THE DOME OF THE ROCK
Al-Haram Al-Sharif

Excerpts from : The early Islamic Monuments of Al-Haram Al-Sharif
Myriam Rosen-Ayalon
Hebrew University 1989

With notes in bold my interpretation

The Temple Mount is known to be the site where Solomon's temple (the First temple) stood at the turn of the 1st millennium CE. Herod the Great expanded the site, rebuilding the "Second temple" there. Only after the Muslim conquest did the Temple Mount come to be known as "al-Haram al Sharif", the Noble Enclosure. As the former site of the two Jewish temples, it was also known in Arabic as "Bayt al- Maqdis", "the Temple".

Why was the Dome of the Rock built? Why should "Abd al-Malik have wished to build such a structure?

And why was it built in this particular manner, according to this particular plan, and with these particular decorations?

All these questions must be approached while keeping in mind that it was indeed "Abd al-Malik who built this monument, and that what is to be seen today faithfully reflects what was built by him in 691/692CE. In other words, we have before us the original plan of this monument, with its basic proportions intact, as is its original scheme of decoration.

In the late 1950s, Oleg Grabar sought a solution along completely different lines. Two major aspects of the Dome of the Rock served as his basis: certain parts of the mosaic decorations and some of the inscriptions integrated into the decoration.

Grabar was fully aware of the complexity of the building and of its rich decoration, and his was one of the first attempts in modern art history to tackle the difficulties of analysing iconographic problems in the Dome of the Rock. His study is concerned primarily with the mosaic decorations of the inner face of the intermediate octagon. That one of the most striking themes in the mosaics of this structure is the stylised depiction of a collection of jewellery has been noted.

The great diversity of the jewellery (comprising bracelets, pendants, necklaces, and above all many crowns and tiaras) was indeed intriguing.

These elements do not seem merely to illustrate the continued tradition of wall mosaics as established in pre-Islamic, Byzantine art; for the golden background here is not merely for colour effect, but plays an active role in this rich, bejewelled realm.

The extraordinary "collection" of jewellery here, conveying the impression of reality, includes a profusion of crowns of 2 different types.

It was to one of these types, the crowns and tiaras which appear as the main theme all round the intermediate octagon that Grabar referred.

Grabar's theory (that the crowns are of vanquished kings subordinated to Islam) does not provide a solution to the large variety of other jewellery.

Why should it be associated in this way with the rest of the decoration of this monument? And why such an array of glittering jewellery, studded with inlay and creating the effect of precious gems, included in the decorative scheme of the building? The answer has remained illusive.

The other type of crowns appearing in the Dome of the Rock is the group of "winged" motifs stemming from each of the splendid amphorae decorating the drum. In some of the early studies this "winged" motif was rightly traced to a Sasanian origin, where such motifs often also symbolise the Sasanian crown. The "winged" depiction in the drum might have played the role of a crown in Sasanian tradition, and thus represent a variant of the crowns depicted naturalistically within the intermediate octagon.