Paper 13

RELATING TO SOME BUILT ENVIRONMENT FACETS OF JUDAISM AND ISLAM

INTRODUCTION

OPENWORLD CONTEXTS

Sharman Kadish Building Jerusalem : Jewish ARCHITECTURE IN BRITAIN

Daniel Libeskind Breaking Ground – Adventures in Life and Architecture in Berlin and New York

Sabiha Foster Islam+Architecture

Jöelle Bahloul The Architecture of Memory – a Jewish/Muslim household in Colonial Algeria 1937-1962

THE HOLY LAND

Moshe Safdie Jerusalem : the future of the past

Oleg Grabar The Dome of the Rock

Raymond Cohen Saving the Holy Sepulchre

Fred Strickert Rachel Weeping – Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Fortress Tomb

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

In built environment, as in life as a whole, the world faiths inter-relate with each other in both everyday relationships and in deeper spiritual and academic ways. I am restricting this consideration to the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and how they encounter each other in ‘open-world’ built environment contexts, and in the particular context of the Holy Land . One of the strengths of religions is that they are sensitive to the continuities between history, contemporary life, and aspirations for the future; all three time dimensions will figure in what follows.

First I would like to draw attention to three comments about inter-faith dialogue.

Rabbi John D Rayner says: There is an urgent need to evolve the vision of a society, not by its performance in the league-tables of material prosperity but by the quality of its national life in terms of freedom, justice, tolerance, compassion health care, hospitality to asylum seekers, generosity to underdeveloped countries, humane treatment of animals, respect for the environment, the beauty of its countryside, the cleanness of its rivers and beaches, the excellence of its architecture and town planning and of its art, literature and music. (Rayner 1998:166)

Cardinal Francis Arinze in Building Bridges: inter-religious dialogue notes that Pope Paul VI said, ‘The Church respects and esteems [other religions] because... they carry within them the echo of thousands of years of searching for God... They are all impregnated with the innumerable seeds of the Word’. Through four strands of dialogue, the Church seeks to uncover the seeds of the Word:

Dialogue of life – daily contact, grass roots lived experience, mutual understanding, respect and enrichment
Dialogue of action or collaboration – addressing issues of injustice, poverty, environment, peace-making
Dialogue of experts
Dialogue on the spiritual life

(Arinze 2000:11)

There are built environment nuances in all of these dialogues.

In a more secular vein, the European Commission Forward Studies Unit (1998) reporting on a Conference entitled The Mediterranean Society: A Challenge for Islam, Judaism and Christianity said:

Monotheisms, as sets of systems, structures and institutions born of a context fundamentally different from the context of the 21^st century, have reached their objective limits. But the message from which they sprang cannot die. It is a constant invitation to assume the human condition in its entirety, in its limitations, in all that is at the same time tragic and sublime about it. The primacy of man is expressed in the rejection of idols of all kinds, yesterday the man-made gods, tyrants and oppressors, today material wealth and abundance that is verging on the suicidally absurd, tomorrow perhaps the perfect health that is already seen as the new Utopia opened up by the current fad for biotechnology. Fidelity to this message is a vital imperative for the survival of humanity.

(EC Forward Studies Unit 1998: 11)

Again, built environment is relevant.

OPENWORLD CONTEXTS

In this section I will examine four major texts relating to: Jewish buildings in England ; Daniel Libeskind’s architectural work in Berlin and New York ; architecture and Islam generally; and more briefly a sociological insight into a Jewish-Muslim house and household.

Sharman Kadish Building Jerusalem : Jewish Architecture in Britain

In her Introduction Kadish comments on the architectural relationship between Judaism and English Non-conformity:

Perhaps the model of religious architecture most relevant to the Jewish experience is Protestant Nonconformity. After all, until the mid-nineteenth century Jews were regarded, in the legal sense at least, as just another dissenting church. It is perhaps not surprising then that, architecturally speaking, Jewish buildings in Britain have some features in common with the free churches. Both share a congregational form of worship and a portable tradition which can function quite independently of its physical surroundings. As an architectural historian of nonconformity has written: ’the Free Churches... are more likely to regard their places of sanctuary as the moveable Tent of Meeting (it is not without significance that we talk of Chapels and Meeting-houses) rather than the fixed Temple which probably has more influence in the understanding of Parish Churches’. It may be contended that throughout Jewish history the Mishkan (the Tabernacle in the wilderness), the concept of Torah anchored to no one place has assumed greater significance than that of the Beth HaMikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem . Metaphysical ideas, the sanctification of people, faith itself, take precedence over the importance of place. A synagogue’s holiness is entirely dependent on its functions as a house of worship, assembly and learning... Jews and Nonconformist Christians in Britain both largely eschewed the Gothic Revival. Romanesque and neo-classical forms were generally preferred. Like many synagogues, chapels built by Nonconformist denominations frequently adhered to a centralized ground-plan with galleries and staircases, in contrast to the cruciform plan and central aisle found in Anglican churches. (Kadish 1996: 14)

Raphael Isserlin’s contribution to Kadish’s book onThe Archaeology of Medieval Anglo-Jewry notes that:

