 24, 626.
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53 The term chosen for the consecration is the specific term found originally in the Septuagint for the dedication of the Temple by Solomon (II Chr. 7: 9) and later used for the rededication of the Temple by the Macabees (I Macc. 4:56 et al.; John, 10:22). This term is not found in the classical Greek sources.
54 Egeria 48: 1, ed. E. Francheschini and R. Weber, Itinerarium Egeriae, in Itineraria et Alia Geographica, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 175, (Turnhout, 1965), 89; English translation of the text in Wilkinson, John, Egeria's Travels to the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Ariel; Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1981), 146Google Scholar.
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66 Ousterhout, “New temples”, 248–9.
67 See above, notes 6–12.
68 See Abū al-Maʿālī al-Musharraf b. al-Murajjā b. Ibrāhīm al-Maqdisī, Faḍāʾil bayt al-maqdis wa-al-khalīl wa-faḍāʾil al-shām, ed. O. Livne-Kafrī (Shfaram, 1995), e.g. no. 5, 13, 14; no. 7, p. 15; no. 9, p. 17; nos 10, 11, 18; passim.
69 For the use of this term see Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī, Faḍāʾīl al-Bayt al-Muqaddas, ed. Hasson, I. (Jerusalem, 1979), 78–9Google Scholar; Ibn al-Murajjā, no. 38, 51.
70 See Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. de Goeje, M.J. et al. (Leiden, 1879–1901)Google Scholar, Taʾrīkh, I, 2408 with an isnād going back to Rajāʾ b. Ḥaywah (d. 730), a famous scholar born in Baysān (former Scythopolis) who was in charge of the construction of the Dome of the Rock under ʿAbd al-Malik. In this report it is the Jewish convert to Islam, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār who is asked by ʿUmar to designate the place of prayer on the Temple Mount; a fragment from the Cairo Geniza dating probably from the eleventh century contains a story about ʿUmar seeking the Jews’ help in locating the holy site: Cambridge TS Arabic Box 6 (1), fol. 1, published and translated from Judaeo-Arabic into Hebrew by M. Gil, Palestine during the First Muslim Period (634–1099), Part II – Cairo Geniza Documents (Tel-Aviv, 1983), 1–3 (in Hebrew).
71 Flusin, B., “L'Esplanade du Temple à l'arrivée des arabes d'après deux récits byzantins”, in Raby, J. and Johns, J. (eds), Bayt al-Maqdis, vol. 1, 17–31 Google Scholar, esp. 25–6.
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73 See above, notes 6–12, 14.
74 See R. Shani, “Iconography”, 158–207, with a survey of earlier literature regarding the ornamentation, esp. pp. 161–76; Soucek, P., “The temple of Solomon in Islamic art”, in Guttman, J. (ed.), The Temple of Solomon: Archaeological Fact and Medieval Tradition in Christian, Islamic and Jewish Art (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976)Google Scholar.
75 O. Livne-Kafri, “Islamic traditions on Jerusalem between Judaism and Christianity”, in O. Livne-Kafri, “A note on some traditions”, 81–3.
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77 As noted by Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, 162–3.
78 Abū al-Maʿālī al-Musharraf b. al-Murajjā b. Ibrāhīm al-Maqdisī, Faḍāʾil bayt al-maqdis wa-al-khalīl wa-faḍāʾil al-shām, ed. Livne-Kafrī, O. (Shfaram, 1995)Google Scholar, 63, no. 50; see also al-Wāsiṭi, ed. Hasson, 86, no. 138; Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, 163. As Elad notes, in the version of al-Wāsiṭi, the expression “in one of the holy books” (baʿḍ al-kutub) is replaced by “it is written in the Torah” (maktūb fī al-tawrāt). See also Livne-Kafri, O., “Christian attitudes reflected in the Muslim literature”, Proche-Orient Chretien 54, 2004, 358Google Scholar, n. 52 and p. 365; idem, “Jerusalem in early Islam: The eschatological aspect”, Arabica 53/3, 2006, 382–403 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “On Muslim Jerusalem in the period of its formation”, Liber Annuus 55, 2005, 203–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mourad, “The symbolism of Jerusalem”, 97–8.
