The Rock (40 page)
Authors: Kanan Makiya
Very few Jews survived; Julius Severus took fifty of their most notable forts, 985 of their villages were laid in ruins, and 580,000 men were slain in skirmishes and battles, while the number of those who perished by starvation, plague, or fire cannot be reckoned. Thus almost the whole of Judea was laid to waste, even as had been foretold to its people before the war. For Solomon’s tomb, which they regard as one of their holy places, fell to pieces and was scattered abroad of its own accord, and many wolves and hyenas came howling into their cities. Many of the Romans also perished in this war.…
14
How were the rabbis, who, along with the Temple, were in danger of losing their reason for existence, to deal with such a catastrophe? They were living in an age in which the channel of prophecy, as Alan Mintz puts it, was closed. “The only possible response was reading.”
15
A curious example of how biblical texts were read and reread in that period is found in a midrashic story pertaining to the site of the Temple after its destruction (which does not mention the rock directly):
Long ago as Rabban Gamliel, R. Eleazar b. ’Azariah, R. Joshua and R. Akiba were … coming up to Jerusalem together, and just as they came to Mount Scopus they saw a fox emerging from the Holy of Holies. They fell a-weeping [; only] R. Akiba seemed merry. “Wherefore,” said they to him, “are you merry?” Said he: “Wherefore are you weeping?” Said they to him: “A place of which it was once said, And the common man that draweth nigh shall be put to death, is now become the haunt of foxes, and should we not weep?” Said he to them: “Therefore am I merry; for … so long as Uriah’s prophecy [of doom] had not had its fulfillment, I had misgivings lest Zechariah’s prophecy [of happiness] might not be fulfilled; now that Uriah’s prophecy has been fulfilled [by the destruction of the Temple], it is quite certain that Zechariah’s prophecy also is to find its fulfillment.” Said they to him: “Akiba, you have comforted us! Akiba you have comforted us!”
16
Akiba’s laughter would not have comforted for long, and certainly not to less learned men and women,
17
who needed a less abstract and more tangible response to the loss of their most precious symbol.
I conjecture that the edification and glorification of the rock in traditions passed on to the Arabs by men like Ka’b began as such a response to total catastrophe. There it was, after all, the last remnant of what the rabbis believed had been the Temple, poking out of the ruins as a kind of proof that at least one indomitable thing remained of Israel’s former glory. Perhaps the rock actually dominated the platform once the walls of the Temple had been torn down, being the highest point of Mount Moriah and rising above the ground floor of the highest level in the Temple, the Holy of Holies, according to the evidence of Yoma.
But this is speculation. One cannot be sure. We do not even know if the rock had actually ever been part of the Temple structure. But something
happened to elevate the importance of this particular bit of Jerusalem’s stony landscape. Of that there can be no doubt, because in the year 333 primitive little rituals had grown around the rock, as observed by an anonymous visitor known only as “the Pilgrim of Bordeaux”:
In the sanctuary itself, where the Temple stood which Solomon built, there is marble in front of the altar which has on it the blood of Zacharias—you would think it had only been shed today. All around you can see the marks of the hobnails of the soldiers who killed him, as plainly as if they had been pressed into wax. Two statues of Hadrian stand there, and, not far from them, a pierced stone which the Jews come and anoint each year. They mourn and rend their garments, and then depart.
18
Hadrian had banned any kind of Jewish presence in Jerusalem. The ban was renewed by Constantine. Jerome, the biblical scholar who lived in Palestine and wrote toward the end of the fourth century, noted that an exception was made for one day of the year:
Silently they come and silently they go, weeping they come and weeping they go, in the dark night they come and in the dark night they go.… Not even weeping is free to them. You see on the day of the destruction of Jerusalem a sad people coming, decrepit little women and old men encumbered with rags and years, exhibiting both in their bodies and their dress the wrath of the Lord. A crowd of pitiable creatures assembles and under the gleaming gibbet of the Lord and his sparkling resurrection, and before a brilliant banner with a cross waving from the Mount of Olives, they weep over the ruins of the Temple; and yet they are not worthy of pity. Thus they lament on their knees with livid arms and disheveled hair, while the guards demand their reward for permitting them to shed some more tears.
19
This is how things remained at the site of the former Temple until the arrival of about four thousand Bedouins headed by the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, accompanied by his learned councilor and expert on the holy sites of Jerusalem, Ka’b al-Ahbar, formerly a Jew from the Yemen named Jacob or perhaps Akiba, son of Mati.
