CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SANCTITY OF JERUSALEM AND PALESTINE IN EARLY ISLAM

In a famous passage of his Muhammedanische Studien.! I. Gold­ ziher expounds in great detail the theory that the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik, by erecting the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, intended to outdo his rival Mecca, his capital, for his own political ends. The Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage, was to be diverted from the Ka'ba to the new temple of Jerusalem, a procedure which was to be justified by sayings attributed to the Prophet or some of his Companions. According to this thesis, the numerous holy traditions supporting or opposing the religious importance of Jerusalem and its sanctuary were but weapons in the war between the two competitors for the caliphate. As we shall presently see, Goldziher's thesis could rely on certain passages in Arabic sources, but its elaborate exposition was due to the master's methodical endeavor to make the contradictory sayings of the Hadith intelligible in the light of contemporary history. In any case, this theory about the motives for the erection of the Dome of the Rock has been generally accepted and invariably appears in historical textbooks dealing with the period.

1 Muhammedanische Studien, II, pp. 35-37. ,. Cf. 2 Kings 12 :26-33. 3 Abel et Vincent, jeruzalem, 933 b. As is well known, the Katba itself is a rectangular, and not a circular, building. 136 ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS death (73 A.H.). To begin with: the great Muslim historians of the third century, who deal with the conflict between the Umayyads and Ibn Zubayr in the utmost detail.! as well as all the earlier geographers, including al-Maqdisi, a native of Jerusalem, never make the slightest allusion to 'Abd al-Malik's alleged intention of making Jerusalem instead of Mecca the center of Islam. On the contrary, for the year 68, Tabari (part 2, pp. 781-3) reports- that four camps-those of

1 In particular Tabar! (and the sources dependent on him) and Baladhurl, Ansab al-Ashraf, V, Jerusalem 1936, pp. 255-378. 2 For other sources about this event cf. Caetani, Chronographia, annum 68, part. 20. 3 Ansab al-Ashraf V, p. 360, H. 6-7. Cf. also Tabarl part. 2, p. 830, 1. 18. , E.g. Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-Zahira I, p. 2°7. Ibn Kathir VIII, p. 280; Ta,rikh al-Khamis II, p. 339. Mujir aI-Din, aI-Dns aI-JaIil bita'rfkh aI-Quds wal-Khalil I, p. 240-243. Cf. Caetani, Chronographia, annum 66, par. 18.