At Colchester , documents of 1293 list six Jewish houses, one vacant land-lot and a synagogue. The community may have been larger at one time, shrinking before the Expulsion. Documents do not always locate such buildings precisely, but seven Norman stone houses (often associated with Jews) have been located by archaeological excavation, by architectural survey and in antiquarian sources. Further, two coin-hoards were found, so large that they are unlikely to have belonged to any other community. They can be mapped in ‘blank’ spots next to the High Street or market, where documents vaguely locate Jewish houses. (Kadish 1996:38)

Lesley Fraser’s paper in Kadish on Social Architecture for East London Jewry 1850-1914 notes: The Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor in Spitalfields can in many ways be seen as an archetypal Jewish philanthropic institution. Originally founded as the London Hebrew Soup Kitchen in 1854, and associated with the Jewish Bread, Meat and Coal Society, its first premises were in Leman Street on the southern edge of London ’s Jewish quarter between the docks and the heart of the community. It moved from Leman Street to Aldgate and then to a house at 5 Fashion Street , and in that respect is typical of many Jewish charities. In 1902 it moved again to purpose-built premises in Brune Street in the heart of the East End Jewish ghetto’. There the architects, Lewis Solomon, provided a somewhat ostentatious building of three bays in red brick with extensive terra cotta dressing. Stylistically, it is typical of contemporary commercial buildings in London , including an Arts-and-Crafts-inspired doorcase as the focal point of the elevation. The Builder magazine noted, ‘the interior... is of a very simple character, so as to save expenditure as far as possible’; the principal space is a large committee room where applications were considered and the ‘deserving poor’ could be identified from malingerers. This room was originally paneled and included donation boards and the portraits of early benefactors. In addition the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor had several classrooms, a reading room, and a large room for recreation. (Kadish 1996:173)

Daniel Libeskind Breaking Ground – Adventures in Life and Architecture in Berlin and New York

Libeskind’s writing reveals spiritual qualities and insights of a universal nature. Commenting on his general approach, he says that if architecture fails, if it is pedestrian and lacks imagination and power, it tells only one story, that of its own making, how it was built, detailed, financed. But a great building, like great literature or poetry or music, can tell the story of the human soul. It can make us see the world in a wholly new way, change it for ever. It can awaken our desires, propose imaginary trajectories, and say to a child who has seen little and been nowhere, Hey, the world can be very different from what you ever imagined. You can be very different from what you ever imagined. Reflecting on his own childhood, he says: My brilliant and fearless mother was a profound influence on my life. We are our parents’ children, and as someone who was born into the post-Holocaust world to parents who were both Holocaust survivors, I bring that history to bear on my work. Because of who I am, I have thought a lot about matters like trauma and memory. Not the trauma of a singular catastrophe that can be overcome and healed, but the trauma that involves the destruction of a community and its real yet also virtual presence. As an immigrant, whose youth often felt displaced, I have sought to create a different architecture, one that reflects an understanding of history after world catastrophes. I find myself drawn to explore what I call the void – the presence of an overwhelming emphasis created when a community is wiped out, or individual freedom is stamped out; when the continuity of life is so brutally disrupted that the structure of life is forever torqued and transformed. (Libeskind 2005:12)

His space and time perspectives are long. As I look out of the window of my office in lower Manhatten, he says, I can see one hundred years of construction right here, and I am stunned by the beauty of the view... How wonderful! You can’t see these things if you’re in the buildings themselves, but you can see them from the street and from neighboring windows, and they talk to one another, play off one another. A perfectly proportioned harmony of forms in light. This kind of public gesture – a gift to others – dates back to the Renaissance, if not before. The people who put up these buildings weren’t looking to become famous, but they were building for the ages. (Libeskind 2005:71)

Some of Libeskind’s most poignant comments relate to his building for the Jewish Museum in Berlin: When I am working on a building, I often find myself poring over photographs of faces. When I designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin , for example, I sat for hours looking at images of people walking around Alexanderplatz in the 1930’s... You won’t see a direct link between the photos and the building that eventually went up. When I looked into their faces, I could feel something personal and primal and very human, which I tried to incorporate into my design. (Libeskind 2005:127)

After the museum had opened in 1999 he tells how one day, two elderly Jewish women, Berlin-born Holocaust survivors now living in England , visited the museum. This was their first trip to Berlin since the war. They were on special assignment from London ’s Evening Standard newspaper. I accompanied them as, slowly, they approached the Holocaust Tower . After we entered, a heavy metal door swung shut with an unforgiving thud. It was winter, and the tower was unheated. From outside the tower you could hear children playing in the schoolyard across the street, trucks grinding past on Lindenstrasse, people talking in the museum grounds. Like Jewish Berliners during the war, we were all cut off from daily life. The two elderly women broke into tears. He further comments that Berliners understood the building deep in their hearts. They stood in the Holocaust Tower , silently, many with tears in their eyes. They studied the staircase, and knew why it dead-ended in a blank white wall. They walked through the garden in groups, talking quietly. The building resonated with the people of Berlin , and made me feel that working on a single building for twelve years was worth it. (Libeskind 2005:149ff)

