The Jerusalem Question – Part 2
by Habib Siddiqui
.......... to be continued ......
In 636 CE, at the battle of Yarmouk, the
Byzantines were decisively defeated by the Muslim Army, led by Amr ibn al-‘As
(R). Within months in 637 CE, the Muslim army under the leadership of Abu
Ubayda ibn Jarrah (R) lay a bloodless siege on Jerusalem, which lasted for four
months. Patriarch Sophoronius offered to surrender the city if Khalifa Umar ibn
al-Khattab (R) himself would come in person to ratify the terms of the
surrender. The encounter between these two men was very dramatic. In the words
of a Christian historian, Anthony Nutting, "Umar taught the caparisoned
throng of Christian commanders and bishops a lesson in humility by accepting
their surrender in a patched and ragged robe and seated on a donkey." [The
Arabs, New American Library, N.Y. (1964)]
The terms of the surrender were: "Bismillahir Rahmaneer Raheem (In the name of
Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful). This is a covenant which Umar, the
servant of Allah, the Amir (Leader) of the faithful believers, granted the
people of Aelia [Ilya’]. He granted them safety for their lives, their
possessions, their churches and their crosses. They shall not be constrained in
the matter of their religion, nor shall any of them be molested. Whoever leaves
the city shall be safe in his person and his property until he reaches his
destination." [11]
Umar (R) thus pledged security of
the lives, properties, churches and freedom of worship of the city’s Christian
inhabitants. These pledges came to be known as the Covenant of Umar, which
established the standard of conduct vis-a-vis the non-Muslim population of
Jerusalem for subsequent generations and specifically for the two Muslim rulers
of Jerusalem: Sultan Salah al-Din Ayyubi (1187) and the Ottoman Sultan Selim
(1516). [It is worth noting that the Covenant was one of the most progressive treaties in history. For comparison,
just 23 years earlier when Jerusalem was conquered by the Persians from the
Byzantines, a general massacre was ordered. Another massacre ensued when
Jerusalem was conquered by the Christian Crusaders
from the Muslims in 1099 CE. The Treaty of
Umar (R) allowed the Christians of Jerusalem religious freedom, as is dictated
in the Qur’an and the sayings of Muhammad (S). This was one of the first and most
significant guarantees of religious freedom in history. Umar (R) further
allowed Jews to worship on the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall, while the
Byzantines had banned them from all such activities.]
When Umar (R) entered Jerusalem, (what is now
known in the West as) the Temple Mount lay vacant. The Christian Byzantines had
used it as a garbage dump [to offend the Jews]. But to the Muslims it contained
the Rock hallowed by the Prophet Muhammad’s (S) Isra’ and Mi’raj (the Prophet’s
nightly journey to Jerusalem and ascension to heaven with Angel Jibril (AS)).
After accepting the city’s surrender from
Sophronius, Umar (R) was shown around the church during which the time for
mid-day (Zuhr) prayer came. The Patriarch offered a place for him to pray
inside the church and laid out a straw mat but Umar (R) refused, explaining to
the Patriarch, “Had I prayed inside the church, the Muslims coming after me would take
possession of it, saying that I had prayed in it.” He (R) prayed
outside the Church.
According to the Muslim chroniclers, Umar’s
(R) next concern was to identify that Rock. Sophoronius guided him to a spot,
which by then had no traces of its Jewish past. Because of high reverence for
the place, Umar (R), the Amirul Mu’meneen, himself started cleaning it in
person, carrying dirt in his own robe. His entourage and army followed suit
until the whole area was cleaned. He directed that no prayers be held on or
near it until the place has been washed by rain three times. His entourage then
sprinkled the place with scent. Umar (R) then led the Muslims in prayer on a
clean spot to the south. Foundation of a mosque was erected on the spot and
this is the Al-Aqsa mosque, revered by Muslims as one of the three most sacred
mosques on earth.
In the Jewish apocalyptic literature of the
time, Umar’s (R) capture of Jerusalem was seen as an act of redemption from the
Byzantines. It is worthwhile mentioning here (as has also been recognized by
Jewish historian Moshe Gil) that it was not until 638 CE that a Jewish quarter
would be assigned in the city – since the days of the second Jewish Revolt some
five hundred years ago – when Muslims invited Jewish families to reside
therein.
