and the other (10) of tanned leather for the summer. Around the Rock he set a balustrade of teak inlaid with green jasper, and behind the railing hung brocade curtains that could be lowered between the columns. Every Thursday and Monday the custodians would melt musk, ambergris, rosewater, and saffron, blend them into an aromatic compound (ghāliya), and burn it through the night. The attendants would then enter the bath, wash, perfume themselves, put on embroidered garments, gird their waists with belts ornamented in gold, and anoint the Rock. Next they placed incense in gold and silver braziers, inside which stood the al-ʿamūd al-qamarī—a moon-white column steeped in musk. When the custodians drew up the curtains, the fragrance streamed out and filled the whole city. A herald would then cry, “Behold, the Rock is open! Whoever wishes to visit, let him come!” People would hasten in, perform their prayers, and depart; and if anyone bore the scent of incense, the townsfolk would remark, “He was at the Rock today.”
The Rock had four doors, each manned by ten doorkeepers. The northern gate was called the Gate of Paradise, the eastern the Gate of Israfel, the western the Gate of Gabriel, and the southern the Gate of al-Aqsa. Its lamps were fueled with bān-oil, and no one entered it outside the visiting days except the attendants.
The sanctuary possessed twenty gates and a thousand marble columns; its roofs were supported by sixty thousand carved-teak beams. There were five thousand lamps and four hundred chains, each chain weighing one thousand Syrian pounds, their combined length reaching thirty thousand cubits. Every night one hundred candles were lit in the Rock and the same number in al-Aqsa, while the lamps received a qintar of refined oil. Within the Haram stood fifty domes and seventy thousand sheets of lead. Three hundred servants—bought from the public treasury with the khums—were assigned to it; whenever one died, his son succeeded him, and they drew their stipends from the treasury month by month. The sanctuary also contained one hundred cisterns.
The plates that covered the Dome and the roof of al-Aqsa were of gold instead of lead, as were the doors of the Dome and their plates. When construction was completed, a surplus of three hundred thousand—some say six hundred thousand—gold dinars remained, and Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah and Yazīd wrote to ʿAbd al-Malik informing him of it.
He replied, “I have granted it to you both.”
They wrote back: “Had we been able, we would have increased the adornment of this mosque with our wives’ jewellery.”
So he wrote again: “Since you refuse to accept it, melt it down and pour it over the Dome and the doors.” Thus no one could fix his gaze on the Dome because of the abundance of old and new gold upon it.
When Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr became caliph he came to Jerusalem in 140 AH. The people complained about the ruin of al-Aqsa and its domes, so he ordered the removal of that gold and the plates on the Dome and the doors and had the damaged parts of the mosque repaired with them; this was carried out. The mosque was excessively long, so he commanded that some of its length be taken and added to its width.
When the restoration was finished they inscribed on the Dome, on the side facing the southern gate toward al-Aqsa, the following words—after the basmalah:
“ This Dome was built by the servant of Allah, the Commander of the Believers ʿAbd al-Malik, in the year seventy-two (1) of the Prophetic Hijrah.”
The length of the mosque from the qiblah wall to the north measured seven hundred and sixty-five cubits, and its width four hundred and sixty cubits. Jerusalem was conquered in the year 16 AH, and Allah—glorified and exalted—is the One who knows best.