20
1
Cited by Ibn Asakir in his
Ta’rikh Madinat Dimashq
, and al-Wasiti in his
Fada’il al-Bayt al-Muqaddas
. I have used the citation by Joseph van Ess in his invaluable article “Abd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock,” in
Bayt al-Maqdis: Abd al-Malik’s Jerusalem
, edited by Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
2
Cited in G. H. A. Juynboll,
The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature: Discussions in Modern Egypt
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 123.
3
See Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari’s
Ta’rikh al-Rusul wa’l-Muluk
(History of the Prophets and Kings), vol. 3,
The Children of Israel
(New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 2474–5.
4
On Ka’b’s age, see EI2 and Moshe Perlmann, “Another Ka’b al-Ahbar Story,” in
The Jewish Quarterly Review
45–46 (1954–1956), pp. 48–58.
5
See W. Montgomery Watt, “Conversion in Islam at the Time of the Prophet,” in
Early Islam: Collected Articles
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990). The elastic nature of Jewish—Muslim allegiances during this period can also be adduced from early Jewish apocalyptic writings, an example of which I attribute to Ka’b in “The Conquest Foretold.”
6
Guy Le Strange is among the pioneering scholars of Islam who, without explanation, writes that Ka’b was “a great liar” who “considerably gulled the simple-minded Arabs of the first century.” See
Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from 650 to 1500
(Original edition is 1890. Reprinted by Khayats, Beirut, 1965), p. 142.
7
Muhammad ibn Abdallah al-Kisa’i, in his
Qisas al-Anbiya’
(Tales of the Prophets), probably written around the end of the eleventh century; see the translation by Wheeler M. Thackston (Chicago, Ill.: Great Books of the Islamic World, 1997).
8
Cited in the “Introduction” to Gordon D. Newby,
The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad
(Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), p. 12.
9
For a full discussion of Abu Rayya’s argument, see G. H. A. Juynboll,
The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature: Discussions in Modern Egypt
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 129–133.
10
A modern Muslim work of scholarship on Jerusalem that illustrates this wounded mindset is
Bayt Al-Maqdis wa Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa
, by Muhammad Muhammad Hasan Shurab (Damascus, 1994).
11
Cited in John M. Lundquist,
The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), p. 7. With adjustments, and with no particular source to base myself upon, this passage has been put into the mouth of Ka’b al-Ahbar at the conclusion of “The Rock of Foundation.”
12
Yoma 5:2 in the Mishna, as cited in F. E. Peters’ anthology,
Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to Modern Times
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 29–30.
13
The relevant biblical citations are: Genesis 22; I Chronicles 3:1; I Chronicles 21:14–17; and I Kings 5–7. Oleg Grabar makes this point in his important essay “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,”
Ars Orientalis
3 (1959), p. 38.
14
From F. E. Peters in his
Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to Modern Times
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 127.
15
See “Midrash and the Destruction” in Alan Mintz,
Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p. 50.
16
Makkoth 24a. I am indebted to my student Jonathan Stern for finding this story.
17
The same Rabbi Akiba was a spiritual leader of the Bar Kochba revolt (132–135). He was brutally executed by the Romans a few years after the events. He was, therefore, in the story I have just cited, justifying his own people’s defeat in a fashion common to revolutionaries of all ideological persuasions.
18
From John Wilkinson’s translation in
Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land
(Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House, 1981), pp. 156–157.
19
From Jerome’s commentary on Zephaniah 1:15, which has been put into Sophronius’s words in “Finding the Cross.” Here, I have cited the translation used in Thomas I. Idinopulos,
Jerusalem Blessed, Jerusalem Cursed
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1991), pp. 100–101.
20
On the names of Ka’b, see Israel Wolfensohn’s dissertation
Ka’b al-Ahbar und seine Stellung im Hadit und der Islamischen Legendenliteratur
(Frankfurt, Germany: J. W. Goethe University, 1933). I am indebted to Chris Berdik for providing me with translations from parts of this work.
I
once read somewhere that sources in a book are like dead ghosts inhabiting an empty house; their presence is what gives meaning to every stick and stone in the edifice. It matters hardly a jot whether or not you believe in ghosts. All that matters is that someone at some point in time did. As the majority of my sources are at least a century—more often than not, several centuries—removed from the events they describe, the use of a particular fragment, or record of a deed, can hardly be justified by its correspondence to historical fact alone (at least not by me). All that is required of a source from this book’s point of view is that it be plausible, even as an invention that might have been in circulation in the seventh century, and that it have found resonance with me. Where I have erred or indulged in anachronism—and I am sure that I have, for my purposes are not history—I have broken the rules that I set for myself for constructing this story.
