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Chapter 5. Kamal Boullata the treaty that handed the city over to the Muslim Arabs. We are told that it was he who led the caliph through the city and who, legends claim, helped him remove the debris from thirteen hundred years of Jerusalem’s crowning jewel. Is it any coincidence, then, that Islam’s foremost monument continues to mirror the visual expression of a perfect architectural marriage between Byzantium and Islam?9
In his comparison, Boullata argues that the connection between heaven and earth represented in the architectural geometry of the three monuments is not coincidental. Rather, it should be noted that all three monuments mark sites in which a messenger of God, whether Jesus or Muhammad, ascended to heaven. Regarding the construction of the Dome of the Rock in particular, the myth of the meeting between Islamic caliph, ‘Umar, and Christian patriarch, Sophronius, is essential.10 The Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 CE, was able to create a multivalent, heterogeneous space in a way that text-based laws could not. By exploring how the Dome of the Rock was able to utilize visual culture in this way, we will better understand the principles on which Boullata is drawing in order to negotiate his own Christian-Arab identity in Jerusalem. According to Boullata’s reading, the myth of the founding of the Dome of the Rock emphasizes an inter-religious dialogue that is expressed in the meeting of community leaders and in architectural form. Although ‘Umar’s presence in Jerusalem marks a shift in political control from the Byzantine to Islamic empire, the interaction between the two leaders that is highlighted is their joint journey through the city and discovery of “Jerusalem’s crowning jewel” a certain amount of respect. This understanding of the myth is important for Boullata’s interaction with Dome of the Rock as a Christian Arab, experiencing it as an egalitarian space. While not always experienced as egalitarian, the Dome of the Rock certainly has a precedent of multivalent readings and experiences. Oleg Grabar argues that a religious plurality was maintained in early Jerusalem in a manner not replicated in other “holy” cities due to the willingness of the ruling Islamic elite to facilitate this plurality from a secure position of power. Grabar writes: Yet, on balance, one key difference exists between medieval Islamic Jerusalem and all other religious centers, including Muslim ones. It is that three religions were able to share in the holiness of the city and use it for their separate purposes. The reason does not lie in an early medieval display of ethnic 9
Boullata, Palestinian Art, 329. This meeting occurred in 647 CE or early 638 CE; see Grabar, Oleg, Mohammad Al-Asad, Abeer Audeh, and Said Nuseibeh. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1996. 46. 10