What Lies Below Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock

Upon a mountain in Jeru-

Salem, there stands a holy building

about whose origin I knew

no vital facts.  Though by its gilding

inspired and amazed, admirers

only rarely are aware it covers

a shrine whose holy level higher is,

I think, than holiness that hovers

above most godly goals, plus than

the wailed-for, much loved, Western Wall,

and chief church of  the Vatican,

St. Peter’s that’s in Rome, and all

the holy places Muslims built,

both in Jerusalem and Mecca.

By holiness filled to the  hilt,

it is a holy double-decker,

whose glorious gilded Muslim roof

should not forever supersede

the temple that’s destruction proof.

More than just a mere Haghia Sophia

inspiration, called Beit al-Maqdis,

stands on what once in Judea

was built by Solomon.  Jews miss

not only on the Ninth of Av

the Temple, but three times each day

prove very piously their love,

requesting every time they pray

for the return of their great beit

hamiqdash, temple. A fine Persian,

called Al-Tabari, would equate

it, by translating the domed version

of what we call Dome of the Rock,

Beit Al-Hamaqdis; labeled

thus in Arabic to lock

it to a temple that’s more fabled:

the beit hamidash that’s below

the golden dome.  Although destroyed,

a second time two thousand years ago,

by Babylon first made a void

it wasted, Jews wait for the time

when plowshares will be made of swords,

and future with the past will rhyme

as per Isaiah’s great accords,

and to this very day still dem-

onstrate their strong belief that this

will happen when Jerusalem

restores the miqdash,  Beit Al-Maqdis.

To Al-Tabari I’m beholden

for this proof to all damned deniers

that underneath a Dome that’s golden

a Jewish temple lies. They’re liars.

I’m taught these ancient data by

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who

wrote: ancient Muslims wouldn’t deny

that Jews’ claims were completely true.

An article  published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Policy,  “Ancient Muslim Texts Confirm the Jewish Temple  in Jerusalem,” states

https://jcpa.org/ancient-muslim-texts-confirm-the-jewish-temple-in-jerusalem/

Jerusalem Center researcher Nadav Shragai responds to modern-day Muslim and Palestinian fabrications about the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with the testimonies of esteemed Islamic religious authorities from more than 1,000 years ago. He presents archeological evidence such as a Jewish ritual bath found under the al-Aqsa mosque and Islamic coins with a Jewish menorah imprinted on them, and documents how the Jews of Jerusalem introduced the Muslim conquerors of the city to the Temple Mount and accompanied them on their visit there. This is a chapter from his latest book in Hebrew, Al-Aqsa Terror: From Blood Libel to Bloodshed (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2020).

Nadav Shragai writes:

Despite the misrepresentations and the sweeping denial that many Muslims now adopt regarding the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to the Temple that stood there, they themselves were the ones who, up until the Six-Day War, identified the Mount – unequivocally – as the site of Solomon’s Temple and as the place where David said his Psalms. Furthermore, Solomon and David, as important prophets in Islam, are seen as the ones who laid the foundations on the Temple Mount for the building of the mosques there. Nevertheless, today, Muslim clerics and leaders remove the Jewish Temple from the Mount and “transfer” it to places like Mount Zion, Nablus, and even Yemen.

Moreover, many of the names and terms the Muslims have used over the years for the Temple Mount, particularly “Beit al-Maqdis,” which is a translation of the Hebrew name Beit haMikdash, derive from the Jewish designation for the site, where the two Muslim shrines were built around 1,350 years ago. Today, Muslims commonly use the name Beit al-Maqdis for Jerusalem, but in the ancient past, they used the name for the Temple Mount itself. The Jewish people and the State of Israel do not, of course, need the Muslim sources – which, for more than 1,350 years, have identified the Temple Mount as the site of the Temple – to prove their connection to the place. Given, however, the dispute on this issue and the resolutions hostile to Israel in the international arena, which espouse the new Muslim narrative, it is worth presenting the primary Muslim documentation and sources for the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Temple. Today, many Muslims erase this reliable documentation from memory. From such forgetfulness, the path is short to denial, and this gives rise to a lie. On this lie now rests the libel from which the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terror derives its inspiration and legitimacy to murder Jews….

Although today’s Muslims rely on their sages’ writings regarding many issues, when it comes to the history of the Temple Mount, they seem to have been erased.

Foremost among these figures is the Persian historian Abu Jafar Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari (838-923), who was one of the first, leading, and best-known commentators of the Koran and the Islamic tradition. One of his ancient manuscripts, which carries a seal of al-Azhar – the world’s most important educational institution for Sunni Islam – was photographed and smuggled out of Cairo a few years ago by Noa Hasid, who is Muslim by origin, and brought to the Beirut-born Middle East scholar Dr. Edy Cohen of Bar-Ilan University. Cohen published the work in 2016. The text in itself offered nothing new; it had already appeared as part of a commentary on the Koran by al-Tabari, which was published in several editions. Nevertheless, as an original manuscript that was photographed and smuggled out of al-Azhar, it sparked great interest. Al-Tabari writes there, among other things, that “Beit al-Maqdis [the Temple Mount] was built by Solomon, son of David, and was made of gold, pearls, rubies, and of the precious stone peridot, paved with silver and gold, and its columns were of gold.”

This documentation, from an Islamic figure of al-Tabari’s renown, undercuts the “revision” of the Temple Mount’s history by many Muslims in recent years. It stands against claims that invert the truth, according to which “the legend of the bogus Temple is the greatest crime of historical forgery,” and against entire books that have been written in that vein.

In his book History of the Prophets and Kings, al-Tabari refers several more times to the Temple Mount as the site of the Temple, and also identified Isaac, not Ishmael, as the hero of the “Binding of Isaac” story. The famous commentator described David’s and Solomon’s involvement in building a mosque on the Temple Mount in a way that corresponds exactly, in not a few details, to the Bible’s description of the process of building the Temple. This description is typical of other, similar descriptions in Islam that point to a strong, ongoing connection to Jewish traditions……

The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, who visited Jerusalem in the 12th century, likewise described “the Temple Mount that Solomon ben David built.” He added that “in the vicinity of the eastern gate of the gates to the Dome of the Rock is the shrine that was called the Holy of Holies, and it is impressive to look upon.” He further attested that the Temple Mount “served as a place of pilgrimage in the era of the Jews and afterward was taken from them, and they were removed from it until the era of the reign of Islam.”

Yakut ibn Abdullah al-Rumi al-Hamawi (1179-1229), a Muslim biographer and geographer, in his book Lexicon geographicum used the term “the Temple,” and in describing its location, he wrote: “Indeed it is Jerusalem [Beit al-Maqdis] and his words to the Israelites were: we have set a meeting with you at the right side of the Mount of Olives, that is – Jerusalem [Beit al-Maqdis].” Later, in an explicit reference to the Temple, he added: “Solomon placed in the Temple [Beit al-Maqdis] wondrous things including the vault from which the heavy chain depends…. And as for al-Aqsa, indeed, it is on the eastern side, in the direction of the qibla, and it was David, peace be upon him, who founded it.”