Libeskind asks, why does a particular city speak to us in a special way? And why do cities take root in particular spots - Berlin , for example. Now the capital of a united country, it was once a small town in the heart of Prussia , and long before that, Slavic and German tribes wrestled over it. It was – is - in the middle of nowhere. Yet, it is situated on the banks of the Spree , but the river moves on, and the city stays behind. When did someone decide, ‘This is the spot, this is where we stay?’ What was it about that spot that made people feel that this was indeed where they should settle? This was their destiny. What makes a place or a building feel right? It’s more than a human force at work. Maybe there is something divine involved, though that word makes people nervous. But whatever you call it, I am not alone in feeling that much of what I do has to do with the Invisible. (Libeskind 2005:191)

Across the Atlantic , Libeskind’s entry was placed first in the design competition for the conservation and re-development of the Twin Towers site in New York following the tragedies of 11^th September 2001 . What we needed, he said, was ‘a dramatic, unexpected, spiritual insight into the vulnerability, tragedy, and our loss. And we need something that is hopeful.’ (Libeskind 2005:31) On his visit to the site, he was moved by the surviving slurry wall. I don’t claim that touching the slurry wall prompted a spiritual epiphany, but it was a revelatory experience, because at that moment I could read the wall, and I understood its message... The slurry wall is an engineering marvel, a metaphoric and literal stay against chaos and destruction. In refusing to fall, it seemed to attest, perhaps as eloquently as the Constitution, to the unshakeable foundations of democracy and the value of human life and liberty. (Libeskind 2005:43)

Central to his concept was the matter of light. I imagined, he tells us, a triangular area that would become lower Manhattan ’s largest public space. I called it ‘The Wedge of Light’. The plaza, which would connect the World Trade Center site to the Hudson in the west and Wall Street in the east, would be defined by two lines. The first would be a line of light that strikes on September 11 of every year at precisely 8.46am – the moment when the first jet smashed into the North Tower . The second line would mark the spot where, at 10.28am , the second tower buckled into dust and debris. These two moments of that day would define the Wedge of Light which would commemorate the events of that unforgettable morning. (Libeskind 2005:48). He further comments: Here’s something important to understand about the mystery of light. Light is about letting the darkness be there. What the builders of temples and cathedrals always understood is that some things should be left in the recesses of light, in darkness. The great artisans who built cathedrals knew that the light from candles would take the eyes only so far. From below we would never be able to see all that exists up above... (Libeskind 2005:65)

Libeskind concludes this particular text with what I would read as a credal statement: In Hebrews 11:1 it is written: ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’. For an architect, these words are profound. We put our faith in things unseen each and every day. As I write this there are designs of mine that may never be built.... But I never give up hope. I always believe my buildings will be built, and given time they almost always are. I am enough of a realist to know they may not stand for ever, although I build them to do so. What is more important to me is that each of them captures and expresses the thoughts and emotions that people feel. If designed well and right, these seemingly hard and inert structures have the power to illuminate, and even to heal! You have to believe. (Libeskind 2005:287)

Sabiha Foster Islam+Architecture

It is crucial to note that the title of Foster’s collection of studies is Islam and Architecture, two major world-wide entities having dialogues with, and impacts on, each other. While it includes the architecture of mosques and other religiously specific buildings, it is much more than that.

I want to begin with Turgut Cansever’s historical paper on The Architecture of Mimar Sinan. Born in 1489, Sinan was conscripted into the sultan’s service in 1512, having become acquainted with Islam’s mystical tradition, Sufism. Sinan died in 1588 at the age of 99 after completing numerous architectural works – some sources mention 477 – most exhibiting rich improvisations of his preferences. His was a unique approach, finding its sources first in the nomadic cultures which tried to record their observations of their ever-changing environment, eyes constantly moving, questioning the individual’s place in the world, and then in Islam, declaring the sublimity of the individual. In Sinan’s architecture we find their reflections realised as continuous attempt to resolve the controversial elements of existence – juxtaposing the sublime and the modest, the plain and the ornamental, the grand and the small-scale, the complex with the simple – sequences of architectural forms as pillars, domes, arches which set in train an effect of motion through their harmoniously changing dimensions. The mystical education Sinan underwent was oriented to develop the individual’s attitudes and behaviours along a progression of different stages, among them the acquisition of piety- that is, being close to reality; the teaching of sincerity [the knowledge to eliminate error], and submission to the divine will. (Foster 2004:65)

These behaviours, feelings and expressions as defined by Sufism, were the spiritual states, ahwal, that guided and dominated Sinan’s approach; feelings such as modesty, respect, simplicity, a social conscience, an eye to the future, the attempt at monumentality on a human scale; joyous colours, brightness and tranquillity of movement are all evident. Using materials and technologies naturally, according to their potential, without concealing them, was a tradition closely followed by Sinan. Wood and stone, metal and tile were used together, reconciling the natural and the man-made, emphasising their co-existence in a respectful manner. Nothing jarred, nothing was exaggerated; every art played its appropriate role, excluding all fetishing tendencies. The Prophet’s command, ‘Look at everything. Look at the sun and the stars in the sky. Look at stone on the ground, was a dictum followed by Sinan that enabled him to improvise brave designs through his evaluation of the unique, historic, local conditions, limitations and potential of each site. (Foster 2004:66)

