Construction of the Dome of the Rock

# The Dome of the Rock: Islam's Architectural Marvel in Jerusalem

The Sacred Site and Its History

The rock that stands at the center of the Dome of the Rock — al-Sakhra al-Musharrafa, the Honored Rock — is among the most spiritually significant pieces of earth on the surface of this world. Islamic tradition holds that it is the rock from which the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was taken up to the heavens during the Mi'raj (the Ascension), having first been brought there from Mecca during the Isra (the Night Journey). The Quran records the beginning of that journey: "Glory be to the One who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs" (17:1).

Before Islam, the rock had carried enormous significance across millennia. Jewish tradition associates it with the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, where Dawud (David, peace be upon him) built an altar, and where Sulayman (Solomon, peace be upon him) later built the first Temple. Islamic tradition, drawing on the narratives of the prophets, recognizes the site as a place of prayer and worship for the prophets of Allah from Ibrahim onward. It is the place where, according to strong traditions, Ibrahim (peace be upon him) was prepared to sacrifice his son in obedience to Allah's command before Allah ransomed him with a great sacrifice.

When Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) entered Jerusalem in 16 AH, he went to the site of the rock and found it covered with refuse — the Byzantines, seeking to displace its Jewish associations, had allowed it to be used as a dumping ground. Umar personally helped clear the area and offered prayer there. He did not build a permanent structure — his construction on the Temple Mount was a simple wooden prayer shed near the southern end of the platform, the precursor to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and the Vision for Jerusalem

The Dome of the Rock was built by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 72 AH / 691 CE — one of the earliest surviving Islamic monuments in the world and, by the near-universal judgment of historians and architects, one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed.

Abd al-Malik's motivations have been a subject of scholarly discussion for centuries. The primary motivation that classical Islamic sources emphasize is the desire to build a magnificent Islamic monument over the site from which the Prophet ﷺ ascended, giving it a permanent, dignified structure worthy of its spiritual significance. Jerusalem was the city of the prophets, and it deserved — and the Muslim ummah deserved — an architectural statement of Islam's connection to that prophetic lineage.

Some later historians, drawing on a report in al-Ya'qubi, suggested that Abd al-Malik built the Dome as an alternative pilgrimage destination to compete with Abdullah ibn Zubayr, who then controlled Mecca. This interpretation has been questioned by many modern scholars and was rejected by classical Sunni scholars, who found the chain of that report weak. The mainstream Sunni scholarly tradition does not accept that Abd al-Malik intended the Dome as a substitute for the Ka'bah, an intention that would have been a grave religious error.

The Architectural Genius of the Structure

The Dome of the Rock stands as a triumph of architectural ambition and execution. Its basic plan is an octagon surrounding a circle — the circular drum topped by the golden dome — nested within an octagonal arcade, surrounded by an outer octagonal wall. The structure is designed so that a pilgrim walking its double ambulatory circumambulates the rock at the center, just as Muslims circumambulate the Ka'bah in Mecca.

The original dome was covered with sheets of gold — material sourced, according to some accounts, from the treasuries and even the jewelry of the Caliph's household. The dome visible today is covered with gold-anodized aluminum sheets, a restoration from the modern period, but the original intention — to create a visual focal point that could be seen from miles across the hills of Jerusalem — was fully achieved. For fourteen centuries, the golden dome has been the defining visual symbol of Jerusalem.

The exterior walls are faced with marble at the base and, above that, magnificent Ottoman-era tilework (added by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 10th century AH). The interior is a masterpiece of Byzantine and emerging Islamic decorative arts: columns of marble and porphyry (reused from earlier Byzantine structures on the site), mosaic decorations in gold, green, and blue covering the walls and the inner dome, geometric and floral patterns that represent the Islamic aesthetic principle of divine beauty expressed without figurative representation.

The Quranic Inscriptions: A Statement of Faith

Among the most remarkable features of the Dome of the Rock is its inscriptional program — the longest surviving early Islamic inscription in the world, running for 240 meters around the inner faces of the octagonal arcade and the drum of the dome. The inscriptions, dating to the original construction (72 AH), are written in early Kufic script inlaid in gold mosaic.