The most obvious reflection of Islam’s
reverence for Jerusalem is in its architecture. During the Umayyad rule
(660-750 CE) Jerusalem flourished to become a major city, and from this period,
important buildings survive. The Umayyad Khalifa Al Walid later completed the
construction of the al-Aqsa mosque in 715 CE. His father Caliph Abdul Malik
bin-Marwan constructed the "Dome of the Rock” Masjid al Quba as-Sakhra
(visible with gold dome) on the Haram al-Sharif earlier in 688-691 CE (68-71
AH). These two mosques became essentially the most visited mosques in the entire
Muslim world outside the Ka’ba and Masjid an-Nabi in Arabia, and grace the city
of Jerusalem to this very day.
In 728 CE, the cupola over the Al-Aqsa Mosque
was erected, the same being restored in 758-75 by the Abbasid Khalifa Al-Mahdi.
In 831 Khalifa Al-Ma’mun restored the Dome of the Rock and built the octagonal
wall. In 1016 CE the Dome was partly destroyed by earthquakes; but it was
repaired in 1022.
As part of historical revisionism, some
Orientalists, such as John Wansbrough, and Likudnik/Zionist historians have
opined that Muhammad’s (S) night journey to Jerusalem – the Isra’ and Mi’raj,
one of the principal foundations of Jerusalem’s sanctity in Islam – was a later
invention aimed at accounting for the Qur’anic verse 17:1. [17] Others, such as
Patricia Crone, have proposed that Jerusalem was in fact the original Islamic
holy city, and that the sanctity of Makkah and Madinah was a later innovation.
Neither of these ludicrous theories enjoys much acceptance (outside die-hard
Zionists), least of all among Muslims. [18]
During the Abbasid rule (750-969 CE) Jerusalem
became a religious focal point for Christian and Jewish pilgrims and Sufi
Muslims. The vast majority of its inhabitants were Muslims. It remained under
Muslim control until the first Crusade (1099). Excepting a brief period during
Fatimid caliph (insane) al-Hakim’s rule (996-1021), there was no religious
persecution of minorities. [19]
In November 1095, Pope Urban II delivered a
speech at Claremont, France, which can only be described as the vilest and most
spiteful speech of the Middle Ages, responsible for initiating the never-ending
Crusade. He said: “O race of Franks! race beloved and chosen by God! … From the
confines of Jerusalem and from Constantinople a grievous report has gone forth
that an accursed race, wholly alienated from God, has violently invaded the
lands of these Christians, and depopulated them by pillage and fire. … The
kingdom of Greeks is now dismembered by them, and has been deprived of
territory so vast in extent that it could not be traversed in two months’ time.
On whom, then, rests the labor of avenging
these wrongs, and of recovering this territory, if not upon you – you upon
whom, above all others, God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great
bravery, and strength to humble the heads of those whom resist you? … Let none
of your possessions keep you back, nor anxiety for your family affairs. For
this land which you now inhabit, shut in all sides by the sea and the mountain
peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food
enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another,
that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife.
Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you;
let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that
land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.
Jerusalem is a land fruitful above all others,
a paradise of delights. That royal city, situated at the center of the earth,
implores you to come to her aid. Undertake this journey eagerly for the
remission of your sins, and be assured of the reward of imperishable glory in
the kingdom of Heaven.”
With that deleterious speech, the Pope aroused
Christians to recapture Jerusalem from Muslims. On 1099 CE the Crusaders
entered the city and began one of the bloodiest and crudest massacres in
history. According to Ibn al-Athir some 70,000 Muslims were slaughtered in
Masjid al-Aqsa alone, all of them non-combatants, some of them Imams and
professors of theology.
Raymond d’Aguiliers, chaplain to Raymond de
Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse, wrote: “Piles of heads, hands, and feet were
to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over
the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what
happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious ceremonies were
ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed
your powers of belief. So, let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in
the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and
bridle-reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this
place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, since it had suffered so
long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.” [20]
Jerusalem became the capital of the Latin
Kingdom under Godfrey, Count of Bouillon, who changed the Al-Aqsa mosque into a
church and erected a big cross on top of the Dome of Rock. Muslims and Jews
were banned from living in the city.
