{[Islamic Art –] Visual Arts [continued –] The Dome of the Rock (2) [continued]}[20th April 1991]

[Redbook9:148-149][19910420:0953nn]{[Islamic Art –] Visual Arts [continued –] The Dome of the Rock (2) [continued]}[20th April 1991]

19910420:0953

[continued]

*‘Although there is no prohibition of figural art in the Koran there is a strong condemnation of idolatory, and the abstract unknowable nature of Allah could be revealed only in his Word with the consequent unacceptability of any icon. Figural art was thus excluded from religious buildings and books, but from the beginning it was allowed in secular and private works.

‘This stance is at once seen in the first major buildings of the Umayyad Caliphs, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque at Damascus. Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock in 691-2[ce]** as a shrine, not a mosque, consisting of a circle set in an octagon,*** with two rows of columns and piers supporting a high central dome, and a roofed ambulatory for circumlocution around the Rock, associated with both Abraham and Muhammed. It stands in the wide open space left empty after the destruction of the Jewish Temple built by Herod. This area is known as the Haram al-Sharif (“the noble sanctuary”) and is considered to be the site on which the Prophet Muhammed descended**** from his night ride through the heavens on the miraculous steed Buraq whose footprint is considered to be visible on the Rock under the Dome. But this belief does not go back to the earliest centuries of Islam and it is now accepted that the Dome of the Rock was built as a symbol of the status of Islam as superseding Christianity as well as Judaism. It bears inscriptions which specifically challenge the divine nature of Christ and the Trinity and is evidently meant as an answer to the domed structure built by Constantine over the Holy Sepulchre.’

#

*[Source text continues from last previous ts journal entry]

**{2048M~U~640[ce]}

***See diagram [[Redbook9:126-127][19910415:0840dd]{[Islamic Art –] Visual Arts [continued –] The Dome of the Rock (1)}[15th April 1991],] 127

****? – cf [[Redbook9:126-127][19910415:0840dd]{[Islamic Art –] Visual Arts [continued –] The Dome of the Rock (1)}[15th April 1991],] 127

# – E[ncyclopaedia of] V[isual] A[rts] 3:425

(& see following para[graph] ↓ on details, and [photographic] illus[tration] [of interior] p[age] 426)

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