Strange and indeed unique is the spectacle, and it reminds one forcibly of the unchanged character of the Jews. After nineteen centuries of wandering and exile, they are still the same as ever, still bound by the iron chain of Talmudic law, a people whose slavery to custom outruns even that of the Chinese to etiquette, and whose veneration for the past appears to bar the way of progress or improvement in the present.
Entering by the gate of the Cotton Bazaar, we stand at length within the Temple courts. Before us are the steps which lead up to the platform where shoes must be removed; for while the outer court, like the old Court of the Gentiles, is a promenade, the paved platform is a sacred enclosure, not to be trodden except barefoot.
From the bright sunlight we pass suddenly into the deep gloom of the interior, lit with the "dim religious lightâ of the glorious purple windows. The gorgeous colouring, the painted wood-work, the fine marble, the costly mosaics, the great dome flourished all over with arabesques and inscriptions, and gilded to the very top, all this splendour gleams out here and there from the darkness.
And in honour of what is this beautiful chapel built? A low canopy of rich silk covers the dusty limestone ledge round which the "Dome of the Rockâ has risen. The Rock of Paradise is the scene of Mohammed's ascension, the source of the rivers of Paradise, the Place of Prayer of all the Prophets, the Foundation-stone of the World.
Such was the holy spot enshrined by the Dome. The sacred rock, recovered and purified by Omar, was soon after enclosed by the Khalif Abd el Melek, and the inscriptions on the walls give the history of this building with most remarkable detail.
The Arab historians relate that the Dome of the Chain was the model for the Dome of the Rock. Now this is possible, if we except the outer wall of the latter. Take that wall away, and you have a building consisting of two concentric polygons, with pillars bound together by a wooden beam, and supporting arcades. The Dome of the Rock is just three times the size of the Dome of the Chain, and the various measures of plan and height are proportional. The smaller building may therefore have been originally the model of the larger.