The Dome of the Rock: Recognition of a Symbol

Emily Pott, PhD (2007)

Emily came to The School with the aim of studying the ceramic tiles prevalent in Jerusalem where she lived, planning to focus on the restorations of the exterior of the Dome of the Rock.  Upon beginning research however, she was struck with how little was written about the symbolism of the building itself and its original ornamentation.   She writes, “Over the last one hundred fifty years, tens of thousands of words have been written about the Dome of the Rock. The building represents an enigma to modern scholars of Byzantine and Islamic art who have endeavoured to fathom its purpose and function. It is the aim of this thesis to move beyond the limitations of historical conditions and related questions of purpose or function in an attempt to amplify the understanding of the levels of meaning that such a building must possess. On one level, historical, social and political interpretations of the plan or ornamentation of the building should be, and have been considered.

 

In this study, after a brief historical overview, the historical, political and social are left behind, for to understand the forms and ornament of sacred art, this world must be left behind.  For the early Muslims, these forms and ornament are the material expression of knowledge of God.  It is this knowledge, and man’s delight in it, that is exteriorized in the symbols of all sacred art and architecture, the forms and meanings with which this study is concerned.
 

 

The Dome of the Rock exhibits the nascent examples of the modes of expression and motifs that, in later generations, would be pared down to their very core in an attempt to purify expression and return to the primordial roots of “the religion of Truth” (al dīn al ḥaqq).  The Islamic Revelation comes as a reminder.  It arrives to renew the Abrahamic purity of the perennial Truth.  In the centuries that follow the motifs that are used by the Islamic craftsmen are stripped of their unessential elements in keeping with a tradition that revolves around Unity.  The modes of expression used in the Dome of the Rock, the building and its ornamentation, are not these, but neither are they merely “parallels” or “borrowings” from another tradition—they are a first step on the path that will eventually lead to the brilliance of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the calligraphy and illumination of the Persian masters, and the geometrical symbolism of the madrasehs of Fez.

It is the aim of this study to open the doors, to leave the confines of the historical dimension, to view the Dome of the Rock, not from the standpoint of its historical deployment, but as a first expression in material form of an Islamic flowering of the perennial and universal Truth, to search for the “purpose of the building” not for one man, or one woman, but for its timeless “purpose”.”

Emily is now a tutor at The Prince’s School.