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‘Abd Al-Malik's Inscription in the Dome of the Rock: A Reconsideration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Christel Kessler
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Extract

The famous Kūfic inscription in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock, which provides the building with a direct dating and an explicit message and which has been discussed for more than a century, once more claims our attention: a recent review of the mosaic decoration maintains that it has lost its original character during the latest restoration; that it has been “entirely redone” and has suffered corrections such as “adding alifs and diacritical points and signs wherever they appear to be missing”. No evidence is given for this disquieting news beyond the statement of a certain (or, as it seems, a rather uncertain) person; this inevitably provokes demand for further information, the more so as it is included in a book renowned for its reliable documentation.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 102 , Issue 1 , January 1970 , pp. 2 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1970

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References

1 Running along the upper edge of the intermediate arcade on both faces, with letters in gold cubes on a background of dark blue cubes.

2 Undertaken from August 1956 to the inauguration by King Ḥusayn in August 1964 by the joint Restoration Committees in ‘Ammān (Lajnat i‘mār al-Masjid al-Aqṣā al-mubārak wa'l-Ṣakhra al-musharrafa, presided over by Qāḍī al-Quḍāh MaἈlī al-Shaykh Ἀbd Allāh Ghōsha) and in Cairo (al-Maktab almi'mārī al-handasī li-iṣlāḥ wa-i‘mār al-Ṣakhra al-musharrafa bi'1-Quds, presided over by the architects Ḥusayn Shāfi‘ī, ṣalāḥ al-Din al-Kaylānī, and the late ‘Abbās Badr).

3 Marguerite van Berchem in the new edition of Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim architecture, 1969, vol. I, pt. 1, p. 220.Google Scholar

4 ibid., “This fact was disclosed to me by the Egyptian architect himself, who had directed the work; he said of the text ‘we have corrected all the faults of orthography’.” Against this I have the assurance of the director of the Restoration Committee's Office in Cairo, Chief architect Ḥusayn Shāfi‘ī, that the inscription has not been altered.

5 February 1967; a first attempt in November 1966 failed because of political events.

6 On the outer face of the arcade on the west side are a few gaps in the mosaics, which have been filled in with plaster and painted to imitate the gold cubes of the missing letters (see EMA, I, pls. 6a and b, 5b, 7a and b). It is on this same side that the roof was repaired under al-Muqtadir billāh, c. 301/913 (see inscription on rafters in his name, JRAS, 1964, p. 88, pl. V and VI) and it may be that the damaged mosaic inscription was repaired at that time.

7 Except for a passage of three words (see Kūfic text note 54) published in a booklet entitled “lṣlāh wa-i‘mār Qubbat al-Ṣakhra al-musharrafa” in ‘Ammān, n.d., by the Jordanian Restoration Committee.

8 Neglecting, of course, the original's much wider spacing.

9 Early Muslim architecture, vol. I, pls. 5–8Google Scholar for the exterior, and pls. 9–20 for the interior. These prove to be the only published photographic record in which a great part of the inscription is clearly readable. Its position (c. 10 m. above ground in a badly lit interior) and its unusual length (c. 240 m.) together with the holiness of the place (third holiest sanctuary of Islam) explain the fact that up to now no proper photographic survey has been made available. Profiting from the unsuccessful experience of his friend Max van Berchem (recorded in detail in Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum, Jérusalem II, Ḥaram, MIFAO, XLIV, 1927, p. 228, n. 2) Creswell operated with filters and exposure times of up to half an hour, occasionally more. It is with great respect for his achievement and with sincere thanks for his permission that I reproduce here sections of these photographs.

10 The Head of this Office, Chief architect Ḥusayn Shāfi‘ī, obligingly allowed me in March 1968 to compare my records with the fine 6 × 6 cm. coloured transparencies of their collection, the publication of which is said to be in preparation. It is the only coloured record of the pre-restoration state and especially valuable for the documentation of the diacritical signs, which often do not stand out on black and white bromides, but are always visible in colour. My sincere thanks are due to Mr. Ḥusayn Shāfi‘ī for his friendly cooperation; also to Mr. Ṣalāḥ al-Shawarbī who is in charge of the storing of this collection.