Suha Özkan, writing on Defining Architecture asks: Can a faith be the sole criterion by which architecture can be categorised ? Absolutely not. Faiths are central to people’s personal and social lives and behaviour. Architecture constitutes only a part of their role in the cultural realm. It is necessary to look further into the matter in order to understand the phenomenon of what is called ‘Islamic architecture’. Traditionally, the architecture developed within the context of the Muslim faith is effective as an important aspect of culture, defining and determining how people live and relate to each other and their urban environment. The impenetrable, almost exclusive, privacy of the home and its strictly controlled access from the public realm of the town is perhaps a basic issue that defines all urban architecture. Furthermore while certain common measures are required to provide comfortable and habitable spaces for the climatic conditions that prevail in almost all Arabic Muslim communities, we must not forget that only 15 per cent of Muslims are Arabs and live in hot, arid climates. The strength of Islamic architecture has arisen not only from the intrinsic cultural values of the societies that generated it, but also from the fact that Islam has adapted itself in interacting with other cultures as it has spread. (Foster 2004:25)

For the last 25 years the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has been exploring appropriate architecture for Muslims throughout the world. Thousands of people have contributed talent and intelligence to this endeavour to improve the built environment and, in so doing, to enrich the human condition... However, there are many building types, problems and regions that have yet to be addressed. Good buildings for health, industry and housing, and schemes to repair both natural and manmade disasters, are all areas that the award must pursue with increasing rigour and determination. (Foster 2004:31)

In Islam and the Avant-Garde Reinhard Schultze, cites Moussavi who, from the standpoint of judging the Aga Khan’s awards, takes a broad view. Architecture across the Muslim world offers more interesting scope than the problems surrounding mosque design: ‘The Muslim world is full of different cultures... the Middle East has as much diversity as Europe ... and there are as many different styles’. Its geographic size and climatic extremes- from Russian steppes to the tropics – ensure that nature has endowed it with different architectural traditions. Before acting as a judge, Moussavi ‘had expected to find among the entries more root in identifiable cultural traditions’, but instead saw compatibilities with architecture in the West. ‘The same processes that generate architecture are present. ..[in many cases] similar technologies and the same daily issues’. With some examples she was left to ‘wonder if they were Western or just contemporary buildings.’ (Foster 2004:107)

Jöelle Bahloul The Architecture of Memory – a Jewish/Muslim household in Colonial Algeria 1937-1962

This is a detailed sociological study of how Jewish and Muslim families lived for some 25 years as one household. Most Jewish families lived on the upper floor and all the Muslims below. One gained access to the house [Dar-Refayil] through a gate which opened on to a cobbled, rectangular, open-air inner courtyard. On the ground floor there were about thirteen rooms, each of roughly ten square metres along three walls of the courtyard. The first floor had a similar layout; only the apartment along the front had windows facing onto the street. The owners of the building lived here, thus physically separated from the rest of the residents, who were all tenants. This distinction between tenants and owners was materially marked not only by the direction in which the windows opened but also by an individual front door located at the top of a staircase that was reserved for them. By contrast, tenants occupied rooms always open to all and laid out along a communal gallery. Dar-Refayil’s memories emphasise this social and architectural design, pointing to the predominance of socioeconomic over religious differences in the organisation and structure of the domestic community. Jews had only a slightly higher status than Muslims. The rent for ground floor rooms was not much higher than for first-floor apartments, but the latter were closer to the owners’ apartment [with permission] to use their balcony for the celebration of bar-mitzvahs and other life-cycle rituals.

(Bahloul 1996:14, 24)

THE HOLY LAND

It is in the place known variously as the Holy Land , Palestine and Israel that the three Abrahamic faiths come together most poignantly, both historically and in the present. I have chosen four studies for inclusion here. The first is Moshe Safdie’s view of Jerusalem as a whole. This is followed by two detailed Jerusalem texts, Oleg Grabar’s reflections on the Muslim monument The Dome of the Rock, and Raymond Cohen’s work on the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or Church of the Resurrection). Outside the city, on the road to Bethlehem , I shall pause as many do at Rachel’s Tomb, which is discussed by Fred Strickert in Rachel Weeping – Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Fortress Tomb. In all cases, the three faiths are inter-related.

Moshe Safdie Jerusalem : the future of the past

In this 1984 work, Safdie indicates that he comes from a non-practising but religiously sensitive Jewish family. Partly brought up in Canada , he trained in architecture, and in the context of Expo 1967 developed innovative ideas with Habitat on systems approaches to house-building.