79 This tradition was later censured, its Jewish background obscured; see Elad, “Why did ʿAbd al-Malik build”, 38, where he translates a section from Sibṭ b. al-Jawzī's (1186–1256) Miraʾāt al-Zamān, as cited by Ibn Kathīr. The second part of this text bears close parallels to the traditions of Faḍāiʾl Bayt al-Maqdis and at its end appears the following version of this tradition: “Rejoice, Oh Jerusalem, which means I shall send to thee my servant, ʿAbd al-Malik, who shall restore to you your first kingdom, and I shall adorn thee with gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones, that is the Ṣakhra, and I shall put my throne on thee as it was before. For I am Allah, there is no God but myself alone, no partner have I”.
80 See Elad, “Why did ʿAbd al-Malik build”, 38. Ibn al-Jawzī's sources are noted as al-Wāqidī (d. 823) and Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 819) and his father (d. 763). Other traditions regarding David, which are based on Biblical and later Jewish tradition, are to be found in the Fadāʾil literature. See e.g. Mourad, “The symbolism of Jerusalem”, 91–3.
81 Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam, 24 and n. 36; for the Jewish sources see Aptowitzer, V., “The heavenly temple in the Agada”, Tarbitz 2, 1931, 145–9Google Scholar; 271–2 (in Hebrew); Solomon is described in I Chronicles 29: 23 as sitting on God's throne (“So Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king in place of his father David”).
On the concept of God's throne and its centrality in Jewish literature see Ilan, M. Bar, “God's throne – what is underneath it, against it, and next to it”, Daat, Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah, 15, 1985, 21–35 Google Scholar, and additional bibliography there (Hebrew).
82 See Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam, 24, n. 36 (Hebrew), citing Ibn al-Murajjā, 106, no. 113.
83 Rosen-Ayalon, M., The Early Islamic Monuments of al-Haram al-Sharif: An Iconographic Study (Jerusalem, 1989)Google Scholar, 54, 62; Shani, “Iconography”, 176.
84 See Van Ess, “ʿAbd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock”, esp. pp. 89; 95–8; Livne-Kafri, “A note on some traditions”.
85 See Busse, “The Temple of Jerusalem”, 24; Sebeos, ch. 43, in The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos, trans. and annot. by Thomson, R.W. (Liverpool, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, vol. 1, 102.
86 See Flusin, B., “L'Esplanade du Temple”, 25–6; Hoyland, R., Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (Princeton: Darwin Press 1997, 100–1)Google Scholar.
87 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 63.
88 Congourdeau, “Jérusalem et Constantinople”, 128–9.
89 See Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. De Boor, p. 339, AM 6127 (634/5), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 471–2.
90 On Theophilus as a historical source see Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 194–236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 206–36; regarding ʿUmar in Jerusalem see pp. 15–6; for the text based on its various derivative sources see Hoyland, R., Theophilus of Edessa's Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 126–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, 31.
91 See Hoyland, Theophilus, n. 299.
92 For a survey of these sources see now also L. Nees, Perspectives, 8–13.
93 See Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam, 14 (Hebrew); Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 65–6.
94 Ibn al-Murajjā, no. 30, p. 40; see also the tradition attributed to al-Suddī in al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 717. Livne-Kafri, “Islamic traditions”, 14 (in Hebrew). For an English version see O. Livne-Kafri, “A note on some traditions”, 71–83.
95 See Tafsīr al- Ṭabarī (Cairo, 1943), vol. 15, 16, and Ibn al-Murajjā, 35, no. 24, who does not mention Jaffa; Livne-Kafri, “Islamic traditions”, 14–5, and parallel sources there.
96 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 706; trans. M. Perlmann, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. IV (Albany, NY, 1987), 98.
97 Gil, “The political history of Jerusalem in the early Muslim period”, in The History of Jerusalem, 196; Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam, 10 (Hebrew); Prawer, J., “Jerusalem in Christian and Jewish perspective in the early middle ages”, Cathedra 17, 1990 Google Scholar, 51 (in Hebrew).
98 See Livne-Kafri, “A note on some traditions”, 81–3.
99 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 2409.
100 On him see Gil, History of Palestine, section 158, p. 122.
101 Al-Wāsiṭī, Faḍāʾīl al-Bayt al-Muqaddas, 78–9, no. 131.
102 Ibn al-Murajjā, no. 38, 51–2.
103 Heraclius, it should be noted, is consistently portrayed in Muslim sources as a positive Emperor, unlike all his predecessors and successors, having vindicated, according to Muslim tradition the umma and legitimized the Prophet; see El-Sheikh, Nadia Maria, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 39–54 Google Scholar.
