The spread of monotheism engendered new and difficult questions for rulers and architects in the Near East. No longer could religious justification for local political power be demonstrated in, say, a ziggurat to the city patron-deity (Taylor 48-49). With the growth of Abrahamic faith, which condemned idolatry and emphasized the universality and unknowable nature of the Divine, rulers needed to envision other ways of capturing man’s natural impulse to divide the sacred from the mundane. Few spots display the strategies used to obtain this effect better than the Temple Mount, the Jerusalem location holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. In this paper, I will use examples from Jewish and Islamic religious structures on the Temple Mount to demonstrate how rulers and architects emphasize monotheism and religious justification through differing visual means. In Herod’s grand Second Temple, the mystery of the Divine was simulated through abstract, symbolic architectural elements, while the fashioners of the later Muslim Dome of the Rock did not shy away from heavier use of text and images in their design.

Historical and liturgical texts are all that remain of the destroyed Second Temple, but they paint an image in the modern reader’s mind of a space filled with abstract symbols of monotheism. In the Temple, visitors first entered the Court of the Gentiles, which was open to everybody (Armstrong 9). As the faithful proceeded inwards, “notices warned foreigners not to proceed further, on pain of death” (9). For the pious ancient Israelite, to pass through such a purity checkpoint undoubtedly provided a major boost in religious fervor — like permission to move into a higher level of spiritual awareness. This mood was conveyed through architectural means: sanctity represented by spatial division. Josephus Flavious wrote of these notices in ​Wars of the Jews,​ noting that upon one of the Temple’s inner partitions stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek, and some in Roman letters, that “no foreigner should go within that sanctuary” (5.194). Yet, besides these brief purity guidelines, a visitor to the Temple would not have encountered heavy text or imagery on the walls to guide their thoughts. Notably, earlier in his description, Josephus notes that the “magnificence” and “prospect” of the Temple was conveyed without paintings or engravings (5.191). One religious scholar highlights this distinction, explaining that through using beautiful metals and embroidery instead, the fashioners of the Temple avoided “threatening three-dimensional decorations such as carvings and statuary” (Elledge 46). According to Elledge, the positive impression that Herod’s Temple left on Josephus Flavius suggests that the veils and other ornaments of the Jewish structure offered an inoffensive and aesthetically pleasing architectural experience even to the most austere, aniconic monotheist (46). Armstrong sums up this architectural holiness created with minimal human expression: “Sacred space could still yield a powerful experience of a presence which transcended all anthropomorphic expression” (10). As we will see, the later Islamic Dome of the Rock embraces monothesism with more allowance of anthropomorphic artistic expression, including politicized text and visual art.

The currently standing Dome of the Rock represents monotheistic belief with different design elements than those described in the Second Temple. Inscriptions on its interior walls, like religious street signs, guide worshippers toward a proper state of mind, adding a flair of holiness and legitimacy. The inscriptions include powerful descriptions of Islamic monotheism, such as Verse III, “And say: praise be to God, Who has not taken unto Himself a son, and Who has no partner in Sovereignty, nor has He any protector on account of weakness” (Grabar 53). The implicit criticism of Jesus’ (“a son”) divinity is evident, a clear rebuke to Jerusalem’s Byzantine Christian character at the time of the Dome of the Rock’s construction. Inscriptions on the walls further guided believers towards the ​Islamic v​ iew of monotheism, outwardly criticizing Christianity’s three-pronged view of the Divine with quotes referring to Jesus as “only an apostle of God … God is only one God” (Grabar 53). It also warns Jews and Christians with a direct command, “O People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion” (Islamic Awareness). So, while in the Second Temple, designers used abstract veils, empty spaces and other means to symbolize the untouchability of the Divine, in the Dome of the Rock designers looked to textual inscriptions to cement clear ideological views in the minds of visitors. Mosaics depicting vegetal motives, vases, cornucopias and wearable jewels also adorn the interior of the Dome of the Rock, to which Grabar assigns both political and socio-religious significance (47-48). He suggests that in using the aforementioned images, which are found in contemporaneous Byzantine and Persian artwork, the Umayyad decorators of this Islamic sanctuary intentionally employed “symbols belonging to the subdued or to the still active enemies of the Muslim state,” in a display of victory (48). It appears that the designers of the Dome of the Rock heavily considered their rejection of antecedent Abrahamic faiths and political victory while commissioning the building’s scriptural inscriptions. Though the quotes call for monotheistic thought (“God is only one God”), they are paired with earthly responses to Christianity and Judaism.

It is critical to remain aware of the different ideological aims​ o​ f the builders of the Jewish Second Temple and the Islamic Dome of the Rock. The fashioners of the Second Temple imbued the visiting faithful with symbolism in movement and vestment. Armstrong explains that visitors moved from the “ordinary mundane world” (outside) into the marginal realm of chaos, the so-called “primal sea,” to the ordered world inside the Temple that God had created (10). Instead of reading scriptural reminders of monotheism on the wall, visitors would physically “ascend” through ever-holier spaces of the Temple in preparation for their visit to the central sacrificial altar, surrounded by priests adorned with tunics symbolizing heaven, earth and the four natural elements (10). Given Judaism’s role in the Abrahamic story as the first major statement of monotheism, Second Temple architects may have felt less compelled to justify beliefs and usurp others’ views. Grabar notes the ​double​ task faced by the Islamic designers of the Dome of the Rock, of both encouraging monotheism and the universality of God and making clear that their faith has usurped previous attempts, like that of the Second Temple (55). Grabar describes the inscriptions as having a “missionary character,” accepting Christian and Hebrew forerunners but asserting the vitality of the “new faith” and the nascent state based on it (55).

Finally, it is rather difficult to pair Islam’s extreme monotheism with political pageantry and architecture in the Dome of the Rock, a dimension which Grabar examines. He argues that later pious Islamic accounts of churches and ornate Christian religious representations offered an air of ambivalence: impression without persuasian (55). But, the earliest Muslims and fashioners of the religion may have been more affected by Byzantine displays of grandeur than later documenters wanted to admit (55-56). The extent to which Islamic designers of the Dome were comfortable appropriating the ornate decorations of their Christian forerunners, especially given that its builder Abd al-Malik sought to “build for the Muslims a mosque that should be unique and a wonder to the world,” remains a topic for further inquiry (55). It is clear, though, that the designers of the Dome of the Rock were comfortable incorporating images and inscriptions into their structure — whatever their religious or political aims.

This brief glance at the Second Temple and the later Dome of the Rock show different ways in which architects fashioned their buildings in order to convey fundamental religious ideas. The Second Temple’s spatial planning moved pilgrims through ascending layers of holiness, largely free of textual inscription. Instead, visual stimulation was provided with elaborate curtains and vestments (Armstrong 8). The Dome of the Rock has fewer spaces; visitors do not experience a “move” towards the Divine presence through their footsteps. Instead, faithful are offered Quranic reminders of major tenets of their faith. Interestingly, thousands of years after the Temple period, Jewish synagogues regularly incorporate textual inscriptions on the walls. From prayers to scriptural quotes, these artistic inscriptions may be due to a lack of readily available prayerbooks during the Diaspora, or efforts to counter religious illiteracy among the general populace. The readiness with which diasporic Jewish institutions inscribe their walls and decorate their surfaces remain a topic for further study outside of this essay’s purview.

Works Cited