It is not always easy for readers to discern from the narrative whether a given story, or a particular detail within a story, or even a passage of scripture is Jewish, Muslim, or Christian in origin. This was the way things were in Ka’b’s time and place, if not in ours. Such ambiguities are hopefully resolved in the essay on sources below. Sources are identified in full at their first occurrence; thereafter, the author’s name is used, alone or with an abbreviated title for those authors with more than one work cited. If a source is used for the same purpose in more than one location in the book (for example, the various descriptions of seventh-century Jerusalem), then it is not repeated. Scripture is italicized, as are some passages of a prophetic or apocalyptic nature (for example, in the opening and closing pages). For citations from the Quran, I have used the numbering of A. J. Arberry in
The Koran Interpreted
(New York, 1996), with occasional modifications of the translation. For many of the events of this story, it should be noted, the Quran was not yet codified and compiled into its final form.
The opening italicized passages are adapted from the Quran (13:15, 16:4, 30:21) and the tenth-century historian and exegete Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari’s introduction to his multivolume commentary on the Quran,
Jami’ al-Bayan ’an Ta’wil ay al-Qur’an
(Bulaq, 1905).
The Creation story draws from Tabari’s multivolume
Ta’rikh al-Rusul wa’l-Muluk, History of the Prophets and Kings
, the English translation of which put out by the State University of New York Press I shall henceforth refer to as Tabari’s
History
. See
General Introduction and From Creation to the Flood
. vol. 1, (1989). The tradition that light and darkness were the first creations is attributed to Ibn Ishaq, the eighth-century biographer of the Prophet.
The story of Adam is based on the Muslim version, which incorporates many nonbiblical elements drawn from Jewish and Christian tradition. See
“Khalq,” Encyclopaedia of Islam
(Leiden: E. J. Brill), henceforth
EI2
. Jewish tradition tells of the clay used to shape Adam’s body in the
Targum Yerushalmi
to Genesis 2:7 and the
Sanhedrin
38a. The beauty and length of the body are mentioned in the Quran 95:4, as well as in Jewish sources
(Sanhedrin
38b;
Bereshit Rabba
8:1, 12:6). Tabari’s recounting of the story of Adam can be found in his
History
, vol. 1. The bowing of the angels before Adam, except Iblis (Satan), is from the Quran (15:26–38); Iblis’s reply to Adam later on in the chapter is an interpretation attributed to the Sufi mystics Junayd and Hallaj. The importance in Muslim tradition of the first Arabic letter,
alif
, is discussed in Edward Lane’s
Arabic—English Lexicon
(Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1984). The reference to a fiery garment of light and the significance of Adam’s fall can be found in
The Zohar;
Gershom Scholem discusses
The Zohar’s
emphasis on the fall of Adam in his
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
(Schocken Publishing House, 1941). The story of Eve’s creation from Adam’s shortest and most crooked left rib is from the ninth-century collector of “sound” tradition, Muhammad al-Bukhari. See his
Sahih al-Bukhari
(Cairo, 1969). That God ascended from the rock to Heaven after the Creation is in Abu Bakr al-Wasiti’s eleventh-century
Fada’il al-Bayt al-Muqaddas
, as cited by Nasser Rabbat, “The Meaning of the Umayyad Dome of the Rock,” vol. 6,
Muqarnas
, 1989. The post-Fall status of Adam and his complaint to God are in Tabari’s
History
. The conversation between the Fish and the Eagle, and the angels’ burial of Adam, are from material attributed to Ibn Ishaq, as edited and translated by Gordon Darnell Newby in
The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad
(University of South Carolina Press, 1989). A later version of the story of the Fish and the Eagle is attributed to Ka’b al-Ahbar by Muhammad ibn Abdallah al-Kisa’i, in his
Qisas al-Anbiya’, Tales of the Prophets;
see the translation by Wheeler M. Thackston (Great Books of the Islamic World, 1997). On the Jewish and Muslim tradition that has God rubbing Adam’s back and Adam ceding fifty of the thousand years alloted to him to the prophet David, see
EI2
under
“Adam.”