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Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade. Jamal and Rania Daniel Seri

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Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade. Jamal and Rania Daniel Seri Book Reviews / JESHO 56 (2013) 309-344 315 Oleg GRABAR and Benjamin Z. KEDAR eds., Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade. Jamal and Rania Daniel Series in Con- temporary History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. 412 pp. ISBN: 978-0-292-72272-9 (hbk.). $75.00; €49.00. The late Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Kedar have brought together a dozen or more historians, religious scholars, photographers, and experts to write on the sacred space of Jerusalem’s esplanade, the editors’ name for the open space where the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and the walls of the Jewish Temple are located. Their efforts, presented in twenty-odd essays and numerous pictures and illustrations, were underwritten by three insti- tutions of higher learning: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Research Center run by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; Al-Quds University and its center for Jerusalem Studies; and the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem. The editors and authors have compiled a worthy, if conspicuously politically neutral, work of perception, historical and artis- tic breadth, and useful content. The result is a book of surprising power and utility. Where Heaven and Earth Meets is a layered and rich source on the development and building of the sacred esplanade, told in terms of its history and its esthetics. The book’s coherence arises from the chronologically ordered historical first section. Each essay creates an overview of an era, noting the transfor- mation of stories and sites beginning with the first Temple and culminat- ing in the present-day contest for sovereignty between Arabs and Israelis. While each chapter uses documents, memoirs, pictures, and architectural plans to define its own piece of the universe; it is the accretion of detail in the history, and of buildings on the site, that impresses the reader and for- mulates a schema of the complex, multi-dimensional efforts that created this space. The chapters are interdisciplinary, using history, archaeology, biblical and Islamic studies, geography, art, architecture, and religion to present and explain the sacred space. In the introduction the editors describe the esplanade as a ‘succession of attitudes, shapes, myths, symbols and practices’ (13) that mark and define the changes in authority on the Mount, recounting each successive regime’s struggle to define the legitimacy of its own sacred space, made poignant by the continued existence and belief of the displaced religions, which do occasionally return to power. This struggle for identity and supremacy, the narrative of the first section, is accompanied by the need to obtain © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341305 316 Book Reviews / JESHO 56 (2013) 309-344 the consent and allegiance from the religions not in authority yet alive with meaning and symbolism attached to the space. The tale opens with a discussion of the First Temple, the Jews’ House of God; where it was built, its material culture and changes over time, and how believers knew that God literally dwelled in this residence. The destruction of this first house initiated Jewish conversations, continuing to this day, regarding the nature and knowledge of God’s return. Rebuilding of the temple occurred under three successive empires. Although the Hero- dian period (30 BCE-70 CE) is the best known, illustrations depict evolv- ing designs under each regime. Through the drawings, the reader accesses the perception that Jews needed a larger temple to reflect its central role, since ‘the temple dominated and dictated the life of the city and of the entire nation’ (67). The Roman destruction of the temple (70 CE) devas- tated and transformed the Jewish community. The succeeding Christians and Romans established a New Jerusalem centered on the Mount of Olives, making the Temple Mount a secondary site of their Christian faith. Its abandonment is demonstrated when Caliph Umar (634-644 CE) visited Jerusalem and crawled through ruins to find the Rock of God. The Mus- lims established the farthest mosque, named Bayt al Maqdis, ‘House of the Temple’, later the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and built over the sacred stone the Dome of the Rock, supplanting the Christians’ New Jerusalem, and the Jewish memory of the Temple. The Umayyads (661-750 CE) legit- imized a sacred space, but it was the Rock of God and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, not the Temple nor Golgotha. The focus for both the Umayyads and the Abbasids (750-1258 CE) was the recognition of the sacred space tied to Islam, not a political arena for the dynasties. The Fatimids (909-1171 CE) were the first to exploit the sacred esplanade as a reflection of their imperial claim. They repaired and built to create a mosque complex where both the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the space surrounding it were parts of the complex. This ignited the Crusaders’ war to free Jerusalem; their success in 1099 CE eliminated Muslims and Jews from the sacred space. The renaming of buildings, tearing down of walls, establishing new sites, and adding to existing ones were all part of the process of legitimizing the Mount for Christians, as was downgrading the importance of the sym- bols of Jewish and Muslim visions. Saladin’s victory over the Christians (1187 CE) initiated a new perspec- tive and a new rebuilding. In this moment, immediately following the departure of the Crusaders, reclaiming the Haram was important and time mattered, and Crusader structures were used for reconstruction of Islamic .
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