Chapter II : The History of the Islamic Sanctity of the City of Jerusalem

Palestine, which was already known by Arabs and Muslims before the Arab conquest to be holy because of Judaism and Christianity, both recognized and revered by Islam, did not acquire its particularly Islamic sanctity until a few years after the beginning of the Prophet’s mission. The first significant act in this direction occurred when the Prophet ordered the Muslim worshippers to turn their faces in prayer towards Jerusalem when the Muslims were still in Mecca. When they moved to Medina, they continued to turn their faces in the same direction for about 16 or 17 months, after which time the Prophet ordered the direction to be changed to Mecca [Al-Khazin’s commentary, p. 103, Cairo, A. H. 1331, and Al-Tabari, vol. 2, p. 265, as quoted by Dr. I. M. Husseini in his “The Arab Character of Jerusalem” (in Arabic), Cairo, 1968). The second significant act in the evolution of the Islamic holiness of Palestine is the ascension of the Prophet into heaven from Jerusalem, from a spot somewhere near or in the area of the Temple. This is enshrined in the famous Qur’anic verse: ‘Glory be to Him who made His servant to go at night from the sacred mosque to the remote mosque of which we have blessed the precincts, so that We may show to him some of Our signs.’ The accepted interpretation of this verse has it that the reference here is to Jerusalem, ‘The significance being that the Prophet shall inherit all the blessings of the Israelite prophets, including the Holy Land’ [p. 561, the Holy Qur’an, Muhammad Ali, Woking, 1917]. The ‘remote mosque’, according to tradition, is said to be an ancient holy place of Proto-Islam, and to have been founded only 40 years after the foundation of the Ka’ba (in Mecca) by Abraham. Jerusalem was therefore the first qibla (direction in prayer) in Islam, before the Ka’ba in Mecca, which is the second and the ‘remote mosque’ or ‘al-Aqsa’, as it is better known, is the third sacred sanctuary in Islam, with the Ka’ba in Mecca and the Prophet’s sanctuary in Medina as the first and second respectively. The word ‘precincts’ in the above-quoted verse is said to refer to the environs of Jerusalem, or even to the whole of Palestine. The Prophet is reported to have said: ‘Journeys should not be made except to three mosques: this my mosque (in Medina), the sacred mosque (in Mecca), and Al-Aqsa Mosque.’ [Al-Bukhari, as quoted by Dr. I. M. Husseini in his book referred to previously.] Al-Suyuti, in his lesser collection of traditions, reports a saying by the Prophet to the effect that ‘God, the Supreme Being, has blessed what lies between Al-Arish (in Egyptian Sinai) and the Euphrates, with a special sanctification of Palestine’. He is also reported to have said about Beit al-Maqdis (Jerusalem sanctuary) that ‘it is the land of the in-gathering and of aggregation; go to it and worship in it, for one act of worship there is like a thousand acts of worship elsewhere’. Another reported tradition says: ‘Whoever dies in Jerusalem sanctuary is as if he has died in heaven. ’Ibn-Abbas reports that the Prophet said: ‘Whoever goes on pilgrimage to the Jerusalem sanctuary and worships there in one and the same year will be cleared of his sins.’ This explains in a way the keenness of the Muslims on making a subsidiary pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after or before their main pilgrimage to Mecca. It is highly desirable for Muslims to begin their pilgrimage rites in Jerusalem. Many eminent Muslims in the early period of Islam, such as Ibn-Umar, Mu’ath, and Ka’b Al-Ahbar, put on their ritual pilgrimage vestments in Jerusalem before proceeding to Mecca.

According to a tradition or a popular legend reminiscent of a similar Jewish and Christian one. Muslims believe that the Day of Judgement will be in Jerusalem. A folklore story runs that on the Day of Judgement, when Christ is sitting on the wall between the Golden Gate and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Prophet on the mountain opposite, a single hair will be stretched from a column there across the valley, over which the multitudes assembled on the Haram (the area where Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock stand) will have to pass. The hills will recede and the valley deepen, and the righteous will walk fearlessly across, well knowing that, if they falter, their guardian angels are ready to hold them up by their forelocks, and save them from tumbling headlong into hell, which is gaping beneath. Thus will they cross until only a handful are left, who seem ill at ease, and reluctant to set foot on so narrow a bridge. Muhammad inquires why they linger, and is informed that they are the wicked Muslims who, having now been smitten with a sense of their misdoings, and realizing that their virtue will not suffice to help them over the abyss, are awaiting the Prophet’s pleasure on this side in fear and misgiving. Muhammad looks stern, and rebukes them for their neglect of his rules and ordinances; and then he smiles a little to himself, and in a moment is across the bridge and among them. They then repent, and so they cross the bridge without mishap [p. 87, The Prince of the East, by H. C. Lukach, London, 1913].

