Under the Arabs

Under the Arabs.

After the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabs the city soon took on a Mohammedan aspect. In 688 the calif 'Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock; in 728 the cupola over the Akṣa mosque was erected, the same being restored in 758-775 by Al-Mahdi. In 831 Al-Ma'mun restored the Dome of the Rock and built the octagonal wall. In 1016 the Dome was partly destroyed by earthquakes; but it was repaired in 1022. The chief Arabic histories of Jerusalem are those by Al-Makdisi, "Mutir al-Ghanam" ("J. R. A. S." xix. 297); Al-Suyuti, "ItHaf al-AHissa" (1470, p. 258); and Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaimi, "Ins al-Jalil" (1496), ed. Cairo, 1866 (partly translated in H. Sauvaire, "Histoire de Jerusalem," Paris, 1876). Mujir al-Din relates that when 'Abd al-Malik built the Dome, he employed ten Jewish families, who were freed from all taxes. They increased so quickly in number that they were removed by the calif Omar (c. 717). He relates further: "And among the servants of the sanctuary, too, was another company of Jews, who made the glass plates for the lamps and the glass lantern-bowls and glass vessels and rods. No poll-tax was demanded of them, nor from those that made wicks for the lamps." Another tradition, reported by a number of Arabic writers, says that the original position of the Temple was pointed out to Omar by the apostate Ka'b ("Z. D. P. V." xiii. 9 et seq.). This tradition is referred to also in an anonymous Hebrew letter ("Ozar tob," 79, 13) and by Isaac Helo (1333), who says that the place was pointed out by an old Jew to the Mohammedan conqueror on condition that he preserve the western wall (Carmoly, "Itinéraires de la Terre Sainte," p. 237). Bar Hebræus ("Chronicum Syriacum," p. 108) asserts that it was specially stipulated between Omar and Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, that the Jews should not live in the city—a statement which can not be verified.

The geographer Al-Mukaddasi, writing in 985, does not speak highly of Jerusalem; he complains that the Christians and the Jews "have the upper hand" (ed. De Goeje, p. 167). He adds that in Palestine and Syria most of the minters, dyers, tanners, and money-changers were Jews (ib. p. 183). The later complaints about the burdensomeness of the taxes were evidently not unwarranted; for, according to Al-Mukaddasi, the tax on Palestine was 259,000 dinars (ib. p. 189). The Persian traveler Nasir i-Khusrau (1047) says that both Christians and Jews came up to Jerusalem to visit the church and the synagogue there (Guy le Strange, "Palestine under the Moslems," p. 88). According to the Ahimaaz Chronicle (Neubauer, "M. J. C." ii. 128, 25), Paltiel, the vizier of Al-Mu'izz in the second half of the tenth century, presented, among other gifts, 1,000 dinars to the (l.c. 128, 25), otherwise called the (ib. 130, 13). These are the usual designations for the Karaites in Jerusalem ("R.E.J." xxxii. 149; "Monatsschrift," xl. 535).

The Karaite Sahl b. MazliaH of the eleventh century gives a picture of the Jerusalem of his day. There were very few Jews there to bewail her fate, and Sahl begs his fellow Jews wherever they may be to return to the city. He speaks of the wailing women who lamented the city's state in Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic; especially on the Mount of Olives in the months of Tammuz and Ab. Zion, he says, is in the hands of Esau; Jerusalem, in the hands of the Arabs (Harkavy, "Meassef NiddaHim," No. 13, in "Ha-Meliz," 1879, No. 31, p. 639, and inBerliner's "Magazin," 1878, p. 181). There seems to be some support even for the view that there were German Jews in Jerusalem at this time. The story is told, on the authority of Elijah Ba'al Shem of Chelm, that a young man named Dolberger was saved by a Jew in Palestine who knew German, and that out of gratitude one of his family who was among the Crusaders saved some of the Jews in Palestine and carried them to Worms ("Seder ha-Dorot," ed. 1878, p. 252). In the second half of the eleventh century halakic questions were sent from Germany to Jerusalem (Epstein, in "Monatsschrift," xlvii. 344).

Jerusalem