In 1967 he went home to Israel and in due course opened an office there to complement his young Canadian practice. He comments: Where you would normally think of the fabric of a city being made up of buildings standing along the edges of streets, it would be more accurate to think of Old Jerusalem as a mass of intricately carved stone. It is as if nature had deposited a solid layer of limestone three or four storeys high which followed the curves and contours of the landscape. Then, with a chisel, man cut away alleys, passages, stair ramps, courtyards and terraces. One cannot build with indifference in Jerusalem . It requires either an act of arrogance – building boldly as Solomon and Herod did – or of aggression – demolishing the old fabric and building anew as the Romans and Umyyads did; or it demands humility – absorbing the past, reflecting upon it, respecting it, as one considers the present and the future. (Safdie 1984:x,xii)

A key project was housing at Manchat. We began by making a model of the entire hill to show the shape of the entire buildings and how they would fit into the Manchat landscape. From this model I developed a plan for a community that was akin to an Arab village in that it followed the hill, each unit had its roof garden, and a series of pathways followed the topography intimately. As I immersed myself more deeply into understanding the village, I began to understand, at the most fundamental level, the difference in attitude between its untrained indigenous builders and contemporary architects. The traditional city interweaves paths, public spaces, routes and arteries, habitations and institutions, all delicately juxtaposed, forming a continuum. (Safdie 1984:28)

Because of political changes this Habitat Jerusalem project never got off the ground. But in 1980 he was asked whether he would think about proceeding with his designs for Manchat. Plans from 1976 were brought up from the vaults. It seemed anachronistic, that image of an instant city, pre-determining the form of a community with such finality. Why seal the lives of a thousand families – diverse as they would be, young and old, eastern and western – into a pre-conceived variety of apartments? It all had to be re-thought. A model was developed for small plots, houses of no more than two-storeys, and rules to facilitate self-building. ARIM, the government development board, being an adventurous group, adopted the plan. For Safdie, the idea of parcelling out land for individual construction brought things full circle. Manchat reflected the pattern of the villages in and around Jerusalem where Arab families constructed their own dwellings. In Manchat, on a similar scale and in a similar topography, Israeli families would do the same. Safdie comments that in his view most Israelis have little appreciation for Arab culture [although] a few sophisticated Jerusalemites.... [may] now restore an Arab house in a village or in the Old City . But the majority of Israelis dismiss Arab society. Yet on the level of building and urban development, the Arabs certainly demonstrate more responsive and wholesome attitudes. (Safdie 1984:207-213)

Oleg Grabar The Dome of the Rock

Grabar explains that this book is an attempt to make the Dome of the Rock, a historic Muslim structure in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, speak in several dialects it: construction, decoration, architectural or urban setting, inscriptions on the building, and accounts of the building. (Grabar 2006:vii) The Dome of the Rock, he explains, is a beautiful shrine. It consists of two sections imbricated [arranged to overlap] into each other. The first is a tall cylinder (20 metres in diameter and 25 metres high) set over a large natural rocky outcrop topped... by a dome. The second is an octagonal ring (about 48 meters in diameter) of two ambulatories on piers and columns around the central rock. The building is lavishly decorated both inside and outside. (Grabar 2006:1)

The octagonal arcade contains a ... mosaic description some 240 metres long: ‘Has built this dome the servant of God, the Imam al-Ma’mun, Commander of the faithful, in the year 72 [691-692CE]. May God accept it and be pleased with him. Amen, Lord of the worlds, praise to God’. The Imam al-Ma’mun was in fact caliph of Baghdad from 813-833, his name replacing that of the original sponsor, ‘Abd al-Malik. The actual construction was supervised by two men, Rajah ibn Haywah and Yabid ibn Salam, who controlled the funds made available by ‘Abd al-Malik in Damascus . Little is known about Yabid ibn Salam. He was from a local family and born in Jerusalem ; his role may have been as liaison with the immediate community. Rajah ibn Haywah, by contrast, was a scholar and political adviser... The presence of this sort of double expertise ... illustrates a constant leitmotiv in explanations of the Dome of the Rock: the constant equilibrium, or tension, it exhibits between local and pan-Islamic traditions and practices. The piers of [the octagonal arcade] are of stone masonry, and the columns vary in height, indicating that the columns were rescued from the remains of one or more Herodian, Classical or Christian buildings and reused. Above the columns, wooden tie-beams cross beneath the arches, providing flexibilty and resilience to a building that would have to withstand earthquakes. (Grabar 2006:59-66)

The Dome of the Rock was very carefully designed by architects well-trained in the elaboration of geometric proportions. But within their carefully conceived geometric grid, the architects introduced variations intended to produce two visual effects. One is to allow the viewer, regardless of which entrance he uses, to see all the way through the building... Visually the visitor is not invited to move around the building but to look through it.