This legend is in some way similar to another relating to the Prophet’s ascension into heaven. The Prophet, on the night of the ascension, worshipped in the sanctuary in Jerusalem, in the company of his predecessors, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, before he was escorted up a ladder of light to the presence of God in the seventh heaven. His magic steed, the Buraq, was in the meantime tethered only a short distance from the site of the present Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Wailing Wall is more familiarly known by Muslims as the Buraq Wall. During this ascension night, some commentators assert, verse 44 of Sura 43 in the Qur’an was revealed [see the commentaries of Al-Khazin and Al-Nasafi]. The ascent, according to tradition, was from a rock. About this rock there are many legends in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Sir John Maundeville gives a number of such legends in the account of his visit to Jerusalem around the year A.D. 1322 [pp. 170-1, Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn’s Library, London, 1848]. In Islam, the tradition reports that the Prophet, on the night of the ascension, prayed on the right of the rock, and that when he started to ascend the ladder on his way up to heaven, the rock rose from its place and attempted to follow. The angel Gabriel stopped it, and it is said that the rock spoke at that time, as it spoke to the Caliph ’Umar when he visited the spot after the surrender of Jerusalem to the Muslims. On the Day of Judgement, according to another tradition, the Ka’ba in Mecca will come to the Rock (Sakhra, in Arabic). God’s throne will then rest upon the Rock. Other legends or traditional stories about the Rock are still current among Muslims. They are inextricably interwoven with Jewish and Christian traditions. For further examples see “Jerusalem” by M. Join-Lambert, Elek, London, 1958; and also p. 222 in A History of Jerusalem by J. Gray, mentioned previously.

Such legends and stories are not peculiar to Islam. Indeed, they are universal and present in all religions. I would like to refer the skeptical reader, by way of illustration, to the story of Elijah ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and the revelation of St. John the Divine. There is also the passage in St. Matthew about Jesus talking with Moses and Elias. The story of St. Iranius, bishop of Lyons in the second century, is similar to the Prophet’s ascension.

All Islamic traditions and sacred writings point to the unmistakable  fact that Jerusalem is holy for all Muslims, second only in holiness to Mecca and Medina. It is the first qibla and the third of the sacred cities. The only sanctuaries precedent to Al-Haram in Jerusalem are the Ka’ba in Mecca and the Haram (sanctuary) of Medina.

For all these religious reasons Jerusalem is holy to the Muslims. The names in Arabic, by which it is known to Arabs and Muslims, is Al-Quds, Beit al-Maqdis, and Al-Beit al-Muqaddas – all of which derive from the triliteral root of QDS, which means ‘holy’, ‘sacred’, or ‘hallowed’. Sometimes Jerusalem is called also Al-Quds al-Sharif – ‘The Noble Jerusalem’. The word ‘sharif’, ‘noble’, is normally added to the names of exceptionally sacred shrines. Thus Al-Haram, where Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock stand, is called Al-Haram al-Sharif.

The triple holiness of Jerusalem does not weaken the Muslim case; rather, it reinforces it. Islam believes in Judaism and Christianity, and regards their founders, such as Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus as prophets, equal to Muhammad. In the Qur’an, there are no fewer than 8 chapters bearing names of Hebrew prophets and having Hebrew associations. David and Solomon alone are mentioned no fewer than 33 times in the Qur’an. In the whole of the New Testament, these two names are not mentioned more than 30 times, the share of Solomon being only 8 as against 17 in the Qur’an. The belief of Christians in the Old Testament is not to be taken as a detraction from the sanctity of the New Testament.(4) A relevant story is told by the pilgrim Felix Fabri (and quoted by Col. Sir C. M. Watson in his book The Story of Jerusalem, London, 1912, p. 256), that the Muslims took away a place called The Tomb of David from the Christians for the following reasons. ‘The Jews have many times begged the Sultan to give them that place, that they may make an oratory of it, and they beg it of him even to this day; while the Christians always refused it to them. So, at last, the Sultan inquired wherefore this place was holy. When he was told that David and the other kings of Jerusalem of his seed were buried there, he said: “We Saracens also count David holy, even as the Christians and the Jews do, and we believe the Bible as they do. Wherefore, neither the Christians nor the Jews shall have that place, but we will take it for ourselves.”’ Felix Fabri, a Dominican Father from Germany, visited Palestine in 1480 and 1483. Palestine was then under the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt.