11 Max van Berchem, op. cit., p. 228.

12 Described in a long footnote, ibid., n. 1.

13 I take this opportunity of thanking His Excellency ‘Abd Allāh Ghōsha for his permission to work in the sanctuary and Mr. ‘Abd al-Wahhab ‘Abd al-Mun‘im, resident architect of the Egyptian Restoration Committee's Technical Office in Jerusalem, for helping to provide the above-mentioned facilities.

14 They are the yā’ (26 times), tā’ (22), nūn (14), bā’ (11), fā’ (6), qāf(5), khā’ (4), ḍād (2), thā’ (2), shīn (1), and ghayn (1). According to my notebook there are a few more letters which have diacritical signs, but since their existence could not be counterchecked on photographs (the coloured transparencies sometimes having part of the inscription obstructed by scaffolding) I have mentioned them only in the notes to the Kūfic text. They would include a possible diacritical marking of the letters dhāl (see Kūfic text note 50) and jîm (see Kūfic text note 64).

15 I examined the inscription, as did Max and recently Marguerite van Berchem, with strong binoculars from the ground; however, the outer ambulatory being narrower than the inner one (it is only 4.10 m. wide) and not allowing enough space to step back and decipher the details of the inscription under the ceiling, I had a ladder leant against the exterior wall—at each side on two places—so that I could examine it from almost the same level. However, a close-up examination would still be desirable in order to check the conclusions drawn here.

16 See below, Appendix, pp. 13–14.

17 Nöldeke, Th., Schwally, , Pretzl, , Geschichte des Qorans, III, 1938.Google Scholar

18 This is the year given in the substituted part of the copper plates above the entrances to the Dome of the Rock, see CIA, Jér., III, MIFAO, t. 45, 1920, no. 216; discussion, CIA, Jér., II, MIFAO, t. 44, 1925, pp. 246–9.

19 In a lecture delivered at the invitation of the Center of Arabic Studies at the American University in Cairo, 22nd November, 1966 (tape-recorded).

20 Al-Ya‘qūbī is the first to speak of ‘Abd al-Malik's designation of the Rock instead of the Ka‘Aba as a place of pilgrimage on account of a tradition that it was from there that the Prophet ascended into heaven (Ta'rikh, II, 1883, p. 311). However, S. D. Goitein has assembled evidence that this cannot have been the case, and that al-Ya‘qūbī, being a partisan of the Shī‘A, must have been purposely depicting ‘Abd al-Malik as a man who broke with the most holy rules of Islam (JAOS, vol. 70, 1950, pp. 104–8). R. W. Hamilton, basing his inquiry into the reasons for building the Dome of the Rock (see n. 19 above) “as far as possible on tangible evidence and on evidence as near as possible to the time of events”, concluded that if the rock in ‘Abd al-Malik's time had already been connected with the mi‘rāj or—what was usually identified with it—the Night-journey, one could be sure that any dedicatory inscription placed on the building would have included the opening words of the 17th Sura; but ‘Abd al-Malik's inscription (and one can add those on the copper plates above the entrances) contains not a word of it. It was only in 1545 that they were inscribed on the exterior of the drum in the great cursive text which forms part of the tile coating given by the Ottoman Sultan Sulaymān. “Yet some reason must have been given why men should walk round the rock; what could that reason have been ? What the khalif ‘Umar asked to see, when he visited Jerusalem in a.d. 638, was the ‘Miḥrāb of Dā'ūd’ or the ‘Masjid Sulaymān’. Whatever exactly he was shown, we know from the Bordeaux Pilgrim that in a.d. 333 the Jews were annually visiting a ‘lapis pertusus’ in the temple area. Comparing that fact with the statement of a 7th-century Armenian chronicler (Sebeos) that the Arabs had built a mosque at a place where the Hebrews thought they had found the Holy of Holies, it is a fair guess that the rock served for ‘Abd al-Malik as the symbol of Solomon's temple, or Miḥrāb of Dā'ūd, the venerable and appropriate relic which he required to draw the Muslims to the Bayt al-Maqdis.” … If the Rock, as a symbol, referred originally to Solomon's temple it soon acquired a more popular connexion with the Night-journey. But neither tradition, as Hamilton pointed out, enshrines the real purpose or message of the building; it was the inscription surrounding the Rock which did that: declaring for all to read—Muslims or People of the Book—that Islam had superseded both Christianity in its doctrine of Jesus and Judaism in its inheritance from David.

