From the point of view of Western scholarship there are serious problems with Muslim history. For example, there are no contemporary Muslim sources for Umar’s conquest of Jerusalem. The account of Umar being shocked at the rubbish on the Temple Mount and making a start at clearing it away comes from Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali towards the end of the fifteenth century, more than 800 years after the events he describes. In fact the earliest Muslim histories appeared only 150 years or so after the death of Mohammed, and according to the oldest history relating the conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Umar was not there at the surrender at all. Though the Temple Mount had little significance for Christians, it is unlikely that in so well-organised and prosperous a city it was left in a ruinous state. The acts of Constantine and the visit of his mother had the effect of magnifying the importance of Jerusalem and promoting its reconstruction, while sometime no later than the mid-fifth century Jews were again permitted to live within the city. An ancient map, and the testimony of a pilgrim, suggest that at the very least there was a church or chapel on the Temple Mount, probably at the southeast corner adjacent to where the al-Aqsa mosque stands today.
Until about 800 there Is an almost total lack of contemporary Islamic sources. Islamic history appears to have been transmitted primarily orally until that date, when Muslim scholars began collecting, editing and recording the traditions, their aim to create a coherent scriptural basis for Islam and to provide an historical underpinning for their now sophisticated world empire.
In fact the earliest date for a written Islamic source Is 692: It Is the founder’s Inscription which appears In gold mosaic along the arcade Inside the Dome of the Rock. It corresponds to Sura 4:171 In the Koran and Is an emphatic warning to the Christians: ‘People of the Book, do not transgress the bounds of your religion. Speak nothing but the truth about God. The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle and His Word which he cast to Mary: a spirit from Him. So believe In God and his apostles and do not say: “Three”. Forebear, and It shall be better for you. God Is but one God. God forbid that he should have a son! His Is all that the heavens and the earth contain. God Is the all-sufficient protector.’
The traditional view Is that the Koran consists of passages associated with (or revealed to) Mohammed In Mecca and Medina In the early decades of the seventh century, that It had been committed to writing by about 650, and that It was the most Important element In Islam from the time of Mohammed onwards. But a discovery made in 1972 of a cache of ancient Korans in the Great Mosque at Sanaa in femen seems to show that even as the Dome of the Rock was being built, Islam was still in flux. The Sanaa cache of Korans have been dated to the early part of the eighth century, and examination of the manuscripts reveals that there are two versions of the text, one written over the other, suggesting that the Koran, and therefore Islam itself, was evolving for at least a century following the death of Mohammed.
By applying the same approaches to the Koran as have long been applied to the Old and New Testaments, various Western scholars based at such institutions as Oxford, Princeton and London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have arrived at the view that the Koran, in the form that it survives, was compiled, if not written, decades after the lifetime of Mohammed, probably by converts to Islam in the Middle East, who introduced elements from Christianity and Judaism, and that it was elevated to the position of Islam’s definitive scripture only towards the end of the eighth century.
Some support for this view has come from archaeology. According to Muslim tradition, Mohammed changed the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca in the earliest years of Islam, after he fell out with the Jews when he was building his community of the faithful in Arabia. But new archaeological evidence shows that in mosques built as late as the eighth century the prayer
Niches point towards Jerusalem and not towards Mecca.
These scholars conclude that Islam’s own accounts of its origins are religiously inspired interpretations of history rather than objective records of events. They say that Islam’s history of that period, including accounts of Mohammed and the formation of the Koran, is in fact a back-projection of views that were formed as the culture and religion of Islam emerged in an atmosphere of intense debate between different groups of monotheists influenced by rabbinical Judaism and heretical Christianity.
The Night Journey
Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam after Mecca and Medina. In fact the Temple Mount was the original direction for Muslim prayer. The holiness of Jerusalem derives from its association with the Old Testament prophets whom Mohammed also made the prophets of Islam, and from Jesus whom Mohammed also regarded as a prophet but not the son of God. But above all the sacred nature of Jerusalem is confirmed for Muslims by the story in the Koran (17:1) of the Night Journey in which the angel Gabriel brings Mohammed to the Temple Mount from where they ascend heavenwards for a brief glimpse of Paradise.
Nothing in the Koran directiy identifies the Farthest Mosque with the Tempie Mount; nor is there any mention of Jerusaiem: ‘Giory be to him who made his servant go by night from the Sacred Tempie to the farther Tempie whose surroundings we have biessed.’ in the viewof non-Musiim schoiars, and some Musiims too, the identification with the site of Soiomon’s Tempie was a iater interpretation, probabiy made generations after the death of Mohammed, some arguing that ‘the farther Tempie’ reaiiy refers to Medina and that the Night Journey was Mohammed’s Hegira to that city, isiam had aiready appropriated the prophets of Judaism and Christianity, but by means of reinterpreting the Koran it couid be made to appropriate their sacred pieces as weii.
The Dome of the Rock iiiustrates that appropriation.
Bui it on the site of Soiomon’s Tempie, decorated inside and out with inscriptions composed of aii the Koranic references to Jesus, and marking the spot where Mohammed was given a giimpse of Paradise awaiting aii true beiievers, the tripie associations of the Dome of the Rock confirm the ascendancy of isiam.
World History