104 The use of the name Rūmiyya refers to the Roman Empire, both before its Christianization, when Rome was its capital, and afterwards, when the capital was transferred to Constantinople. The term Byzantium is an early modern one, intended to create such a differentiation, while in Late Antiquity and the middle ages the name of the empire remained the same throughout.
See e.g. Ibn al-Murajjāʾ no. 38, 51–2; no. 231, 168; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 706 where the name refers to the Empire after Constantine, while in no. 24, 35 no. 218, 162, the name clearly refers to the city of Rome during the first century. See also “Pirkei Mashiach”, Midrashei Geula, ed. Even Shmuel, Y., (Tel-Aviv, 1943), 320 (in Hebrew)Google Scholar: “ויבא משיח בן יוסף ויתגרה מלחמתו עם מלך אדום וינצח את אדום, ויהרוג מהם תלי תלים. ויהרג את מלך אדום, ויחריב מדינת רומי, ויוציא קצת כלי המקדש, שהם גנוזים בבית יוליאנוס קיסר ויבא לירושלים.”
105 Ibn al-Murajjā, no. 29, p. 39. This tradition is told also by the Qaraites Salmon b. Yeruḥim, Commentary on Lamentation XLIV, in Gil, History of Palestine, Section 81, 67, n. 70.
106 See Elad, Medieval Worship, 19, 45, 54, 56.
107 Probably a reference to Isaiah 60:1 (“קומי אורי כי בא אורך וכבוד ה' עליך זרח; כי הנה החשך יכסה ארץ וערפל לאמים ועליך יזרח ה' וכבודו עליך יראה” “Arise, shine, for your light has dawned; the Presence of the Lord has shone upon you! Behold! Darkness shall cover the earth, and thick clouds the peoples; But upon you the Lord will shine, And his Presence be seen over you”. The English translation is taken from the new Jewish Publication Society Hebrew?English Tanakh (Philadelphia, 2003).
108 “My House” is the Biblical term often used for the Temple in Jerusalem.
109 A more literal translation would be “bald and bare”. See D. Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 60, where he translates this expression in a parallel tradition in Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād as “bald and bare”.
110 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, I, 2409; trans. Y. Friedmann, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. 13, 196 with one change for shabbahūki “likened you to My Throne” rather than “presented you as if you were similar to My Throne”.
111 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh.
112 See Friedmann, The History of al-Ṭabarī, n. 732, citing H. Busse, “ʿOmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb in Jerusalem”, JSAI 5, 1984, 92 n. 72; Sabā and Qādhir are mentioned also in a prophecy on the destruction of Constantinople in Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād, Fitan, 285, following another such prophecy which names Yaman and Qays as the protagonists. Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 62, and n. 108, notes that Sabā is identified with Yemenite Arabs while Qādhir (= Kedar) is usually equated with Quraysh. In Abū ʿAbdallah Nuʿaym b. Hammād b. Marwān al-Khuzāʿī al-Marwazī, Kit ā b al-fitan (Beirut, 1993), 299, Sabā is equated with ahl al-yaman.
113 Rubin, U., Between Bible and Qurʾan: the Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 20–26 Google Scholar; see also, Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 61–2.
114 In a letter attributed to Kaʿb al-Aḥbār: قل لصور مدينة الروم, وهي تسمي باسماء كثيرة” Nuʿaym b. Hammād, Kit ā b al-fitan, 299; Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 61.
115 Nuʿaym b. Hammād, Kit ā b al-fitan, 299.
116 For Sharīḥ b. ʿUbayd see Tahdīb, vol. 4, p. 328; Livne-Kafri, Faḍāʾil Bayt al-Maqdis, no. 9, n. 3; no. 326, n. 1.
The version brought here is Nuaʿym b. Ḥammād, Kitāb al-fitan, 284. The translation is based on David Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic, 60–61 with a few changes; for parallel versions see also Ibn al-Murajjā, no. 342, 231–2. The text there is somewhat problematic, and the isnād goes back to al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) (on him, see Sezgin, F., Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1967), 516–7Google Scholar; J. Schacht, “al-Awzāʿī”, EI2 ); also Yūsūf b. Yaḥyā al-Sulamī, ʿAqd al-durar fī akhbār al-muntaẓar (Beirut, 1983), 225; Ibn al-Fakīh, Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. De Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1885), p. 146, cited by el-Cheikh, N., “Constantinople through Arab eyes”, in Neuwirth, A. et al. , Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature – Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach: Proceedings of the International Symposium in Beirut, June 25th–June 30th, 1996 (Beirut, 1999), 528Google Scholar.