In 1187 CE Sultan Salahuddin (Saladin) Ayyubi
(RA) liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders and restored the al-Aqsa mosque to
its previous condition. Before liberating Jerusalem, Saladin wrote a letter to
King Richard which sums up Muslim position vis-a-vis the status of the city. He
wrote: “Jerusalem is our heritage as
much as it is yours. It was from Jerusalem that our Prophet ascended to heaven
and it is in Jerusalem that the angels assemble. Do not imagine that we can
ever abandon it. Nor can we possibly renounce our rights to it as a Muslim
community. As for the land, your occupation of it was accidental and came about
because the Muslims who lived in the land at that time were weak. God will not
enable you to build a single stone in the land so long as the war lasts."
Comparing Saladin’s behavior with those
Christian Crusaders, the historian Anthony Nutting writes: "Apart from
restoring the holy places of Islam, Saladin allowed not a single building to be
touched. As Christian historians have attested, strict orders were issued to
all Muslim troops to protect Christian life and property and not a single
Christian was molested on account of his religion – a remarkable contrast to
the atrocities perpetrated by the Franks eighty-eight years before." It is
worth mentioning here that while the Crusaders, when they entered Jerusalem,
burned Jews in their synagogue Salahuddin, after recovering the city, had
allowed Jews to return.
Excepting brief periods between 1229-1239 and
1243-1244 when Jerusalem again fell in the hands of the Crusaders (because of
Muslim in-fighting), it remained a Muslim City through all its life. Religious
freedom and rights of worship by Christians and Jews were respected. In 1267
Rabbi Moshe Ben Nahman (Nahmanides) arrived from Spain, revived the Jewish
congregation and established a synagogue and center of learning bearing his
name. In 1448, Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro settled in Jerusalem and led the
community. After the Spanish Inquisition (1492), Jews found shelter among the
Muslims of North Africa and (what is now called) the Middle East.
The Mamluks (1248-1517), who came after the
Ayyubids, left their mark in architecture with beautiful buildings, schools and
hospices throughout the Old City. They added markets, repaired water supplies
and constructed city’s fountain system.
In 1517 the Ottomans took over Jerusalem
peacefully. Sultan Suleiman "the magnificent" (1537-41) rebuilt the
city walls (un-walled since 1219) including the present day 7 gates (what is
now known as the Old City) and the "Tower of David." He further
improved the city’s water system, installed drinking fountains still visible in
many parts of the Old City. He also patronized religious centers and
educational institutions. A Jewish colony “Safaradieh” was formed in 1522 in
Palestine. The Ottomans granted religious freedom to all and it was possible to
find (something that was unthinkable in Europe) a synagogue, a church and a
mosque in the same street.
The Damascus gate was erected in 1542. It was
Sultan Selim, the Ottoman ruler, who dug out the Wailing Wall from under the
rubble in the 16th century and permitted Jews to visit it. All the Ottoman
Sultans -” from Suleiman “the magnificent” to Sultan Abdul-Hamid (RA) -” were
great patrons of Jerusalem, making surrounding territories of the mosques as
their Waqf properties.
Throughout the Ottoman era, the city remained
open to all religions, although the empire’s faulty management after Sultan
Suleiman meant slow economic stagnation. When Jewish people faced extermination
across Europe, the Ottoman Sultans allowed them to take refuge in the Empire.
Some of them settled in Palestine. In 1562 there were 1,200 (mostly religious)
Jews and 11,450 Arabs living in Jerusalem. [21]
By mid-19th century, with the weakening of the
Ottoman Empire (to the extent of being ridiculed as the “Sick Man of Europe”)
the European colonial powers vied with each other to gain a foothold in
Palestine. New areas with names like the German Colony and the Russian Compound
sprouted the city. According to Zionist historiography, residential building
outside the walls of the Old City began around 1860 with the Jewish settlement
– Mishkenot Shaananim. However, such scholarship overlooks the much earlier
construction and continued use of numerous indigenous residential buildings
outside the walls such as khans, residences for religious persons, and summer
homes with orchards and olive presses, belonging mostly to non-Jews, especially
the Arab Muslims. [22] In time, as the communities grew and connected geographically,
this became known as the New City. [23]
This was also an age of Christian religious
revival, and many churches sent missionaries to proselytize among the Muslim
and especially the Jewish populations, believing passionately that this would expedite
the Second Coming of Christ. These outside missionaries settled in and around
places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
In 1846 there were only 12,000 Jews in
Palestine out of a population of 350,000. In 1880, shortly before the Russian
Pogroms, there were only 25,000 Jews in Palestine out of a population of half a
million. [24]
The last half of the 19th century witnessed
the pontification of Pope Pius IX (1846-78), the publication of Wilhelm Marr’s
"Jewry’s Victory over Teutonism" (1873), the assassination of Czar
Alexander II (1881) and the Alfred Dreyfus case (1894). [25] These events led
to pogroms and anti-Semitism (actually Jew-hatred) across Europe, especially in
Eastern Europe and Russia. Jews again found refuge in the Ottoman Empire.
