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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
The Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik beheld Syria to be a country that had long been occupied by the Christians, and he noted there the beautiful churches still belonging to them, so enchantingly fair, and so renowned for their splendour, as are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Churches of Lydda and Edessa. So he sought to build for the Muslims a mosque that should be unique and a wonder to the world. And in like manner is it not evident that ‘Abd al-Malik, seeing the greatness of the martyrium [qubbah] of the Holy Sepulchre and its magnificence was moved lest it should dazzle the minds of Muslims and hence erected above the Rock the Dome which is now seen there.
– Al-Maqdisi (984 CE), reporting words of his uncleIn this place, by divine command, Solomon made the Temple of the Lord. He built it with magnificent workmanship without any equal, and decorated it with all the ornament about which one reads in the Book of Kings. In its glory it excelled all other houses and buildings. In the middle of this Temple is to be seen a rock which is high and large and hollow underneath, in which was the Holy of Holies. There Solomon put the Ark of the Covenant, with the manna and the rod of Aaron … and the two tables of the Covenant. … There the child Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, and was named ‘Jesus’. There the Lord Jesus was offered by his parents with the Virgin Mother Mary on the day of her purification, and received by Simeon …
– Saewulf, in Jerusalem between 1101 and 1103Robert Hillenbrand now ensures we do some justice to Islamic Jerusalem. He describes a deepening Muslim veneration for the city and in particular for the Dome of the Rock over several centuries following its completion in 691 to 692. Among his principal sources is The Merits of Jerusalem by the Baghdadi theologian Ibn al-Jauzi around 1200. Such Merits form a familiar genre from the ninth century onwards; Ibn al-Jauzi’s, however, here gets the attention it deserves for the first time.
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