The Diadem of Mu‘āwiya’s Jerusalem: The Dome of the Rock
Capitalizing Jerusalem - Mu'awiya's Urban Vision 638-680 - Beatrice St. Laurent
Beatrice St. Laurent [+]
Description
Chapters 6 focuses on a major revision of the dating, patronage and history of the Dome of the Rock and attributes the monument’s planning and construction by 660 to Mu‘āwiya who perhaps left it incomplete at his death in 680. Newly available archival sources reveal the Dome’s original siting on bedrock with no upper platform, without buttresses and porches and fully reveted in jewel-like mosaic above marble paneling. Connections to Byzantium, Persia and Yemen are explored as well as Biblical, Qur’anic and Zoroastrian linkages with the monument thus positing links to the monotheistic faiths to the Dome. The crowns of the interior mosaic décor reflect the unification of earlier Byzantine, Sasanian and pre-Islamic Arabia under Umayyad dominion in Jerusalem. This is reflected in the physical embodiment of this royal mosaic embellished Umayyad monument as both a bejewelled diadem or crown and as a pre-Islamic South Arabian royal sanctuary or palace of the ruler called a miḥrāb.