However, these Islamic religious feelings were concretized in the course of subsequent history. Jerusalem surrendered to the Arabs under ’Umar, the second Caliph, in the year A.D. 637, and continued to be in Arab hands for nearly 900 years, and in Muslim hands for nearly 1,300 years, with a break for more than one thousand years when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Crusaders. Jerusalem then was not a Jewish city; it was a completely Christian one. The Arabs did not take it from the Jews, who after the years A.D. 70 and 135 had almost entirely disappeared. Nothing of the Jewish Temple remained after A.D. 70, and the Jews, after the last rebellion in A.D. 132-5, ceased to have any significant existence in Palestine as a whole, and from that time, ‘the Jews were destined to be a kingdom not of this earth’ [p. 14, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Own Time by Moshe Menuhin, Beirut, 1969]. In the covenant between the Muslims and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, it was stipulated to the Christians that ‘no Jews shall reside with them’. History records, on the authority of two Greek historians, Eutychus and Theophanes, and of Muslim historians, that ’Umar was led to the spot from which the Prophet ascended into heaven. ‘The precinct was encumbered with debris of the recent Persian destruction and with the rubbish of the Christian city to such an extent that the gate at the southwest by which they entered was almost totally filled up. But that presented no obstacle to ’Umar, and the proud prelate felt obliged to crawl first on all fours and clear a way for his guest. It was then that ’Umar inaugurated the clearing of the famous rock above the cave. The pollution here apparently prevented its immediate consecration, so that the first sanctuary of Islam in Jerusalem was on the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque’ [pp. 219-20, A History of Jerusalem by J. Gray, Robert Hale, London, 1969]. John Gray adds to this that ‘it is recorded that as ’Umar stood on the site of the Temple in the shabby patched shift of clothes in which he had ridden up from Medina to Syria, the Patriarch Sophronius shed tears and muttered into his beard the quotation from the Book of Daniel (12:11) about the abomination of desolation standing, where he should not, as Theophanes casts an invidious glance at ’Umar’s interest in the holy places also of Christianity. “Diabolical hypocrisy” is the venomous remark of the Byzantine Chronicler, but this is in itself evidence of the moderation of the great-souled, wise ruler of Islam, who in reverent simplicity regarded Jerusalem as the Holy City of both faiths’ [p. 220, ibid.]. It is also recorded that it was a converted Jew who helped the Caliph in finding the Rock [p. 169, Jerusalem by Michel Join-Lambert, Elek, London, 1966].

In this visit, ’Umar is said to have ordered the erection of a mosque. Arab historians do not agree as to the identity or the exact location of this mosque. But it must have been a very primitive one, somewhere to the south of the Temple area(5). Conder, in his book “The City of Jerusalem” [John Murray, London, 1909], says ‘’Umar prayed in Justinian’s basilica of the Virgin. He is said to have visited the Sakhra (Rock), which he purified.’ Eutychus says that in Constantine’s time ‘the rock and the parts adjacent thereto were ruins, and were thus left alone. They cast dirt on the stone, so that a great dunghill was piled upon it, wherefore the Romans (or Byzantines) neglected it, and did not pay it the honour which the Israelites were wont to do, neither did they build a church over it, for that our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel, “Behold your House shall be left unto you desolate.” ’Umar caused it to be purified, and then someone said, “Let us build a temple with the Stone for Qibla”; but ’Umar answered, “Not so, but let us build the shrine so as to place the stone behind it.”’ Perhaps there was in the minds of early Muslims some vague association between the Black Stone in Mecca and the stone or the Rock in Jerusalem. This may have endowed the Shrine of the Rock, or the Dome of the Rock, as it is popularly known, with an enhanced sanctity.