The main inscription on both sides of the uppermost part of the octagonal arcade is 240 metres long... Inner face includes, ‘Indeed the Messiah Jesus son of Mary was an envoy of God and his word he bestowed on her as well as a spirit from him...’ (Grabar 2006:90) This long text is a key element in any explanation of the purposes of the Dome of the Rock. But its importance does not lie only in the meanings it conveys. The inscription is also an essential vector in the building, in the sense that it establishes a clock-wise movement from the south to the west and ending up in the south again... (Grabar 2006:90-92)

In many variants, the octagonal building type became common for Christian religious martyria and for regular liturgical purposes as well. It was used for the Anastasis of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and in the church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives , datable to the fourth century CE. (Grabar 2006:98)

After much detailed analysis Grabar concludes that the plan and elevation of the Dome of the Rock were adaptations of a common Antique and Late Antique architectural type to a terrain with its own constraints, including a large protruding rock. One such example is found in Capernaum , located to the north of Lake Tiberias . This small town is mostly known for the ruins of a probably fourth-century synagogue. Less well known is an octagonal building, just a block away from the synagogue, the latest interpretation of which is that it commemorated the whole area’s association with St Peter, whose original house may have been on the site, near a synagogue in which Jesus preached. (Grabar 2006:99-100)

A second Palestinian example was far more spectacular. At the beautiful site of Caesarea , by the Mediterranean , Herod the Great erected a large platform for a Roman temple, whose facade faced the sea. Apparently no traces of that temple have survived, except for columns and capitals strewn around the ruin. But is the sixth century an octagonal building was constructed more or less in the centre of the platform. The building contained an inner octagon presumably bearing a high dome, a striking composition, just as with the Dome of the Rock. (Grabar 2006:102) These buildings survived for many reasons, but one of them was undoubtedly their sheer beauty. In our times of easy destruction, I find something soothing in being able to conclude that aesthetic values alone may move people to give the preservation of works of art primacy over cultural or even religious programs. Through its circular composition and its play with light and shadow, the Dome of the Rock belongs to a fascinating series of beautiful buildings which, from Santa Constanza in fourth-century Rome to the domes of Cairo, Isfahan, Sinan, and Sir Christopher Wren and eventually to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, focused on drum-like, circumambulatory forms, often with colourful surfaces in thousands of variations.

But this aesthetic judgment is not sufficient to explain the wealth of associations that accrued to the Dome of the Rock over twelve centuries of Islamic rule. The building illustrates one of the noblest streaks of traditional Islam, its openness to mankind’s individual aspirations within the boundaries outlined by Revelation. And in this sense the building also reflects the city where it was built – a holy city, in so many different ways, for all three of the Semitic revealed religions. The Dome of the Rock sent a message of earthly power through its shining domination of Jerusalem ’s landscape, but it was also a message of eternal hope for the future of the just. (Grabar 2006:209-211)

Grabar suggests that one possible clue to understanding the Dome lies in the Christological content of the inscription and its proclamation of Islam as the final revelation of divine message already present in Judaism and Christianity. It saw the Dome of the Rock as a monument celebrating in the Christian city par excellence the victory of a new faith and its creation of a new holy place on an area full of memories... (Grabar 2006:113)

Raymond Cohen Saving the Holy Sepulchre

Cohen’s sub-title is How rival Christians came together to rescue their holiest shrine. The Holy Sepulchre (or Church of the Resurrection) is, he says, the only church in the world where first-century Herodian, second-century Hadrianic, fourth-century Constantinian, eleventh century Byzantine, twelfth-century Crusader, nineteenth-century neo-Byzantine, and twentieth century modern masonry are visible in one place. It is also the only church in the world where six of the most ancient Christian denominations worship side by side. The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox churches are known as major communities, with rights of possession and usage at the holy places. The Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syrian Orthodox churches are deemed minor communities, with rights of usage but not rights of possession at the holy places. Once these separate churches were in full communion. A tradition of shared celebration (sylleitourgia) existed in early centuries. Egeria, a nun who visited Jerusalem in the early fifth century, paints a picture of harmonious communal worship. She describes the bishop always speaking in Greek in the church and his words being translated into Aramaic and Latin ‘that all may understand what is being explained’. (Cohen 2008:4-5)

Practical and legal complications have gradually built up. For example, as a result of periods of Turkish and Islamic influence it is neither church law nor common law categories that count here but those of Islam. Under shari’a law, a holy place of whatever religion is waqf, an inalienable religious endowment, not mulk, private property. Ownership of a shrine such as the Church of the Resurrection, is not absolute. Those who reside in it have rights of possession, in the sense that they can hold and use it, but they do not have title and cannot dispose of the property either by sale or gift. (Cohen 2008:6) Since the mid-nineteenth century, the term Status Quo has had the special meaning of the normative regime or set of binding arrangements covering possession, usage and ceremony at the holy places. Issues under contention were said to fall under the ‘Status Quo’, and no change was permitted. Only the last community to have repaired a certain wall, hung a certain picture, or swept a certain step could continue to do so in the future. The most blatant loophole in the Status Quo regime was that it did not provide a satisfactory mechanism for enabling major repairs to be carried out to contested areas of the Holy Sepulchre. The reason for this lay in two features of Turkish property law: first, payment for the repair of a structure indicated possession, and second, the owner of the covering of a building owned the building. As much as one community might want to pay for a certain repair as an assertion of ownership, the other two major communities would be eager to block it. (Cohen 2008:8-11)

