Q&A
When was the Dome of the Rock built?
• SHORT ANSWER
The golden shrine was built in the seventh century on a spot sacred to Islam, as well as other major religions
• LONG ANSWER
“The Dome of the Rock is a building of extraordinary beauty, solidity, elegance, and singularity of shape,” wrote the great 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta. “Both outside and inside, the decoration is so magnificent and the workmanship so surpassing as to defy description. The greater part is covered with gold so that the eyes of one who gazes on its beauties are dazzled by its brilliance, now glowing like a mass of light, now flashing like lightning.”
By the time of this five-star review, the Islamic shrine in Jerusalem was already 700 years old and not in its original form, when constructed by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik in the 690s AD as a symbol of the young religion. The rock in question was the spot where the prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven and met with Allah. Also the exact site of two destroyed Jewish temples, the Dome was intended as a display of strength, too.
While the oldest extant monument in Islam, it has undergone a lot of changes: collapsed and rebuilt in the 11th century; used as a church during the Crusades; and restored by Saladin. As late as 1993, the dome itself had to be redone thanks to a $8.2m donation from the king of Jordan to buy the required 80kg of gold.