Читать книгу Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin онлайн

81 страница из 120

The mosque erected by ‘Omar is described by an early pilgrim who saw it as a simple square building of timber, capable of holding three thousand people, and constructed over the ruins of some more ancient edifice.

The annals of the Mohammedan Empire during the next forty-eight years, although fraught with stirring events, bear but little on the history of Jerusalem itself; and although the visit of ‘Omar had impressed the followers of the Cor’án with the idea that they possessed an equal interest in the Holy City with the adherents of the Law and of the Gospel, still their devotion to the Temple of Mecca and their prophet’s tomb at Medína was too deeply rooted to leave them much reverence for the Masjid el Aksa. But political exigencies did what religious enthusiasm had failed to accomplish, and in 684 A.D., in the reign of ‘Abd el Melik, the ninth successor of Mohammed, and the fifth caliph of the House of Omawíyah, events happened which once more turned people’s attention to the City of David.