Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

234 t CHAPTER NINE
raise Jerusalem’s Muslim profile—which was reinvigorated after
1967—must be judged successful. After Saladin’s restoration of
Muslim sovereignty in the city in 1187, both Muslim investment in
and Muslim pious visits to Jerusalem dramatically increased.
By far the most common practice of a Jerusalem ziyara was a
visit to the city en route to Mecca. The hajj caravan that marshaled
in Damascus peeled off an excursion to Jerusalem on its way
southward, and many other pilgrims made the relatively easy detour
to Jerusalem on their own since a visit to al-Quds was thought
to enhance the sanctification of the subsequent hajj. None of this is
unexpected, given Jerusalem’s deliberately enhanced reputation as
a holy city, nor is it surprising that, with the increased investment
in madrasas and Sufi convents in the city, many of Islam’s “friends
of God” should choose to settle there and that many more of the
pious should come to Jerusalem to sit at their feet and gain their
blessing (baraka).
More surprising—perhaps even startling—is the growth of a
kind of pilgrimage ritual in the Noble Sanctuary. What is merely
surprising is that there should begin to develop a kind of stational
liturgy in and around the Haram al-Sharif. Some of this was obviously
generated by stories of where and how the Prophet prayed
during his celebrated but brief Night Journey to the Noble Sanctuary,
and some of those places were soon enshrined with small
domed oratories clustered around the Dome of the Rock. What is
startling, however, and somewhat perplexing, is the persistent tradition
that in late-seventh-century Jerusalem was intended to replace
Mecca as the site of the Muslims’ mandatory hajj and the
unmistakable evidence that throughout the Middle Ages a number
of Muslims did just that. The early tradition is connected to the
caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), who was confronted by a stubborn
rebel who had taken possession of Mecca. The caliph, it was
said, built the Dome of the Rock, which he assuredly did, to divert
the hajj from rebel-held Mecca to his holy city of Jerusalem. Modern
scholarship has discounted the story, but it persisted in Islam,
and we do know that in subsequent centuries at least some Muslims—20,000
were reported on one occasion—performed their
obligatory “standing” atop the Jerusalem Haram while their fel-