The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem (Vintage International)

by Kanan Makiya

  Other details: On the significance of the passage from the Book of Revelation cited by the hair-shirted leader of the group that intended to destroy Abd al-Malik’s Dome (a fictional incident), see Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). The imagery that Ishaq conjures up comparing the Dome to a beautiful woman bedecked with ornaments is adapted from Lamentations 4. I have adapted the early traditions relating to the merits of Mecca versus Jerusalem from the examples cited in Kister’s “You Shall Only Set Out for Three Mosques.” On the smells of Paradise, see the Quran 83:23–28, 76:5–22, and 52:19.

  Grabar, in Formation, tells a wonderful story taken from the tenth-century geographer Ibn Rusta on the origins of the extremely elaborate uses that various kinds of incense and perfumes were put to in the Dome of the Rock. One day a certain Uthman ibn Maz’un spat in the covered part of the court of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina. “It made him so sad that his wife enquired about the reason for his unhappiness. He answered, ‘I spat in the qibla while praying. But I did then go back there to wash it, then I made a paste with saffron and covered it with it.” Ibn Rustah comments: “It is thus this particular Uthman who was the first one to cover the qibla with perfume.” Grabar goes on to make a very important observation: “The very nature of the story, its incidental and accidental character personalized through some otherwise little known individual, illustrates the point that, in the Muslim view of Islam and of its growth, there was no preconceived, theoretical notion of a holy place but an accretion of unique and at times trivial events that became accepted. It is as though the culture were psychologically reluctant to interpret abstractly the physical reality of its Muslim life.”

  Finally, the title of this chapter comes from the line in Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity,” and the last citation “The eyes attain Him not, but He attains the eyes,” is from the Quran 6:103.

  The Rock of Judgment

  The correspondence of the ancient Egyptian words for “south” and “north” with “face” and “back of the head” is from Henri Frankfurt, Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Penguin Books, 1949). Umar ibn al-Khattab is reported to have said that he would not have kissed the Black Stone had he not seen the Prophet doing it. On Zion’s “foundation stone,” Ishaq is citing Isaiah 28:16. The Jerusalem-born historian and geographer al-Muqaddasi wrote: “The Holy Land is truly a mine of profit both for This World and the Next.” (Le Strange, 1890). Ka’b’s denunciation of building is a combination of Isaiah 14 and a saying by the famous preacher, Hasan al-Basri, who died in 728. See EI2 under “Hasan al-Basri.” Desert monks used the expression “to work the earth of the heart”; see Norris. Abraham is referred to in the Quran 4:124 as the “friend of God.” Ishaq’s ruminations on true faith versus good works is adapted from a conversation between the great ninth-century Sufi teacher Dhu ’l-Nun and his disciples. See Tor Andrae, In the Garden of Myrtles (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987). The passage from the Quran cited just before the end of the chapter is 2:130.

  In the Name of God …

  At the heart of the prophet Muhammad’s message lay the conviction that the last day, the day of judgment and retribution, was about to strike. The Quran speaks of it in the present tense. Different natural catastrophes will usher it in—the signs described by Ishaq. On this matter, see Tor Andrae, Mohammed: The Man and His Faith (Harper & Row, 1960). As a consequence the set of beliefs in al-sa’a, the last hour, al-fana’ al-mutlaq, the complete annihilation, yawm al-qiyama, the day of resurrection, and yawm al-din, the day of judgment, became essential in Islam. The disappearance of the Ka’ba and the evaporation of all words from the pages of scripture are signs according to al-Ghazzali (1058–1111). See Haddad and Smith (1981) for a comprehensive discussion. The parallels in Jewish messianic thought are discussed in G. Scholem, “Towards an Understanding of the Messianic Idea,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971). Passages from the Quran that are integrated into the text or cited are, in the order of their occurrence: 54:2; 54:1; 69: 13–16, 81:1–14; and 82:17.