In addition to all these Islamic associations, Jerusalem is unforgettable for other historical relationships. The great Arab and Muslim historical figures and Muslim men of religion who are closely related to Jerusalem and who lived or sojourned in Jerusalem are countless. In the early period of Islam, a great number of famous Muslims came to Jerusalem, notably ’Umar, the second Caliph, Khalid ibn Al-Walid and Abu-Ubaida, two distinguished Arab commanders, Mu’awiya, the first Umayyad Caliph, Amr ibn Al-’As, and many of the Prophet’s companions, including Bilal, the Prophet’s mu’ezzin (caller to prayer), and Abu Nu’aim, the first man to call to prayer in Jerusalem. Of the great Muslim men of religion and mystics, the first who come to one’s mind are two famous women: Umm Al-Darda and Rabi’a the mystic. The latter lived and died in Jerusalem, and her tomb is a landmark on the Mount of Olives. There also are the four leading Muslim theologians and holy men, namely Al-Awza’i, Ibrahim ibn Adham, a great mystic, Al-Shafi’i, the founder of a Muslim religious school, and Abu-Hamid Al-Ghazali, the great theologian and mystic who lived in Jerusalem near the Gate of Mercy, very close to the Haram area, where he worked on his great book on the sciences of religion circa 1095. Many of the Prophet’s companions and other famous men in theology and Islamic history visited the city at various times and lived in it, and several were buried there.(6) Sulaiman, the seventh Umayyad Caliph, arranged for his bai’a (investiture) to take place in Jerusalem. Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid Caliph, and Al-Mahdi, the third Abbasid Caliph, both already mentioned in connection with repairs at Al-Aqsa Mosque, visited the city, the former twice. A famous visitor to Jerusalem under the Franks was Usama ibn Munqidh in 1140.

Jerusalem has always been regarded by the Muslims as a holy city and has been treated with the greatest reverence. Apart from desecrations by the Chaldeans and by the Romans, when the Jewish Temple was destroyed, the only two desecrations suffered by the Muslim holy places were, first, during the Crusades and secondly, during the recent Israeli occupation after the June war of 1967. The first one was at the hands of the Christians, who in their excessive zeal, forgot to reciprocate the outstanding Muslim tolerance at the conquest of Jerusalem in A.D. 637, and the second was at the hands of the Jews, who forgot how the Muslims had revered the Jewish sacred shrines and traditions and preserved them for them. When Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders in A.D. 1099 the Christians committed unspeakable acts of sacrilege and mass murder in the Haram area. So many thousands of Muslims, men and women, were brutally massacred that blood was said to have risen up to the ankles in the area [p. 528, An Introduction to Medieval Europe by Thompson and Johnson, New York, 1937]. Michel Join-Lambert has this to say in his book “Jerusalem”, already mentioned: ‘The status of the Muslims was completely reversed; from having been the masters they now became the servants, and sometimes slaves. They were deprived of all their edifices; the mosques were converted into churches.’ When one contrasts this behaviour with the humane and tolerant behaviour of ’Umar in 637 and of Saladin in 1187,(7) one cannot escape the conclusion that Muslims, to say the least, have been more sinned against than sinning. With the exception of two isolated incidents, notably under the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim,(8) the holy places in Jerusalem have been well protected and respected under the Muslims; and Jerusalem has never ceased to be Al-Quds Al-Sharif (The Noble Jerusalem), even under the Ottoman Turks, up to the conquest of Jerusalem by the British in 1917 and until now. I quote here from the translation of a proclamation by Colonel Ali Fu’ad, Turkish commander of Jerusalem, which was posted throughout the city a few days before its surrender to the British on 9 December 1917: ‘Jerusalem, the Holy, which during thirteen centuries has been the second religious site to Muslims, and the first religious site to Christians, has until now been protected by Turkish soldiers striving for general unity under the shadow of the Ottoman Sultanate . . .’ At 8 o’clock in the morning on 9 December 1917, the Arab Mayor of Jerusalem delivered a letter of surrender from the Civil Turkish Governor, in which the Governor said: ‘For two days now shells have fallen on some of the places in Jerusalem, including The Noble (Quds Sharif) which is a holy sanctuary to all. The Ottoman Government, to safeguard the religious places from destruction, has withdrawn the soldiers from the City and functionaries have been appointed to guard the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and other religious places . . .’ [pp. 170-1, Palestine and the World by F. G. Jannaway, London, undated]. This should be contrasted with the Israeli behaviour in 1948 when their shells fell on the Haram area and damaged the Dome of the Rock, and with their failure to afford sufficient protection to the holy places, which resulted in the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque on 21 August 1969.(9) These facts speak for themselves. Saladin allowed the Jews to come back to Jerusalem. The Crusaders earlier on and the Israelis later on forced Muslims to leave Jerusalem. What a contrast! Incidentally, in this context I cannot help referring to a persistent habit of some Christian and Jewish writers, who either ignore compeletely that there was a brilliant Arab-Muslim civilization in the Middle Ages,(10) especially in Spain, and regard the long period of 800 years there as non-existent, or, when writing about Palestine, ignore the historical fact that the Arabs ruled the country for nearly 900 years. The book by Jannaway, apparently a Zionist, from which I have just quoted, has one single brief sentence on the subject of the long Arab rule of Palestine. He says: ‘In A.D. 350, Julian, the Apostate, gave the Jews permission to return and rebuild their Temple, a work they never carried out.’ Now here is the sentence immediately following: ‘Comparative peace followed for many centuries, and then what ups and downs!’ [pp. 169-70, ibid.]. A long stretch of nearly 900 years obliterated at one stroke. Another Jewish author, Cecil Roth, in a chapter on the Islamic rule of Palestine, calls this Islamic period of as long as 1300 years ‘The Islamic Interlude’, in his book A “Short History of The Jewish People”, East and West Library, Oxford, 1943.

