The Rock (38 page)

Like seeds buried in the earth, all the teachings of the Holy Book have to rot in order to bear fruit once again
.

When people are so far gone that they eat like cows, when piety has given way to pride and truth to lies, when usury, adultery, and
fornication on the street are customary, when people’s hearts have become wolflike, then will a Divinely Guided One come to herald the end of the world
.

“How soon will He come?” the people of Jerusalem ask
.

“Three things catch men unawares,” I reply. “A found article, a scorpion, and the coming of the Divinely Guided One.”

“How will we know whose staff to follow?”

“His nose will have an aquiline shape. His head will be bald. He will be from the family of the Prophet with a pedigree in the Yemen on His maternal side.”

“Where will He come?”

“To the Rock. You will find Him preaching in the Dome.”

Redemption will follow His coming like a dawn breaking on the horizon. At first, it will barely be visible; then it will shine forth more brightly. Afterwards, it will break forth in all its glory
.

As the Divinely Guided One gains dominion among Believers, He will rule among the People of the Torah according to their uncorrupted Torah, and among the People of the Gospel according to their uncorrupted Gospel, and among the People of the Quran according to His Last Words spoken in Arabic. He will restore the world to the way it was before the onset of sedition, civil war, and corruption. The earth will bring forth its fruit for everyone. No man will have to hoard or steal. Whenever a man will get up and say, “O Divinely Guided One, give me,” He will answer, “Help yourself!” Then he will die, a sign that

The Hour has drawn nigh: the moon is split
.

T
he Hour will be announced by the Master of the Horn
.

“Who is the Master of the Horn?” people want to know
.

“A winged angel carrying a trumpet.”

“Where will he stand?”

“On that corner of the Rock,” I reply, pointing to an elevated
spot due north of the stone mass, facing which today on the northern arcade is a sumptuously decorated entrance into the Dome called the “Gate of the Master of the Horn.”

The sound of the horn will be louder and more terrible than thunder; it will pierce the mind and transfix the soul. Upon hearing the horn, every living creature shall taste death’s bitterness. The angel will blow the trumpet on God’s command, announcing the Hour of Annihilation when all things perish except His face
,

A
second time the trumpet will blow, and God will bring forth the living from the dead as He brings death to the living. Flesh, which in this life decays and rots inside the earth, will turn as fresh as that of a newborn’s still dripping from its mother’s fluids
.

Thrown out of their tombs, throngs of corpses as numerous as particles of sand will swarm hither and thither like flies, all quickened in the blink of an eye. Conjoined with their souls, released from their place of confinement inside the mountain, they will race pell-mell toward the place of their gathering, where the most remarkable sight shall unfold:

Two enormous crowds will gather separately—one destined for
Paradise, the other for Hell. Both will have to pass through the Gate of Paradise in the Dome of the Rock on their way to the next life. Opposite this Gate, God will have created a bridge narrower than a hair and sharper than a sword. It will stretch over the roaring flames of Hell. The faces of those destined for Paradise will be smiling, joyful, and brimming with hope; they will cross the bridge in the twinkle of an eye. The faces of the Wicked will be veiled in darkness and covered in dust; they will fall into fire everlasting
.

Two crowds assembled in the knowledge that each can no longer grow, not by one person, not even at the other’s expense as they have been doing since the time of Cain and Abel. Everyone—Jews, Christians, Muslims, prophets, martyrs, saviors, unbelievers—even the angels—will be in one or the other crowd, which, together, will contain the sum of all generations who have been, or ever will be, born
.

F
ollowing the motion and commotion of the gathering comes the unbearable silence of the Standing
.

Each person stands for the very first and the very last time in the same seamless white shroud of death. For just as one may not look upon the Black Stone unless dressed in such clothes, so after death one may not look at the Rock unless one’s dress stamps upon its bearer the character of a particle of sand
.

“Where will we be standing?”

“In circles around the stillness upon which He stood during Creation. The Rock graced by its Dome will be all that is left of a turning world. For the first to be created is the last to be destroyed. The Day of Annihilation will unfold in reverse of Creation. Only the Rock will hold for the duration of the Reckoning. Afterwards, even it will be annihilated.”

“How long will we stand?”

“Time past and time future have already collapsed into time present. The Standing lasts an eternity.”

“Will He come?”

“Veiled like the overcast sky.”

“Upon which hallowed spot will He alight?”

“His foot will descend upon the spot from which it last ascended in anger and disappointment.”

“What will we be thinking?”

“Of Him who made and destroyed you. Of the imminence of the danger that looms. You will stand with faces cast down, your souls suspended in astonishment, transfixed by apprehension, not in community or any kind of sympathy with one another, but one by one, alone—utterly and completely alone.”

N
ever has there been, or will there ever be again, such loneliness, such single-minded preoccupation with the possibility of eternal pain. Never has there been such a breakdown of every confining partition of the mind so as to keep everyone who has ever been born wholly transfixed on the consequences of his own selfishness
.

From Creation to Judgment turns the wheel of all Believers. From time past to time future, it spins around the still axis of the universe. It turns in the direction of what will happen at the moment that He, among whose ninety-nine names are the Avenger, the Dominator, the Abaser, the Exalter, and the Merciful, will alight upon the Rock
.

The face-to-face encounter with the Judge of all Judges will be like tumbling down into a bottomless chasm. It will be like being lost in the vast expanse of a starlit desert, listening to the howling of hungry wolves. Looking to the Rock, every person who has ever been born shall be struck by Terror as though by a thunderbolt from the sky, a terror that is the ruling principle of the Sublime
.

T
he author of this passage, Abu Khalid Thawr ibn Yazid al-Kala’i, lived in Homs, Syria, in the eighth century. The Dome to which he refers was built over a rock on the
Haram al-Sharif
, the Noble Sanctuary, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in the year 692. Written in mosaic on the Dome’s interior surfaces, in some of the finest craftsmanship of the period, are the oldest verses of the Quran in existence. In fact, with the exception of some foundations and some coins, little else remains that is indubitably Muslim and of the seventh century to hint at the great encounter that took place between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Jerusalem. To be sure, there were manuscripts and artifacts produced during that remarkable century of turmoil and change. But they are lost or destroyed and survive only through recollections in later documents—works of history, geography, and biography written at least a century after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem, which took place sometime after 634 and before 638.

As it so happens there were three holy rocks in the seventh century, not one. And to each rock corresponded a Temple: The Rock of Calvary had its Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the Black Stone had its Ka’ba in
Mecca; and then there is our own story’s Dome of the Rock, whose builders may have thought they were rebuilding Solomon’s Temple, the first Temple of the Hebrews destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C.E.

Three is a curious number in human relations. Jews and Muslims have an aversion to it. And yet Islam, the third great monotheism, saw its mission as one of healing the damage caused by the previous division into two. During the time frame of our story, 630–692, the fortunes of these three Rocks waxed and waned at one another’s expense. At the heart of this competition were the big questions of life, death, and the shape of the afterlife. The story has attracted many great scholars over the centuries. But, unfortunately, no amount of scholarship will be able to do it justice. We know too little. So much has been irretrievably lost.