Gnostic Elements in the Dome of the Rock
I’ve been reading a lot of Gnostic stuff recently and also many of the Gnostic blogs that are springing up in the Palm Tree Garden - as regular readers will know, my main focus is on interfaces with Islam and Christianity (in terms to the esoteric aspects of each rather than the orthodox) and I’ve been thinking a bit about the Palm Tree symbolism and Gnosticism in an Islamo-Christian context - specifically in relation to the building known as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
This is a fascinating area and one which is (imagine my shock) completely misunderstood, under researched and misinterpreted - in fact the building is more mysterious the more it is studied.
Firstly the Dome of the Rock is not a mosque as is generally supposed. Built in 691 CE, the building is an octagonal structure with an ambulatory (for ritual circumnavigation of the rock) built around a large rock (see plan). There is no worshipping hall (although there is a later mihrab in a cave below the structure) or minaret and the building has never served as a mosque - this function is fulfilled by the Mosque of al-Aqsa situated nearby on the same platform, the haram ash sharif.
So, the Dome is not a mosque, nor does it conform to any motif of Islamic architecture. So what is it? Well, the first clue is that it is an exact copy in form of the type of Christian Byzantine martyria - ie, the builders here abandoned Islamic forms of design to specifically reference Christian buildings.
This may be supposed to be significant on solely aesthetic grounds but this theory cannot be sustained on close examination. The Dome features numerous mosaic motifs and calligraphic writing. The mosaic motifs centre around palm trees (as also in similar mosiacs at the Great Mosque in Damascus of the same period) and crowns, jewels etc but most important is the calligraphy.
The calligraphic mosaics are verses from the Qur’an, but they are verses from the Qur’an that reference Jesus Christ. In fact, all the Qur’anic passages speaking of Jesus are engraved around the walls. So we have a building erected in Jersualem that is not a mosque, that copies Eastern Christian Church forms and that prominently displays Christian motifs such as the palm tree and Qur’anic verses related to Jesus Christ.
The stone at the centre of the Dome of the Rock is also of interest but perhaps I shall post comments on this if anyone is interested. Suffice to say for now, that it cannot be the place where Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven in the Night Journey as is commonly supposed because another spot commemorating this already exists elsewhere nearby on the platform.
For those interested in further research into the palm tree motifs - which are said to also reference the ‘Tree of Life’ - there is a great scholarly article by Myriam Rosen-Ayalon of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
On another note, the Pal Tree symbolism is a key Sufi tenet as may be seen in the convergence of the Arabic roots of the words for ‘Palm Tree’ and the ‘Tariqa’ or Sufi path.
But back to the Dome of the Rock - and I really, really hate do this but it’s necessary - I’m going to have to mention the Templars. It is well known that the Order occupied both the Dome of the Rock and also the Mosque of al-Aqsa for prolonged periods (and may well have restored key aesthetic elements) but perhaps less well-known is that Templar Churches in Europe are in many instances modelled on the Dome of the Rock and are often Octagonal in design . Here is an example from La Vera Cruz.
The Templars themselves apparently referenced their buildings to the earlier ‘Temple of Solomon’ but it may well be possible that they were (as were the builders of the Dome of the Rock) heirs to another, hidden, tradtion that saw Judaism, Christianity and Islam as a continuing stream or having a unity on the esoteric level.
If this is the case, it seems highly likely that the Palm Tree was a symbol of this underground stream - it is a marked feature of the original Temple of Solomon and is also a significant feature of Christianity, orthodox and otherwise. That Islamic builders should also adopt it as a main feature of an anomalous building in Jerusalem cannot be without significance.