After centuries of contention over rights of ownership and the implications of paying or not paying for repair work, in 1963 there was a meeting at the Holy Sepulchre between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Benedictos. The Pope was able to say: It is with joy that we have learned that an atmosphere of frank collaboration now exists between your[Orthodox] community, the Catholic community, and the Armenian community in regard to the work of restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For this is the very place where God wishes to reconcile to himself all things. It is highly symbolic that despite the burden of history and of numerous difficulties, Christians, though unhappily separated, are working together to restore this temple, which they had first erected when in full unity, and which their divisions have abandoned to dilapidation. (Cohen 2008:163)

One by one, new stone pillars were erected [in the Rotunda] in place of emergency piers over the course of 1972-73. Several broke during installation. Morel and his men became adept at taking down columns complete with their bases and capitals without causing harm. An observer described the operation of dismantling the old and raising the new – requiring pinpoint precision in the positioning of an object weighing 22 tons as ‘tense and breath-taking’. The new columns were made from the finest Mizzi Ahmar and were modelled on pillars found near Lake Tiberias . The question of the capitals proved contentious and protracted... At a meeting of experts and delegates on October 7 1972 , two completely different designs were presented.... Having rejected both these alternatives, the communities studied a number of variations over the next two years. At a meeting in September 1974, the experts chose in principle a fifth-century design found in the ruins of Corozain (Korazim) in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee . Associated with neither late Byzantium nor the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem , it evoked a primordial period of church harmony. (Cohen 2008:203)

In 1985, Daniel Rossing of the Israeli Department of Public Works received a series of complaints from individuals who had fallen into a hole in the burial cave, not visible in the darkness. It was not particularly deep, but people were breaking arms and legs. Clearly something had to be done about it. After months of negotiations, the Armenian and Syrian communities grudgingly agreed just before Christmas to have the hole roped off, using posts on heavy bases. Because the posts were not permanently fixed in place, this was not considered a change in the Status Quo. However, it was not a satisfactory solution. If the parties could not agree to fill in the hole, surely they would accept his Rossing’s his installing a grate at government expense? While this clearly illustrated the intransigence of the disputants, it also reflected the extreme caution of the Israeli authorities. But one day, with Easter and the ceremony of the Holy Fire looming, a grate suddenly appeared over the hole. Neither Armenians nor Syrians made any protest. (Cohen 2008:215)

British engineers, Campbell, Reith, & Partners won a 1978 tender to carry out the reconstruction of the Rotunda dome. The notice called for ‘an internal and external shell, as light as possible, over existing steel dome trusses’ and ‘external roofing of lead, copper, aluminum or other light material of timeless and aesthetic value. Technically, these were straight forward requirements. What fascinated them was the knowledge that they had been given the unique task of restoring the dome over the best known shrine in the Christian world. They were to preserve a cherished feature of the skyline of the Old City of Jerusalem. Because of the difficulty of finding local craftsmen of sufficient skill and experience, almost all those who worked on the project – steelworkers, concrete sprayers, plasterers, welders, and lead workers – came from Britain . It was to be an unforgettable experience for all concerned – religious, cultural, culinary, and professional. (Cohen 2008:218)

On August 17, 1994 , the advertising man from California together with Catholic officials from New York made a presentation to church leaders in Jerusalem assisted by a plastic scale model consisting of an illuminated upturned bowl sitting on a framework 6 feet high. Each leader in turn sat under it, as if he were actually in the rotunda. Campbell, Reith, Hill again carried out the design. ‘We shall not spare any effort to make the celebration of this great event in the history of salvation a means for ushering in the light of peace’. The range of specialists involved drew on technology that had never been seen before in the sixteen centuries of the edifice. Corky Normart had designed an ultramodern construction for the new millennium. On January 2, 1997 , to the sound of church bells and applause, the canvas drapes were pulled back, revealing the renovated dome. And there was light. (Cohen 2008:233)

Fred Strickert Rachel Weeping – Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Fortress Tomb

This is a study of Rachel’s Tomb, a story in the Hebrew Bible commemorated by a monument that can be visited today. Strickert’s perspective is of Rachel as a person ‘on the way’, someone whose life involves much waiting, first for her marriage and then through apparent barrenness for, in time, the birth of her sons Joseph and Benjamin (Strickert 2007: xv)

There are two traditions concerning the location of Rachel’s tomb. The Northern Tradition is based on 1 Samuel 10:1-5 where the prophet Samuel says to the future king Saul: When you depart from me today you will meet two men by Rachel’s tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah; they will say to you, ‘The donkeys that you went to seek are found.’ This makes perfect sense because Rachel was giving birth to Benjamin the twelfth son of Jacob at the time of her death. The tomb would serve as a permanent reminder to all of Benjamin’s descendants of his tragic beginning. (Strickert 2007: 57)

The later prophet Jeremiah was a descendant of Benjamin and he recalls while in exile in Babylon :

Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel is weeping for her children ...