  Ishaq’s description of the al-mahdi, or rightly guided restorer of true religion and justice who, according to a widely held belief among Muslims, will rule before the end of the world, is actually attributed in the tradition to his father, Ka’b. See EI2, vol. 5, under “al-Mahdi,” where much of my material on the Divinely Guided One originates. The three things that catch men unawares, a found article, a scorpion and “the coming of the Divinely Guided One,” or the mahdi, is from a third-century Talmudic teacher cited in Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism. The image of redemption breaking like a dawn on the horizon is from a story in the Mishna cited in the same source. Scholem notes that, by medieval times, it is no longer easy to tell whether it is Jewish messianic ideas that are being incorporated into Muslim ones or the other way around.

  Was the Dome of the Rock, and the Haram complex of which it is a part, conceived with the Day of Judgment in mind? Concluding a chain of careful argument from site planning considerations to the decorative scheme of the Dome, Rosen-Ayalon (1989) thinks that it was. She cites this revealing passage from al-Wasiti, author of Fada’il al-Quds (The Merits of Jerusalem): “the Dome of the Rock is the Temple … the throne of the Day of Judgment will stand on the Rock, and there will all congregate.…” This congregation, wuquf, which I have called “the Standing,” follows the gathering, hashr, and bears a strong resemblance to a pilgrim’s experience of God during the Meccan pilgrimage, the high point of which is standing before a small protuberance of rock on Jabal al-Rahma, the Mountain of Mercy, in the plain of Arafat in Mecca. For a powerful literary evocation of this scene, see Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995). The “King of Absolute Sovereignty, the Avenger, the Dominator, the All-Powerful, the Abaser, the Exalter” are attributes and names of God according to al-Ghazzali. The idea of terror being “the ruling principle of the sublime” is from the essay by Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).

  Illustrations

  1.1 The Temple of Solomon. Drawing of floor mosaic in the Theotokos Chapel, Church of Mount Nebo, Jordan, early sixth century. The Holy of Holies is at the center with the great altar just below it shown in flames with an offering. Dan Bahat and Shalom Sabar, Jerusalem: Stone and Spirit (Rizzoli International Publications, 1998). For a photograph of the original mosaic, see Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman, Jordan, 1993).

  1.2 The Rock from the apex of the Dome. Photograph by David Harris.

  1.3 Granite sculpture by Ronald Rae, entitled War Veteran, 1997. Regents Park, London.

  1.4 Mount Hor, or Jabal al-Nabi Harun (the Mount of the Prophet Aaron) as seen from the cliffs surrounding Petra. Pilgrimages were being made to this mountain, venerated by Muslim and Jew alike as the site of Aaron’s death, until modern times. Lithograph by David Roberts, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Egypt, Nubia, vol. 3 (London, 1849). By permission of the Kufa Library, London.

  1.5 The World According to Ka’b, showing the Ka’ba and the Black Stone in the south; Mount Zion and the Rock in the north; the bird of Paradise to the east; and the Tree of Life to the west. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  3.1 Muhammad preaching his farewell sermon. From al-Biruni’s al-Athar al-Baqiya (Surviving Traces of Ancient Nations). Al-Biruni died in 1048. The illustration is from an early-fourteenth-century edition of his manuscript produced in Tabriz. By permission of Edinburgh University Library (Ms. 161, fol. 6v).

  3.2 The Prophet David. From Qazwini’s Wonders of Creation, which contains all the important prophets within medallions. The flame enveloping the Prophet symbolizes the fire of the love of God emanating upward toward His Divine presence. Baghdad, seventeenth century. Gouache on paper. © Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem (Yah. Ms.
Ar. 8 1113).

  6.1 Photograph of a twelve-foot-high rock of red granite known as the Rock of Moses in Sinai. Local Arabs believe this to be the actual rock struck by Moses to quench the thirst of the Israelites. Photographer unknown. Scanned from an edition of The Holy Land by David Roberts, published by Studio Editions (London, 1989). Courtesy of the Kufa Library, London.