[Ironically, the demise of the Ottoman regime can partly be blamed on the
Jewish enclave in Salonika (now Thessalonica or Thessaloniki in Greece) – home
of the Donme [26] and the birthplace of the (Jacobin) Young Turk movement.]
[27]
The last decade of the 19th century saw the
emergence of political Zionism calling for the establishment of a Jewish state.
Sultan Abdul-Hamid, the last of the Ottoman Sultans, was approached by Theodor
Herzl, the father of political Zionism, who offered to buy up and then turn
over the Ottoman Debt to the Sultan’s government in return for an Imperial
Charter for the Colonization of Palestine by the Jewish people. In his Diary,
Herzl writes, “Let the Sultan give us that parcel of land
[Palestine] and in return we would set his house in order, regulate his
finances, and influence world opinion in his favour…” The Sultan rejected the
offer, but reiterated that as the Caliph he remained a guardian of the Jewish
people.
Herzl personally
met the Sultan in May 1901. The American Jewish Yearbook [5663, October 2, 1902, to September 21, 1903, ed. Cyrus Adler,
Philadelphia, the Jewish Publication Society of America (1902)] at the time
summarized Herzl's meeting this way:
[Note: The Jewish Yearbook cited above also
shows that at the Fifth International Congress (of Zionists), held at Basel,
Switzerland, from Dec. 26 to 29, 1901, a system was designed to uniting the
various Zionistic societies under one umbrella, the Congress, and the Congress
was to establish a National Fund of 200,000 British Pound to be used for the
purchase of land in Palestine.]
In his letter to a Sufi Shaykh - Shadhili Sheikh Abu'Shamat
Mahmud (dated Sept. 22,
1911), Sultan Abdul-Hamid mentions this episode: “I left the post of the ruler
of Caliphate only because of the obstacles and threats on the side of people
who call them ‘Young Turks’. The Committee of Unity and Progress obsessively
insist on my agreement to form a national Jewish state in the sacred land of
Palestine. But in spite of their obstinacy I strongly refused them. In the end,
they offered me 150 million English pounds in gold, but again I refused and
said the following to them: ‘If you offer me gold of the world adding it to
your 150 man, I won’t agree to give you the land. I have served Islam and the
people of Muhammad (S) for more than 30 years, and I won’t cloud the Islamic
history, the history of my fathers and grandfathers - Ottoman Sultans and
caliphs.’ After my definite refusal, they decided to remove me from power, and
after that they told me that they would transport me to Salonika and I had to
resign. I praise my benefactor who didn’t let me bring shame on the Ottoman
state and the Islamic world. I want to stop at this. I praise the Almighty once
again and finish my letter.” [28]
The Sultan, to the last of his days, resisted
bartering Jerusalem for his reign.
So, what we notice from historical accounts is
a remarkable Muslim reverence for the city of Jerusalem, much in contrast to
the disingenuous claims made by Zionist apologists like Daniel Pipes and
others. Down the centuries, from the time of Umar (R) to the subsequent Muslim
dynasties ruling from Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Istanbul, Jerusalem was
always important to Muslims. They constructed a wide variety of buildings and
institutions in Jerusalem: mosques, theological college convents for Sufi mystics,
abodes for holy men, schools of the Hadith and the Qur’an, orphanages,
hospitals, hospices for pilgrims, fountains, baths, pools, inns, soup kitchens,
places for ritual ablution, mausoleums, and shrines to commemorate the
Prophet’s (S) Mi’raj. These buildings were maintained through a system of
endowment in perpetuity (awkaf), sometimes involving the dedication of the
revenues of entire villages in Palestine, Syria, or Egypt. The patrons were
caliphs and sultans, military commanders and scholars, merchants and officials,
including a number of women. Their philanthropy bears witness to the importance
of Jerusalem as a Muslim center of residence, pilgrimages, retreat, prayer,
study and burial. [29]
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