In his book “The Rape of Palestine”, London, 1948, another Zionist writer, William B. Ziff, has the following to say about the Arabs; ‘Actually there are no “Arabs” anywhere . . . History gives it as a fact that the Arabs never settled Palestine.’ His book teems with these flagrantly unhistorical and frenzied statements, especially in the chapter entitled: ‘Does an Arab Race Exist?’ The Israelis now have taken up the idea and are trying hard to prove that there has never been such a thing as ‘Arabs’ or ‘Arab Race’. Now, if that is so, where, by the same token, is the ‘Jewish People’ or the ‘Jewish Race’? What is more amazing is the bold claim made by Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, in a television interview during a visit to London, that there has never been such a thing as ‘Palestine’.(11)

Before I close this chapter on Jerusalem as a holy city of Islam, I would like to refer to two important examples of the veneration accorded to this city. The first was the result of the Crusades, which gave Jerusalem a new significance in the eyes of  Muslims. The Crusaders were not regarded as Christians who were impelled by religious zeal, only but were found to be Europeans who were desirous of expansion and conquest – an adumbration of European colonialism and imperialism later on. This blend of Christianity and imperialism was counteracted by a blend of Arabism and Islamism. It sharpened the Arab-Muslim interest in Jerusalem, and the proof of it is the lavish care bestowed upon Jerusalem by the Ayyubid and the Mamluk Sultans. After the recapture of Jerusalem, Muslims treated all its inhabitants with great tolerance. They even felt strong enough at one time to try and get rid of the cause of trouble between Muslims and Christians. It is said that the Ayyubid Sultan ’Isa  Al-Mu’azzam, successor to his father Al-Adil, conceived the idea of destroying Jerusalem, and accordingly sent, in 1219, a party of masons and sappers to destroy it. His idea was ‘the humane and advanced one that the only way to avoid disputes between the two religions was to render the city common property’ [p. 206, Cairo, Jerusalem and Damascus by D. S. Margoliouth, London, 1907]. We read also in the same book that some authorities asserted that his workmen reduced the whole city to a heap of ruins with the exception of the great Christian and Muslim sanctuaries. This was only a passing phase in the history of the city, and when it fell into the hands of the Muslims again in 1244, it became the centre of attention for the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman Sultans ever after. I have given a general account of the acts of restoration, building and repairs carried out at various periods by these Sultans, including the building of the present walls in 1542 by the Ottoman Sultan Sulaiman. But a further elaboration of these acts, especially by the Mamluks, is needed to show the increased interest in the city as a result of the Crusades. Margoliouth says: ‘Baibars I, who built a mosque over the supposed tomb of Moses, is said to have instituted the festival (‘Id an-Nabi Musa) in honour of the Prophet Moses, which to this day serves as a sort of counterpoise to the Greek Easter. He renewed the stonework which is above the marble of the Dome of the Rock. Outside the city on the north-west side he built in the year 1264 a khan or hospice, which he adorned with a door taken from the Fatimid Palace in Cairo, and on which he settled the revenues of several villages in the neighbourhood of Damascus. The building contained a mill and a bakehouse, as well as a mosque. Its purpose was to harbour visitors (perhaps belated visitors) to the city, and an arrangement was made for the distribution of bread at the door. Baibars also repaired the Dome of the Chain.

‘The Sultan Ketbogha is credited with having done some repairs to the stonework of the Dome of the rock, and having rebuilt in the year 1299 the wall of the Temple area which overlooks the Cemetery of the Bab al-Rahmah (Gate of Mercy). His successor Lujan renewed the mihrab (niche) of David in the southern wall near the Cradle of Jesus.