The inscriptions include verses from the Quran and invocations. The Quranic texts selected are of profound theological significance: Surah al-Isra (17:111) — "Say: Praise belongs to Allah who has not taken a son, and who has no partner in sovereignty, and who has no need of any protector on account of weakness"; Surah al-Ikhlas; and texts from Surah Maryam. These are not random selections. They represent a deliberate theological statement, addressed not only to Muslims but to the Christians of Jerusalem and the Byzantine Empire: Islam's affirmation of the absolute unity of Allah (tawhid) and the rejection of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

The inscriptions also contain prayers for blessings on the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and invocations acknowledging the prophets who preceded him. They represent an early example of the Quran being used as an architectural element — the Word of Allah literally inscribed into the fabric of a sacred space.

The Care of the Dome Across Islamic History

The Dome of the Rock has been maintained, restored, and protected across nearly fourteen centuries by a succession of Muslim rulers who recognized its extraordinary significance.

When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 CE (492 AH), they converted the Dome of the Rock into a Christian church — Templum Domini (the Temple of the Lord) — covering the rock with a marble altar and adding a cross to the dome. The structure itself was not destroyed; the Crusaders recognized its magnificence and preserved it, adapting it for their own worship.

When Salahuddin al-Ayyubi (may Allah have mercy on him) liberated Jerusalem in 1187 CE (583 AH) at the Battle of Hattin, one of his first acts was to restore the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque to their original purpose. He removed the Crusader additions, had the rock cleaned of the marble covering, and restored Islamic worship. He also renewed the inscriptions and repaired whatever damage had been done.

The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 926-974 AH) undertook the most extensive restoration in the medieval period, commissioning the magnificent Iznik tilework on the exterior walls that replaced the original mosaics and giving the structure much of the visual character it has today.

The Rock Itself: Multiple Layers of Sanctity

The rock inside the Dome — the natural bedrock of the hill, approximately 17.7 by 13.5 meters — has been the subject of elaborate traditions and scholarly commentary in Islamic literature. Below the rock is a cave-like space known as "the Well of Souls" (Bi'r al-Arwah), where some traditions hold that the souls of the dead gather for prayer at certain times.

Traditions recorded in works like Fadail al-Quds literature (the merits of Jerusalem) describe the rock's cosmic significance: that it is the navel of the earth, that beneath it runs a spring, that angels descended upon it, that the Prophet ﷺ stood upon it before ascending to the heavens. Scholars distinguish between those traditions authenticated through sound chains of transmission and those that are weak or fabricated, but the core Islamic identification of the rock as the site of the Mi'raj is established in the Islamic scholarly tradition.

The Dome of the Rock in Islamic Consciousness

For fourteen centuries, the Dome of the Rock has been one of the most reproduced images in Islamic art and architecture — appearing on tiles, carpets, illuminated manuscripts, and carved woodwork from Morocco to Indonesia. It is the symbol of Jerusalem's centrality in Islamic devotion and the physical embodiment of Islam's claim to the prophetic tradition of Ibrahim, Musa, Dawud, Sulayman, and Isa (peace be upon them all).

Al-Tabari's history provides the foundational account of Abd al-Malik's construction project and its context. The detailed analysis of the building's inscriptions was pioneered by the scholar Christel Kessler and subsequent researchers, while classical Islamic sources from al-Muqaddasi (writing just three centuries after its construction) provide the earliest descriptions of the building from a Muslim perspective.

Al-Muqaddasi, writing in his geographical work Ahsan al-Taqasim in the late 4th Islamic century, describes seeing the Dome of the Rock and writes: "It rose above the surrounding buildings; it was decorated with gold and precious stones; I saw it with my own eyes, and there is nothing like it in all of Islam."

Sources:

• Al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wal-Muluk
• Al-Muqaddasi, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma'rifat al-Aqalim
• Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wan-Nihaya, Volume 8-9
• Al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan
• Ibn al-Faqih, Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan
• Al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala (biography of Abd al-Malik)
• The Quran, Surah al-Isra (17:1, 17:111)
• Al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (ahadith on the Isra and Mi'raj)
• Muslim, Sahih Muslim (hadith on the Night Journey)