21 See n. 15 above.

22 Dated or datable specimens of epigraphy and palaeography with diacritical signs (dots or strokes), excluding numismatic. (Miss Helen Mitchell of the Numismatic Department of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, kindly informed me that in those cases when an occasional dot occurs during the Umayyad period there is no question of its being inserted in its normal function, i.e. that of avoiding confusion or ambiguity of letters; it is apparently to serve as an inconspicuous mark, connected with some aspect of mint-organization about which we cannot do more than speculate, cf. Jungfleisch, Marcel, “Les points secrets en numismatique”, Bull. de l'Inst. d'Egypte, XXVIII, 1947, pp. 101 ff.)Google Scholar For the preparation of this list I am much indebted to Professor Dr. A. Grohmann who has provided these references in a letter of April 1967 and additions in Nov. 1968:

23 CIA, Jérusalem, MIFAO, t. 45 (1920), no. 2 and CIA, Jérusalem, Ville, MIFAO, t. 43 (1922), pp. 18–19.

24 Such as the pointed beginning of the letters alif and ‘ayn, the pointed ending of dāl and kāf (when written like dāl) and especially the long sweeping backwards turn of the final yā’. It might be worth mentioning that the kāf is written , i.e. distinctively different from the usual dāl-like form , only when the pronominal suffix ka refers to God, also in mulk and in the phrase lā sharika lahu. The same distinction is found in the original part of the inscription on copper plates above the entrances.

25 In relation to the milestone (CIA, Jér., II, Ville, p. 18, n. 5) and to the graffiti in Antinoë of 117/735 (CIA, Égypte, I, p. 693), Max van Berchem has already suggested that the strokes must have been adopted from the Qur”ān manuscripts. The influence of the Qur'ānic manuscripts on the Qur'ānic inscription in the Dome of the Rock is even easier to explain.

26 Nöldeke, , Bergstraesser, , Pretzl, , Geschichte des Qorans, III, 1938, pp. 257–258.Google Scholar

27 Zur orientalischen Altertumskunde, VI, 1917, p. 26.Google Scholar

28 World of the Arabic papyri, p. 85.

29 See Kūfic text notes 13, 17, 33, 56, 59.

30 Dated by Karabacek to the 9th century a.d. in op. cit., p. 25.

31 MS in Leiden of Abū ‘Ubayd, Gharib al-Ḥadīth, of a.h. 252/a.d. 866. De Goeje, in ZDMG, XVIII, 1861, p. 781, states that qāf is given with one dot below, but often with two dots above in addition. Karabacek suggests that the two dots above might have been introduced by a later hand.

32 Found by Tischendorf; dated by H. L. Fleischer to the beginning or first half of the 9th century a.d., ZDMG, XVIII, p. 288 ff. Qāf with a dot below occurs 13 times, while qāf with two dots above, always introduced by a second hand, occurs 17 times.

33 Dated by H. L. Fleischer to the 9th century a.d. (ZDMG, VIII, 1854, p. 586, facs. II).

34 Op. cit., p. 84 (Pap. Erzhzg. Rainer, Inv. Ar. Pap. 34963 and PERF 6557).

35 Mélanges de la Faculté orientale, Univ. St. Joseph, III, 1908, p. 422.

36 e.g. Nöldeke, Bergstraesser, Pretzl, op. cit., III, Abb. Nr. 10, Madīna la (line 5 has stroke under qāf in qiyāmd) as an example of an “early” Qur'ān, but no closer dating is suggested.

37 Arabic Palaeography, pls. 13 and 14, qāf with stroke below in khalaqakum.

38 J. v. Karabacek mentions in op. cit. a coin from Marāgha, dated 347/a.d. 958–9 from the collection of Charles de l'Ecluse, which is supposed to be the latest example of a qāf with one sign below. I was not able to verify this.