‘The great builder Muhammad An-Nasir naturally left some memorials of his taste in Jerusalem. In the year 1330, he coated the front of the Aksa Mosque with marble, and opened in it two windows to the right and left of the mihrab. He had the domes of the two chief edifices regilt so well, says Mujir Al-Din, that, though 180 years had passed since the operation, the work still looked brand-new. He rebuilt the gate of the Cotton-merchants (Qattanin) in a very elaborate style.

‘The Sultan Sha’ban, grandson of an-Nasir, built the minaret near the Gate of the Tribes (bab Al-Asbat) in the year 1367. Nine years later, he renovated the wooden doors of the Aksa Mosque, and the arches over the western stairs in the Court of the Dome, opposite the Bab An-Nasr.

‘The great Sultan Barquq built the Muezzin’s (caller to prayer) bench opposite the miharb in the Dome of the Rock, and repaired the Sultan’s Pool (Birkat Al-Sultan) outside Jerusalem on the west. In 1394, a governor named Shihab Ad-Din Al-Yaghmuri, appointed by Barquq, placed on the western door of the Dome a marble slab containing a declaration that the various imposts instituted by former governors had been revoked.

‘The following Sultan Faraj placed on the wall of the Bab Al-Silsilah a slab declaring that in future the Sultan’s representative at Mecca and Medina must be a different person from the governor of Jerusalem which was to form an administrative unit with Hebron’ [pp. 208-12, ibid.].

‘Other sovereigns who left inscriptions in the Dome (of the Rock), commemorating work done by them in restoring or beautifying it, are the Fatimid Caliph Zahir (A.D. 1022), who rebuilt it after it had caved in, following the earthquake of the year 1016; Saladin (1187), who renovated the building; the great Cairene builder, Nasir, son of Kala’un (1318 and 1319) and the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II; the latter repaired the Dome in the first third of the nineteenth century . . . Another of the many isolated buildings is a little Sebil or drinking fountain built in 1445 by the Mamluk Sultan Kaitbai’ [pp. 219-22, ibid.]. In their book “Handbook of Palestine”, London, 1930, Luke and Keith-Roach give a glowing picture of the building and restoration activities during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. They also have this to say about Jerusalem: ‘The many hostels and colleges built in Jerusalem during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show that in those centuries Jerusalem was a city providing opportunities for study to large numbers of people, who doubtless hailed from all over the Muslem world to visit the holy sites and to gain learning. Each of these colleges was endowed with land of which the revenues went to its support. To discover the land allotted to the maintenance of each college would provide an interesting study and might result in the provision of the money needed for their repair and reestablishment as seats of learning’ [p. 85, ibid.].(12)

This, in my view, explains the increased interest shown in the City by the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultans as a result of the Crusades.

The second example is the large number of books written on Jerusalem by various Muslim and Arab authors, some of which are still in manuscript. Prominent among these are ‘The Merits of Beit Al-Maqdis’, ‘My Journey in the Valley of Al-Quds’, ‘The Merits of Al-Quds’, ‘The Comprehensive Compendium of the Merits of Al-Aqsa Mosque’, ‘The Incentive of the Soul for the Visit of Al-Quds’, ‘The Exhaustive Study of the Merits of Al-Aqsa Mosque’, ‘The Merits of Beit Al-Maqdis’, ‘History of Jerusalem and Hebron’, ‘The Jerusalem Journey’, ‘The Stimulant of Love on the Merits of Jerusalem and Damascus’, and others [p. 81, The Arab Character of Jerusalem, by Dr. I. M. Husseini, Cairo, 1968 (in Arabic)].

Before concluding my account of Jerusalem, there is one other point I would like to add here and which has significant bearing on the position held by Jerusalem from the Islamic and Arab point of view as a result of the Crusades. Jerusalem was regarded as the gateway to Jordan and to the holy cities of Arabia, Medina and Mecca. It is said that in the year A. H. 578 (A.D. 1182), a Crusader garrison stationed in Kerak and Shaubak in Transjordan planned an expedition to Medina in Arabia to dig up the Prophet’s grave and carry away his remains to Europe. The story, as stated by Mujir Al-Din in his history of Jerusalem and Hebron, goes on to say that ships were fitted out for the purpose and were dispatched from Suez through the Red Sea to Hedjaz. But Al-Nasir Salah Al-Din frustrated the attempt [p. 44, The Arab Character of Jerusalem].