And God replies, as if to Rachel:

Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears...
There is hope for your future,
says the Lord:
your children shall come back to their own country

(Jer 31: 15-17) (Strickert 2007: 14)

The primary witness for the southern tradition is the book of Genesis ch35... More important is the designation of Rachel’s death in relation to a place called Ephrath, that is Bethlehem . The future Christian significance of the place is expressed by Micah:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth from me
one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

(Mic 5:2) (Strickert 2007: 62)

In some ways, Strickert says, it seems fitting that two separate traditions of Rachel’s tomb occur in the Bible. For an individual characterised as always on the way, it is appropriate that no single place could confine her in death... In truth, the existence of Rachel’s tomb has elevated her memory so that she transcends death and intercedes for her offspring and others in need. It is the southern location that has survived and is marked by the present monument. (Strickert 2007: 64)

On Friday October 19, 1827 , while the British business man Moses Montefiore was consumed with business in Jerusalem , his wife Judith took a day trip to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem . Along the way (cf Rachel) she encountered Rachel’s Tomb as recorded in her private diary:

After an hour’s ride, we came to Rachel’s Tomb, which stands in a valley on the right, near to which is a well at present without water. We dismounted to view this most interesting monument of sacred history. It is formed of four square walls, with Gothic arches bricked up, and is covered by a domed roof. On entering I was deeply impressed with a feeling of awe and respect, standing as I thus did, in the sepulcher of a mother in Israel . The walls of the interior are covered with names and phrases chiefly in Hebrew and other eastern characters; but some few English are to be found among them, and to these I added the names of Montefiore and myself. (Strickert 2007: 112)

Subsequently Montefiore took an interest in the tomb. ‘Rabbi Joseph Schwarz records that in the year 5601 [1841]. Sir Moses Montefiore, of London , caused Rachel’sTomb to be entirely renovated, furnished it with a cupola, and an entrance hall, so that at present it is a quite handsome building.’ The actual renovations centred on the completion of a vestibule adjacent to the tomb itself. This second room was now enclosed with an open, arched entryway. A mihrah was added in the south wall or Muslims who wished to pray. The cupola, however, had always been a well-recognised feature of the tomb and likely underwent repair work. (Strickert 2007: 115)

Montefiore’s role with regard to Rachel’s Tomb must be considered in view of his general attitude towards human rights and religious freedom. During his visit to the Pasha in Egypt in 1839, his request for Jewish human rights fit into the larger British programme of emancipation of all enslaved and oppressed peoples. Through his efforts, Christians as well as Jews improved their standing in the Middle East . Later, through his intervention for all minorities in Morocco he was praised for demonstrating ‘new proof of the universal principles of the religion of which you are such a brave champion’. His contribution at Rachel’s Tomb must be considered in view of such an open attitude. This is quite clear from the fact that a mihrah remained in the south wall and that Muslims continued to be welcomed for prayer and for the burial of their dead in the surrounding cemetery. (Strickert 2007: 116)

In the Status Quo document of 1852 it Rachel’s Tomb is described thus: ‘the present tomb consists of an ante-chamber and a two-roomed shrine under a cupola containing a sarcophagus. The building lies within a Muslim cemetery for which it is a place of prayer.The tomb is a favourite place of Jewish pilgrimage, especially during the month of Elul and the Tishri festivals when many visit it.’ For the Jews who did not live in the vicinity – the closest being five miles away in Jerusalem – the shrine was primarily a pilgrimage site. For Muslims it was a place of prayer, primarily for those who lived in the area. (Strickert 2007: 128)

Later, under the British Mandate it was preferred to focus on this particular shrine as a model of a shared site. The British Mandate thus recognised the right to worship of both Muslims and Jews. As a public demonstration of this support they issued a postage stamp in 1932 featuring a photo of Rachel’s Tomb with the word ‘ Palestine ’ in both Arabic and Hebrew. (Strickert 2007: 131)

With the Israeli/Palestine peace process of the 1990’s, sacred places such as Rachel’s Tomb were treated with all seriousness. The interim agreement signed by Yitzak Rabin and Yassar Arafat on the White House lawn on September 28, 1995, again restated the basic principle: ‘Both sides shall protect and protect the religious rights of Jews, Christians, Muslims and Samaritans concerning the protection and free access to the holy sites as well as freedom of worship and practice. (Strickert 2007: 134) However a short time later in February 1996, the Israeli government began a two-million dollar, eighteen-month facelift of Rachel’s Tomb, including a thirteen-foot high security wall and an adjoining military post. This and subsequent developments show the continued politicization of Rachel’s Tomb. The rights of Muslims and Christians to worship in freedom were no longer respected. The power of the modern state made exclusive Jewish worship the only possibility. (Strickert 2007: 135-137)

In closing his book, Strickert says, as for the future of Rachel’s Tomb, one would hope we will learn from the past. He quotes a diary entry of the shrine’s guardian, Solomon Freiman, for January 21, 1936 :

Two pilgrims came today, one a Jew, the other a Muslim. The Jew prayed fervently and shed tears over the exile. The Muslim too wept and prayed according to his custom. Both lit candles and went on their way.

This episode from the recent past was possible because Rachel’s Tomb was accessible and welcoming to all... [Today] Rachel weeps because we have forgotten her story. Rachel – always on the way, always at risk and vulnerable to the hostile forces around her, always living with the hope that the impossible will become possible. (Strickert 2007: 139)

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