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Too Big to be Owned: Reflections on Jerusalem in Islamic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2019

Suleiman A. Mourad
Suleiman A. Mourad*
Affiliation:
Smith College
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Abstract

Muslims have venerated Jerusalem since the seventh century. Their direct control of the city began in 638 and lasted, except for a few interruptions, until 1917. When we examine the evolution of an official Muslim attitude towards Jerusalem, it becomes clear that they perceived their role not as owners of the city but rather as custodians. This attitude was informed by the realization that Jerusalem was sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike, and that all three religious communities share many of the same sacred sites. As such, statesmanship and law obliged Muslim rulers to protect and defend Christian and Jewish sacred spaces, even against occasional Muslim mob behavior that called for the destruction, confiscation, or exclusive use of those places. The Trump administration's decision in 2017 to enact the 1995 decision of the U.S. Congress to move the American embassy to Jerusalem stands as a violation of this historical framework and of the rule of law and sanctions the eradication of Palestinian identity and historical memory.

Keywords

JerusalemIslamCrusadesMuslim-Crusader relationsMuslim-Christian relationsMuslim-Jewish relationsHistoryPalestine
Type
Special Focus: From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: An Embassy Move as the Crucible for Contested Histories
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , June 2019 , pp. 20 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2019 

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Footnotes

1

Suleiman A. Mourad is a Professor of Religion at Smith College and Associate Fellow at Nantes Institute for Advanced Study. He teaches courses on Islamic history, law and religion, and comparative themes in monotheistic religions (Jerusalem, Holy Land, Crusades). As a historian of Islam, he explores how Muslims have perceived their own past and religious tradition, spanning early Islam and its conceptual and ideological formation within the world of Late Antiquity, through the problematic Crusader period, and until today. His most recent book, The Mosaic of Islam: A Conversation with Perry Anderson (Verso, 2016), “reveals both the richness and the fissures of the faith.” Mourad is also a co-editor of the book-series The Muslim World in the Age of the Crusades (published by Brill). He is currently finalizing his forthcoming work, Islam between Violence and Nonviolence, which seeks to show that the foundational sources of Islam (the Qurʾan, the Sunna of Muhammad, the teachings of imams and mystical saints, and the various legal traditions and schools of Shariʿa) do not have an unequivocal voice on choosing violence or nonviolence. Rather, they offer conflicting positions, which reflect an unresolvable struggle. Since Islam is also defined by what Muslims say and do, Mourad also delves into the attitudes among Muslims, historically and today, towards the issues of violence and nonviolence.

References

2 For selected scholarship on this significance see Elad, Amikam, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 1995)Google Scholar; and Mourad, Suleiman A., “Jerusalem in Early Islam: The Making of the Muslims’ Holy City,” in Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem, eds. Mourad, Suleiman A., Koltun-Fromm, Naomi, and Der Matossian, Bedross (London: Routledge, 2019), 77–89Google Scholar.

3 Gideon Avni's work identifies these connections in The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

4 For the phrase and argument concerning this tension see, Rubin, Uri, “Between Arabia and the Holy Land: A Mecca-Jerusalem Axis of Sanctity,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34 (2008): 345–62Google Scholar.

5 For an overview, see Mourad, “Jerusalem in Early Islam.”

6 Sivan first posited this in an article – Sivan, Emmauel, “Le caractère sacré de Jérusalem dans l'islam aux xiie–xiiie siècles,” Studia Arabica 27 (1967): 149–82Google Scholar – which was incorporated into his book l'islam et la croisade: idéologie et propagande dans les réactions musulmanes aux croisades (Paris: Librairie d'Amérique et d'Orient, 1968), 115–20Google Scholar.

7 See for example, Elad, Medieval Jerusalem; Grabar, Oleg, The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Rubin, “Between Arabia and the Holy Land;” and Mourad, “Jerusalem in Early Islam.”

8 See for example, Gorenberg, Gershom, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (New York: Free Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Smith, Robert O., More Desired than Our Own Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Fink, Reuben, America and Palestine: The Attitude of Official America and of the American People Toward the Rebuilding of Palestine as a Free and Democratic Jewish Commonwealth (New York: American Zionist Emergency Council, 1944), 20–23Google Scholar; and Kark, Ruth, American Consuls in the Holy Land, 1832–1914 (Jerusalem: The Magness Press, 1994), 20–24Google Scholar.

10 Muʿawiya – the fifth caliph in Islam – was the brother-in-law of Muhammad (the prophet married Muʿawiya's sister) and a close relative of caliph ʿUthman (r. 644–656), whose assassination led to the first civil war among Muslims. Muʿawiya refused to acknowledge ʿAli (r. 656–661) as caliph, and with the assassination of ʿAli, he emerged as the only contender for the position.

11 See for example, Kedar, Benjamin Z., “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 3 (2004): 15–75Google Scholar; and Hirschler, Konrad, “The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative,” Crusades 13 (2014): 37–76Google Scholar.

12 al-Isfahani, ʿImad al-Din, al-Fath al-qussi fi al-fath al-qudsi, ed. Subh, Muhammad M. (Cairo: al-Dar al-Qawmiyya li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1965), 146Google Scholar.

13 al-Jawzi, Sibt Ibn, Mirʾat al-zaman fi taʾrikh al-aʿyan (Hyderabad: Daʾirat al-Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1951), 8.2: 655–57Google Scholar.

14 The depiction in Figure 2 is based on a myth. As far as we can tell, al-Kamil and Frederick never actually met.

15 A detailed account of the story of the synagogue is reported by the Jerusalemite scholar Mujir al-Din al-ʿUlaymi (d. 1522), who witnessed many of the events and attended some of the meetings: al-ʿUlaymi, Mujir al-Din, al-Uns al-jalil bi-taʾrikh al-Quds wa-l-Khalil, ed. Nubata, ʿAdnan (Amman: Maktabat Dandis, 1999), 2: 300–14Google Scholar.

16 Daniel B. Shepp, Holy Land Photographed (Philadelphia, PA: Alfred M. Slocum Company, 1894), 30.

17 They are the Nuseibeh family and the Joudeh family.