The Temple in Christianity and Islam, Part Two: The Farthest Mosque
The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (Image credit: Ondřej Havelka, Wikimedia Commons)
NOTE: For those interested in the Temple’s place in Christianity, click here to read Part 1.
According to Islamic tradition, while asleep one night in Mecca, perhaps within Masjid al-Haram, or the Sacred Mosque, the Prophet Muhammad was awakened suddenly by the Archangel Gabriel and commanded to mount the Buraq, a supernatural steed. Unbound by the normal limitations of time and space, the Prophet commenced what would become known as the Night Journey, or al-Israʾ. Riding upon the Buraq, he travelled from the Hijaz to al-Aqsa al-Masjid, or the Farthest Mosque (i.e., the Temple Mount) in Jerusalem in almost no time at all. Upon arriving at the sacred Palestinian site, Muhammad is said to have led some of the great biblical figures whom Islam regards as prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, in prayer before his Ascension, or al-Miʿraj, from the Foundation Stone through the seven heavens, where he would speak with God himself. All of this is believed to have taken place in a single night, and according to The Study Quran by Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al., some commentators say that the door that the Prophet passed through in Mecca at the beginning of his journey was still swinging on its hinges when he returned.
Following the Hijra—i.e., the emigration of the early Muslims from Mecca to Medina—Muhammad instructed his followers to perform their prayers in the direction of Jerusalem, or perhaps more specifically, al-Aqsa al-Masjid. Besides the Temple Mount having been the site of one of the most monumental events in the Prophet’s life, it was also the practice of the Jews of the Hijaz to pray towards it. Moreover, regarding the Foundation Stone, the hadith scholar Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri is purported to have said, “from the time Adam descended into this world, Allāh has never sent a prophet without making the Rock his qibla [i.e., direction of prayer].” Thus, Muhammad praying towards Jerusalem may be seen as a sort of prophetic rite of passage. Yet, Jerusalem only remained the qibla of Islam for somewhere between thirteen to twenty months before being superseded by Masjid al-Haram in Mecca (see Q 2:142-50).
The Temple, which was destroyed half a millennium before the Prophet’s birth, is also referenced in the Qurʾan. For instance, we read about how, with the help of the jinn, King Solomon built maharib (Q 34:12-3), plural of mihrab. While the Arabic term mihrab came to denote the prayer niche in the qibla wall of a mosque, its pre-Islamic meaning varied. In The Qurʾan and the Bible: Text and Commentary, Gabriel Said Reynolds argues that the Muslim scripture uses mihrab to refer to the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, he finds an interesting parallel between the Qurʾan and the Talmud regarding the Temple’s construction. According to the rabbinic text, Solomon required the assistance of demons, particularly the demon king Ashmedai, who provided him with the Shamir, a magical worm, in order to build the Temple. The parallel between the Talmudic story and the Qurʾanic statement regarding the jinn’s role in Solomon’s maharib makes it fairly clear that the Muslim scripture is indeed referring to the Temple here.
Besides Solomon, the Qurʾan also associates the Temple with the Virgin Mary. Similar to the popular extrabiblical Christian traditions regarding her early life, the Muslim scripture says that Mary grew up in a mihrab, or the Temple, under the care of Zechariah (Q 3:37). The Qurʾan also seems to depict the Temple as a sort of bridge between heaven and earth, telling of how Mary received her provisions from God while living there (3:37). According to Reynolds, Surat Maryam perhaps teaches that the Virgin conceived Jesus in the Temple as well. He basis this on the sura’s statement regarding the Annunciation occurring in a “easterly place”—which may be seen as an allusion to the Temple, since it was located in east Jerusalem—and that it tells of Mary having hid herself behind a curtain or barrier (19:16-7). Given that the Qurʾan states that Zechariah received the news of his barren wife conceiving their son, John the Baptist, while in the Temple (3:38-41;19:2-11), it seems likely that it is indeed alluding to the Annunciation as having taken place there as well.
The Qurʾan also seems to speak of the razing of the Temple by both the Neo-Babylonians in 586 BC and the Romans in AD 70. In a passage rebuking the Israelites for their unfaithfulness, we read,
We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book, “Surely you will work corruption upon the earth twice, and you will ascend to great height.” So when the promise of the first of these came to pass, We sent against you servants of Ours, possessed of great might, and they ravaged your dwellings, and it was a promise fulfilled. Then We gave you a turn against them, and We aided you with wealth and children, and We made you greater in number. If you are virtuous, you are virtuous for the sake of your own souls, and if you commit evil, it is for them. So when the other promise comes to pass, they will make wretched your faces, and enter the Temple as they entered it the first time, and utterly ruin whatsoever they overtake (Q 17:4-7).
Reynolds interprets the above passage as echoing “the Biblical theodicy associated with these events.” For the Bible portrays the destruction of the First and Second Temples as divine punishment for Jerusalem’s sins.
