Jerusalem's Holy Places: Selections from Palestine Under the Moslems

📖 Public Domain Classic — Islamic Golden Age

Description

No single Arab author left us a complete history of Jerusalem's two greatest monuments. Instead, the story survives in fragments — scattered across the writings of geographers, pilgrims, and chroniclers who visited the Noble Sanctuary over eight centuries, from Al-Muqaddasi, a native of the city writing in 985, to Nasir-i-Khusrau's account of his 1047 pilgrimage, to Ibn Battuta's visit in 1355. It was the British Orientalist Guy Le Strange who, in 1890, gathered these Arabic sources together for the first time in English, weaving them into a continuous narrative of the Dome of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa from the Muslim conquest through the eve of the Ottoman period.

This edition presents two chapters from that work: the history of the Masjid al-Aqsa, from its founding under the early caliphs through its centuries as a Crusader stronghold and Saladin's reconquest, and the history of the Dome of the Rock, from Caliph 'Abd al-Malik's construction of the shrine in 691 through the inscriptions, restorations, and vivid eyewitness descriptions left by generations of Arab travelers. Le Strange's complete study also covers Damascus and dozens of other cities and shrines across Syria and Palestine; this edition selects the chapters devoted to Jerusalem's two most sacred monuments.

Author & Genre

Compiled by: Guy Le Strange (1854–1933)
Genre: History / Geography / Islamic Golden Age Non-Fiction
Publisher: Palestine Exploration Fund (1890)

"As to the saying that Jerusalem is the most illustrious of cities — is she not the one that unites the advantages of This World and those of the Next?" — Al-Muqaddasi, 985 A.D.