  7.1 The Prophet solving a dispute between the tribes of Mecca by having them join in replacing the Black Stone into the southeastern wall of the Ka’ba. From the World History of Rashid al-Din. By permission of Edinburgh University Library (Ms. 20, fol. 45r).

  7.2 The Black Stone inside its silver frame. Excerpted from a postcard printed in Saudi Arabia.

  8.1 Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  9.1 Abraham, Isaac, and the Angel. Limestone relief, 20¾ inches by 15½ by 2 inches. Coptic, fifth century. © National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, The Netherlands.

  11.1 Mosaic icon of Saint John Chrysostom (344–407), one of the founding fathers of the eastern Church. By permission of the Byzantine Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

  12.1 The city of Jerusalem in the seventh century. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  12.2 The Gate of the Column in the seventh century. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  12.3 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or the Church of the Resurrection as it is known in Arabic. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  12.4 A reconstruction of Byzantine Jerusalem based on the Madaba map in Jordan. The domed Church of the Holy Sepulchre is shown in the foreground. A cross is believed to have sat on top of the column at the Gate of the Column for a century or so into the Muslim conquest. Courtesy of the Tower of David Museum, Jerusalem.

  13.1 Inside the rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. From Corneille Le Bruyn, Voyage au Levant, vol. 2 (Paris, 1725). Courtesy of the Kufa Library, London.

  14.1 Photograph of what remains of the Rock of Calvary, seen here encased in a glass box on the floor. Photographer unknown. See M. T. Petrozzi, Dal Calvario Al S. Sepolcro (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1972).

  15.1 Byzantine gold coin depicting a portrait of the Empress Helena. © The British Museum.

  16.1 Three woodcut engravings from J. Veldener’s illustrated History of the Cross, first published in Dutch in 1483 and then reissued as a facsimile in 1863. The woodcut to the left depicts Judas being lowered into a well as Helena and her retinue look on. The central woodcut shows his repentance, and the woodcut on the far right shows him digging “with might and main, To find the Holy Cross again.” By permission of Widener Library, Harvard University.

  17.1 The Destruction by fire of the Temple of Jerusalem as depicted in al-Biruni’s Al-Athar al-Baqiyah. The illustration is from an early-fourteenth-century edition of his manuscript produced in Tabriz. The standing figure on the right is Nebuchadnezzar, and the Temple is shown as a large domed structure supported by a circular colonnade and enclosed by a wall. A white inscription at the base of the Dome reads, “Bayt al-Maqdis,” which derives from the Hebrew Bet ha-Miqdash, or Temple. The imagined form of this first Jewish Temple is clearly modelled on the Dome of the Rock. Notice that the first Temple is also imagined as a tentlike structure, an allusion, however indirect, to the origins of both the Temple and the Dome of the Rock in tent construction. By permission of Edinburgh University Library (Ms. 161, fol. 134v).

  17.2 Architectural ruins. From Charles W. Wilson, Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, vol. 2 (London, 1882). Courtesy of the Kufa Library, London.

  19.1 The Church of the Ascension. Loosely based on a description left by the pilgrim Arculf in 660. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  22.1 The Prophet’s Footprint. Photograph of a relic. By permission of the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul.

  22.2 Muhammad riding his extraordinary steed, Buraq, traditionally represented in Islamic art as a composite of mule and camel with a woman’s face. From a manuscript of the Miraj Nameh, produced in the workshops of Herat, Khurasan, in the fifteenth century. The text is decorated with sixty-one illuminations that tell the story of the Prophet’s ascent to Heaven. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

  22.3 Muhammad negotiating with Moses the number of daily prayers he should enjoin upon his followers. Plate 35 of the fifteenth-century Miraj Nameh, produced in Herat. By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

  24.1 A possible representation of the Caliph Abd al-Malik shown grasping a sword with his left hand. It is thought to have been issued during his reign on a coin known in the literature as The Mihrab and ’Anaza bust. See Luke Treadwell, “The ‘Orans’ Drachms of Bishr ibn Marwan and the Figural Coinage of the Early Marwanid Period” in Bayt Al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam, edited by Jeremy Johns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). By permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