Greek Orthodox icon of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (Image credit: Basilica.ro)
When Muhammad died in 632, Islamic conquest had been limited to Arabia. However, after his death, Muslim armies would rapidly expand the newly founded caliphate, wresting control of all the major cities of the Middle East and North Africa from the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. Under the command of Abu ʿUbayda, Muslim forces arrived at the doorsteps of Jerusalem in c. 637. Having been abandoned by the Byzantine army, Jerusalem’s patriarch, St. Sophronius, opted to surrender the city to the Arabs. Yet, he refused to negotiate with just anyone, requesting the presence of the caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab himself.
There are a number of accounts regarding the treaty (ʿUmar’s Assurance) signed by the caliph and the patriarch. According to al-Tabari, as long as the people of Aelia, i.e., Jerusalem, agreed to pay the poll tax, or jizya, ʿUmar pledged to protect them. This meant that Christians themselves, along with their personal property, churches, crosses, and any rituals associated with their faith, were to be safeguarded by the Muslim ruler. Even those Christians who chose to leave Jerusalem with the Byzantines were not to be harmed or stripped of any of their goods but were to be granted safe passage to the lands still ruled by Constantinople.
Eutychius (Saʿid ibn Batriq), patriarch of Alexandria, says that when the Muslim time for prayer arrived, Sophronius suggested to ʿUmar that he pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is reminiscent of an account found in Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah of Muhammad having graciously offered his mosque in Medina, al-Masjid al-Nabawi, to a delegation of Christians to perform their prayers in. However, unlike the Christians who accepted the offer, ʿUmar refused to pray in the church, explaining that if he were to do so, Muslims would eventually seize it and turn it into an Islamic shrine.
However, Eutychius tells of Sophronius having successfully offered ʿUmar the Temple Mount in response to the latter’s request for land to build a mosque on. The saint is said to have spoken of the past sanctity of the Foundation Stone but explained to the caliph that Christians had left the area desolate in accordance with Jesus’s words, specifically, Matthew 23:38; 24:2. However, some may find it curious that Sophronius would offer the Temple Mount at all, given that its bareness had long been viewed by Christians as a symbol of their faith’s triumph over Judaism. Yet, one must keep in mind that less than two and a half decades prior to the Arabs arrival, Palestinian Jews had joined forces with the invading Sassanians in conquering Jerusalem from the Byzantines. The invading forces had also targeted churches and carried out massacres against the local Christian population, as well as taking many Christians, including the city’s patriarch, St. Zechariah, into captivity. Moreover, there was even an unsuccessful attempt by the Jews to rebuild the Temple. Thus, Sophronius may have viewed an Islamic Temple Mount, one that would be protected by the far more accommodating Arabs, as a bulwark against any future attempts to reconstruct the Temple.
It may have also been the case that Sophronius, or at least other Christian representatives, attempted to convince ʿUmar to uphold the Roman law prohibiting Jews from residing in Jerusalem. If so, this would help to explain why a number of prominent versions of ʿUmar’s Assurance, including al-Tabari’s, contain a clause banning Jews from living in Jerusalem, despite it being a well-attested to fact that the caliph opened the city to Jewish settlement. Among the many Jewish sources on the subject, some of which hail ʿUmar as the “King of Ishmael” who overthrew the Byzantines, there is a document from the Cairo Geniza that tells of seventy Jewish families arriving in Jerusalem and being given permission by the caliph to settle near the Temple Mount. In truth, Islamic rule brought a religious openness to Jerusalem that had not been demonstrated by any of its previous Christian rulers.
According to Eutychius, Sophronius led the caliph by the hand to the Temple Mount, where he showed him the garbage heap that now covered the Foundation Stone. Immediately, ʿUmar began to carry away the rubbish in his cloak. According to Muslim sources, Kaʿb al-Ahbar, a Yemeni Jewish convert to Islam, suggested that the mosque be built facing the Foundation Stone. Al-Suyuti says that he did so out of a desire to merge together the qiblas of Moses and Muhammad, as it would allow Muslims to pray with the Foundation Stone between them and Mecca. Yet, ʿUmar rejected Kaʿb’s suggestion. For the qibla was Mecca alone, and nothing was to cloud that fact. Thus, al-Aqsa al-Masjid, or al-Aqsa Mosque,* was constructed with the Foundation Stone at its rear.
Interestingly, we perhaps have an eyewitness description of the original al-Aqsa Mosque from the Frankish bishop Arculf, who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in c. 680. As recorded in St. Adomnán’s De locis sanctis, Arculf reports,
But in that renowned place where once the Temple had been magnificently constructed, placed in the neighbourhood of the wall from the east, the Saracens now frequent a four-sided hall of prayer, which they have built rudely, constructing it by raising boards and great beams on some remains of ruins: this house can, it is said, hold three thousand men at once.
In Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers …, F.E. Peters states that the mosque probably held the city’s entire Muslim population at the time. It seems that al-Aqsa Mosque was not intended as a symbol of worldly triumph, but as a simple place of prayer for Jerusalem’s Muslim minority. Nevertheless, Muslims would eventually come to regard the mosque, which has been rebuilt a number of times over the centuries, as their third holiest site, and to refer to the city of Jerusalem as al-Bayt al-Maqdis (The Holy Sanctuary) or al-Quds (The Holy)
In stark contrast to the modesty of al-Aqsa Mosque is that of the grandeur of its neighbouring Dome of Rock, or Qubbat al-Sakhra. It is also worth noting that the Dome of the Rock, whose construction began in 685 during the reign of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, is not technically a mosque, but a shrine enclosing the Foundation Stone, or Noble Rock. Its architecture is essentially Byzantine, as it was inspired by the Christian churches of Jerusalem, particularly the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre. ʿAbd al-Malik may have also intended the Dome of the Rock to be somewhat of a symbol of Islam’s privileged position in the Holy Land. This can be gleaned not only from the shrine’s scale and the symbolic importance of its location, but from the fact that its interior contains a number of polemical inscriptions directed against Christian doctrine, namely, belief in Jesus’s divinity and the Trinity.
The Foundation Stone, or Nobel Rock, inside the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Yet, the prime motivation behind the Dome of the Rock’s construction seems to have had far less to do with anything external to the Muslim umma than it did with the Second Fitna, or civil war, which had engulfed the Islamic world from 680 to 692. While the Umayyad caliph Yazid I may have largely curbed the ʿAlid challenge to his family’s power in 680 when he killed the Prophet’s grandson Husayn ibn ʿAli at the Battle of Karbala, Umayyad control over the Islamic world still remained rather tentative. Moreover, in 683, ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, the grandson of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, and a fierce opponent of the Umayyads, declared himself caliph in Mecca. Until his death in 692, Ibn al-Zubayr would maintain control of Islam’s holiest site, al-Masjid al-Haram. With the Kaʿba beyond the borders of his realm, ʿAbd al-Malik perhaps felt the need to supplement it, at least for the time being, by building an alternative pilgrimage site for his Muslim subjects in the form of a great shrine centred around the cult of the Foundation Stone, i.e., the Dome of the Rock.
Regarding the rituals performed at the Dome of the Rock, Heba Mostafa in Architecture of Anxiety writes,
[T]he caliph [ʿAbd al-Malik] encouraged pilgrimage to Jerusalem by claiming guardianship of the earthly locale of God’s Footstool and for Muslim pilgrims to participate in its ritual veneration. The [Nobel] Rock was circumambulated by pilgrims after it had been cleaned, anointed and incensed while ritually veiled from view. Appointed servants (khuddām), whose sole function was the performance of these rituals, burned incense every Monday and Thursday. Before it was anointed, the Rock was washed, and a precious blend of aromatic substances was brought from the treasury. Dressed in costly robes, the servants were instructed on the precise preparation of the aromatic blend, which included saffron, musk, ambergris, and rosewater […] The aromatics were crushed, ground, and applied to the Rock. The ritualistic cleaning and anointing of the Rock took place behind closed curtains installed between columns surrounding the Rock. The curtains, which signaled the cultic roots of the ritual and its parallels to pre-Islamic practice, were installed on the explicit orders of the overseers. The choice suggests that the guardians of the shrine dictated a coherent ritual prescription for the veneration of the Dome of the Rock.
After cleansing, anointing, and incensing the Rock, both the curtains and the doors to the shrine were opened for the faithful to enter.
From the above excerpt alone, one can perhaps at least sympathize with those scholars who argue that the Dome of the Rock represents the restoration of the Temple. Moreover, although ʿAbd al-Malik’s reign is often thought to have been a watershed moment that solidified the confessional borders between Muslims and ahl al-kitab, or People of the Book, the latter was still given a minor role in the rituals performed at the Dome of the Rock. In The Death of a Prophet, Stephen J. Shoemaker refers to a report regarding there having been “a staff of Jews and Christians who cleaned the Ḥaram and provided glass and wicks for its lamps and goblets.” While their role at the Dome of the Rock may not have been as important as that of their Muslim colleagues, that Jews and Christians were permitted to participate in any way in Islamic rituals of such sacred nature speaks to the Muslims inclusive approach to worship. It is as an approach that no doubt had been inspired by the example of Muhammad and carried from the Hijaz to Palestine by ʿUmar.
It is my hope that this two-part series has been able to provide a relatively clear overview of the Temple’s place in both Christianity and Islam. While there is an ongoing campaign in the West and Israel to delegitimatize the current Islamic character of the Temple Mount—along with the very humanity of the Palestinian people, both Muslim and Christian—by claiming that the sacred esplanade’s transformation in the seventh century was the result of religious extremism and intolerance, history does not agree with such an assessment. For the Arabs, beginning with ʿUmar, brought a degree of tolerance to Jerusalem and a respect for the Temple Mount that neither had experienced in centuries. For having perhaps been led to the site by a Christian saint, ʿUmar transformed a garbage dump into a sacred esplanade, where the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could once again be glorified. In this way, we may perhaps consider both al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock nothing less than the spiritual descendants of the ancient Temple itself.
*While the Qurʾan refers to the entire Temple Mount as al-Aqsa al-Masjid, the term later came also to denote the mosque erected on the site. Moreover, it was during the Mamluk period that the Temple Mount received its other popular Arabic name, al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Nobel Sanctuary.