Medieval Jerusalem: Forging an Islamic City in Spaces Sacred to Christians and Jews, by Jacob Lassner

Abstract

In this book, Jacob Lassner sets out to re-examine the role of Jerusalem in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic period. As part of this undertaking he revisits (and generally opposes) recent explorations into the meaning of the Umayyad building project in the city. His goal in the book is to make clear the city’s evolution as a revered Islamic religious site comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina. The main body of the work consists of nine chapters. Chapter One engages with the ways Jerusalem and its surrounding landscape were envisioned by the Muslim conquerors, as well as discussing its sacred geography and toponymy. In its wake, Lassner addresses the book’s key question: when, and in what circumstances, did Jerusalem, a city long venerated by Jews and Christians, become a hallowed place for Muslims? In a different take (to be found in the preface of the book) he asks: when, and in what circumstances, did Jerusalem become for Muslims a sacred city comparable (italics added) to Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Arabia? Lassner’s main argument is that Jerusalem won a unique religious status parallel with Mecca and Medina following Islamic acceptance of prevailing Jewish and Christian understandings of its sanctity during the early Islamic period. While Chapter Two follows the intricate path of connecting the Qur’ānic Masjid al-Aqṣā and Jerusalem, Chapter Three probes into Muslim sources and modern scholarship to establish that Muslims came to accept the sanctity of Jerusalem following the Muslim conquest of the seventh century CE. Chapter Four explores the role of Mu’āwiyya in the Islamisation of Jerusalem, and rules out the idea of a grand design for Jerusalem to serve as a nerve centre of Muslim political and religious activities. Chapters Five and Six revisit the generally accepted interpretation of an Umayyad plan to transform Jerusalem into an administrative centre. By conflating Islamic textual sources and post-1967 archaeological findings and their interpretations, Lassner is advocating a cautious approach to Mu’āwiyya’s activities in Jerusalem. This is the foundation for Chapter Seven, which advances S.D. Goitein’s thesis holding the Umayyads’ project in Jerusalem as part and parcel of Islamic rivalry with Christianity therein. The meaning, form and function of the Dome of the Rock and its environs are discussed in Chapter Eight. Lassner largely follows Oleg Grabar’s 1959 paper which prioritised Byzantine-Muslim contestations and not internal Islamic struggles as the background for the ostentatious building project in Jerusalem. This leads to a final discussion in Chapter Nine which narrates (and summarises the main argument of the book) how non-Islamic religious practices and ideologies regarding Jerusalem influenced Muslim common belief about the city.