What follows is Ibn al-Murajjā's version: Constantinople gloated over the destruction of Bayt al-Maqdis since they were avaricious(?). [The text reads الحاروا, maybe a corrupt form of لحز, تلحز] “And she behaved proudly and was insolent and haughty and God called her the insolent and the arrogant because she gloated over (the destruction of) Bayt al-Maqdis (saying) that God's throne is on the waters and explained that it was she who is on the waters. And God became angry at her and promised to punish her and the exalted one said to her: ‘I swear (to you), oh haughty (city), because you disobeyed my command and were insolent, I will send to you my servants, believers from dispersed dwellings, and I will fill their hearts with courage until I will cause them to be like the hearts of lions coming out of the forest. Then I will terrify the hearts of your people with the fear of the blasphemers. I will then take off your ornaments, your silk vestments and your splendid garments and will abandon you, and no one shall cry: “Woe to thee”, and your dove shall not hatch its eggs. Then I will bring down on you three fires from the sky: a fire of tar, and a fire of bitumen, and a fire of naphtha; and I shall leave you desolate, bare, and bald. Because it has been a long time already that I have been shared (by other gods) in you, that others have been be worshipped, and that I have been maligned, therefore I will ignore you until the day of your repentance, you will not hasten, oh haughty (city), but I shall not fail to attain my wish”.
117 Neuwirth, A., “The spiritual meaning of Jerusalem in Islam”, in Rosovsky, N. (ed.), City of the Great King (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 93–116 Google Scholar, esp. p. 109; see also now M. Milwright, The Dome of the Rock, 77–9.
118 See M. Rosen-Ayalon, The Early Islamic Monuments of al-Haram al-Sharif; Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, index “Last Days”; Neuwirth, “The spiritual meaning of Jerusalem”, esp. 109–12; Necipoğlu, “The Dome of the Rock as palimpsest”, 28–36.
119 On this see S. Bashear, “Apocalyptic and other materials on early Muslim–Byzantine wars: a review of Arabic sources”, JRAS, series 3.2, 1991, 173–207; El-Sheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, 65–71; Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾān, 20–31; Livne-Kafri, Jerusalem in Early Islam, 14, 29, 63–4, 66, 67 (Hebrew). On Constantinople in Byzantine apocalyptic literature see A. Külzer, “Konstantinopel in der apokalyptischen Literatur der Byzantiner”, in H. Hunger and W. Hörandner (eds), Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik (Vienna, 2000), 51–76; Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic.
120 For the Hagia Sophia as the symbol of Constantinople see Fenster, E., Laudes Constantinopolitanae (Munich, 1968), 201, 214Google Scholar.
121 See Kaegi, W.E., “Confronting Islam: emperors versus caliphs (641–c. 850)”, Cambridge History of Byzantium (Cambridge, 2008), 369–86Google Scholar; Rotter, G., “Maslama b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān”, EI2 , vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill), 740Google Scholar.
122 See Blair, “What is the date of the Dome of the Rock?”; Milwright, Dome of the Rock, 65–6.
123 See e.g. Khirbat al-Mafjir, the paintings in Quṣayr ʿAmra; various Roman bathhouses, e.g. Hammath Gader; it has been claimed that the Dome of the Rock is modelled after the Anastasis of the Holy Sepulchre: see Bieberstein, K. and Bloedhorn, H., “Jerusalem: Grundzüge der Baugeschichte von Chalkolithikum bis zur Frühzeit der osmanischen Herrschaft”, in Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients Reihe B , N (Wiesbaden, 1994), vol. 3, 72–92 Google Scholar.
124 See El-Sheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, 56–9.
125 Flood, F.B., The Great Mosque of Damascus (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 228–45Google Scholar, 78–9.
126 Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus, 243.
127 See Milwright, The Dome of the Rock, ch. 7, 172–213.
