in both winter and summer, so that larger numbers of people would travel to the Holy House and thus be kept from going to Ibn al-Zubayr—“for people follow the religion of their ruler.”

From that time onward a degree of veneration for the Rock and for Bayt al-Maqdis appeared that Muslims had never known before. Certain individuals even began circulating Israelite reports to exalt it, until someone—while Kaʿb al-Aḥbār was in the presence of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān and ʿUrwah b. al-Zubayr was also present—recited: “Allah said to the Rock, ‘You are My nearest Throne.’” ʿUrwah objected, saying, “Allah the Exalted declares, ‘His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the earth’ (Qur’an 2:255), and yet you claim that the Rock is His Throne?”—and the like of these stories.

There is no doubt that the Rightly Guided Caliphs did not build this dome, nor did the Companions venerate the Rock or make a point of praying beside it. Even Ibn ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with them both—though he would travel from the Ḥijāz to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, never went to the Rock. It had once been the qiblah and was then abrogated; it is now the qiblah of the Jews, and nothing in our law assigns it any special ruling—just as our law assigns no special status to the Sabbath.

To single it out for reverence therefore resembles the practice of the Jews, and scholars have already discussed the matters of the Sabbath, ʿĀshūrā’, and the like.

A number of later jurists, from our school and others, have stated that an oath may be solemnized in Jerusalem by swearing beside the Rock, just as it is solemnized in the Sacred Mosque,