  25.1 Abraham and Sara with Isaac (Ishaq) dispatching Ishmael (Isma’il), the ancestor of the Arabs, into the desert. From a manuscript produced in Constantinople in the twelfth century, known as the Codex Graecus 746, folio 80 recto. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

  25.2 The city of Mecca growing around the Ka’ba. © Zeynep Yurekli.

  28.1 Sequence of geometrical diagrams showing the derivation of the plan of the Dome of the Rock and culminating in an axonometric drawing showing how Ishaq imagined the Ka’ba fitting into the Dome. The axonometric is based upon a drawing in Creswell, Early Islamic Architecture, and the portrayal of the fusion between the Ka’ba and the Dome borrows a drawing of the Ka’ba developed by Zeynep Yurekli.

  29.1 The Rock and its Dome. Photograph by Garo Nalbandian.

  30.1 Vegetal decoration arising from jewelled vase. Photograph of interior mosaic in the Dome of the Rock. © 1992 Said Nusseibah Photography. San Francisco.

  30.2 Holy Rock, Summit of Mount Moriah. Jerusalem, 1891. Watercolor by Carl Haag. © Christie’s Images, London.

  31.1 Jewelled crown inlaid with mother-of-pearl amid lush vegetation. Photograph of interior mosaic in the Dome of the Rock. © 1992 Said Nusseibah Photography. San Francisco.

  31.2 Two sides of a copper coin with a menorah-styled candlestick and the inscription “Muhammad Messenger of God” on the reverse. Issued in Jerusalem by Abd al-Malik as the Dome of the Rock was nearing completion. Numismatic Collection, Yale University.

  Acknowledgments

  For reading and commenting on this manuscript in one or more of its multiple transfigurations, Ali Allawi, Pamela Berger, Patricia Crone, Musa Farhi, Rena Fonseca, Mai Ghoussoub, Margaret Makiya, Mary Ann Mcgrail, Hassan Mneimneh, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Anne Marie Oliver, Rend Rahim, Emmanuel Sivan, Naghmeh Sohrabi, Daniel Terris, and my dear friend, Emmanuel Farjoun, who first walked the streets of the Old City with me.

  For historical research that went far beyond the call of duty, Chris Berdik, Jonathan Stern, and Rashid Khayoon. For sharing with me the index cards of his research as they related to Ka’b, Nasser Rabbat. For research into images and photographs of relics, Lara Tohme, Kris Manjapra, and Anne Marie Oliver. For sharing with me the heartache of constructing images allied to this book in their spirit, and then making them, Zeynep Yurekli. For countless hours spent teaching me the intricacies of Photoshop and Minicad, Walid al-Khazraji. For tracking down copyright owners and pursuing picture permissions Kris Manjapra and Keramet Reiter. For going over my transliterations, Bruce Fudge. For fact checking and completing and reorganizing my scattered sources, Jennifer Meier and Kathryn Hinkle.

  Finally for being the kind of editor that most writers only get to dream about, Dan Frank. And for introducing me to Dan, and being there when I needed him, Toby Eady.

  To all of them, my deepest gratitude.

  KANAN MAKIYA

  Born in Baghdad, Kanan Makiya is the author of Republic of Fear, Post-Islamic Classicism, The Monument, and Cruelty and Silence, which was awarded the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on international relations. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Inde
pendent, The Times (London), and The Times Literary Supplement. A trained architect, he is a founding director of The Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that facilitates research toward a democratic Iraq. He has collaborated on two films for television, one of which, Saddam’s Killing Fields, received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Documentary on Foreign Affairs. Makiya Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Books by Kanan Makiya

  Republic of Fear:

  The Politics of Modern Iraq

  The Monument

  Cruelty and Silence:

  War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World

  The Rock:

  A Seventh Century Tale of Jerusalem

  Post-Islamic Classicism