With a little help from Wikipedia I need to tell my readers some fascinating stuff about this structure, which for me was the most impressive of all the amazing structures in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock, (Arabic: مسجد قبة الصخرة, translit.: Masjid Qubbat As-Sakhrah, Hebrew: כיפת הסלע, translit.: Kipat Hasela, Turkish: Kubbetüs Sahra), is an Islamic shrine and a major landmark located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It was completed in 691, making it the oldest extant Islamic building in the world.
The Dome of the Rock is located at the visual center of an ancient man-made platform known as the Temple Mount to the Jews and the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to the Muslims. The platform, greatly enlarged under the rule of Herod the Great, was the former site of the Second Jewish Temple which was destroyed during the Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. In 637 AD, Jerusalem was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate army during the Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire.
The names of the two engineers in charge of the project are given as Yazid ibn Salam from Jerusalem and Raja ibn Haywah from Baysan. Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan who initiated construction of the Dome, hoped that it would “house the Muslims from cold and heat”, and intending the building to serve as a shrine for pilgrims and not as a mosque for public worship. Historians contend that the Caliph wished to create a structure which would compete with the existing buildings of other religions in the city.
Al-Maqdisi writes that he: "sought to build for the Muslims a masjid that should be unique and a wonder to the world. And in like manner, is it not evident that Caliph Abd al-Malik, seeing the greatness of the martyrium of the Church 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."
Prof. Shlomo Dov Goitein of the Hebrew University states that the Dome of the Rock was intended to remove the fitna, or 'annoyance,' constituted by the existence of the many fine buildings of worship of other religions. The very form of a rotunda, given to the Qubbat as-Sakhra, although it was foreign to Islam, was destined to rival the many Christian domes. [6] A.C. Cresswell in his book Origin of the plan of the Dome of the Rock notes that those who built the shrine made use of the measurements of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The diameter of the dome of the shrine is 20m 20cm and its height 20m 48cm, while the diameter of the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is 20m 90cm and its height 21m 5cm.
I talked about how this city is a microcosm of our world in my last post. I wonder how things would be different if we did not compete in the world, even with our religions and religious structures. It seems at times like we are all participating in a Divine Beauty Contest for all around the world to see. I wonder what Jesus thinks about all this? None-the-less, enjoy this edition of my Friday Fotos.
