The Dome of the Rock -- a backdrop for television news, a picture on a travel poster, or an indelible memory of a visit -- is the dominant public image of Jerusalem. It is, perhaps more than any other religious site, a signal of the potentially dan-gerous interplay between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as of the inescapable challenges that confront the three great monotheistic faiths.

The May 9 ICJS Spring Conversation at St. Mary's Seminary & University welcomed benefactors and friends of the Institute to a discussion led by Carol Bier, Research Associate at Wash-ington's Textile Museum and a faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Carol drew on her thirty years of study of Islam and its art; her fieldwork in archaeology in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Iran; and her background as the former curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections at the Textile Museum.

Carol traced the development of the site, beginning in 638 C.E. when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem and began to transform what had become a garbage dump into what would again be a space with religious meaning. She offered a fascinating series of facts to indicate how this religious meaning has changed through the ages.

• The site was the original Muslim qibla or direction of prayer before it was replaced by Mecca. Jerusalem
  ranks third in sanctity behind Mecca and Madina in Islam. A pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj, is a religious obligation, while a visit to Jerusalem is optional.



• The Dome of the Rock was the first major Islamic architectural monument, constructed under the reign
  of the Umayyad caliph, ‘Abd al-Malek, who ruled several decades after the Sunni/Shi’i split over the succession
  of power following the death of Mohammed.



• A host of religious associations cluster here. Perhaps the most prominent is its identification as the traditional site of the binding by Abraham of Isaac (for Jews and Christians) or of Ishmael (for Muslims). While the Dome of the Rock is the traditional site for the ascension of Mohammed, the Koran refers to "the far mosque" as the place of ascent, not Jerusalem by name.



• The dome of the Holy Sepulchre is roughly the same size as that of the Dome of the Rock.



• The Ottoman sultan, Sulayman the Magnificent, in the 16th century welcomed Jews back to Jerusalem and had the area around the Western Wall dug out to make it accessible for Jews to pray.



• The Dome of the Rock and the area around it were the site of the First and Second Temple, although their precise locations are disputed. Even more disputatious are proposals that this become the site of the Third Temple.

Carol reminded us that this remarkable locale is charged with memory and meaning. These are key factors for Jews, Chris-tians, and Muslims both in their self-definition and in their relation to the other. So, beyond bricks, mortar, and bedrock we must consider the abiding issues of peace, understanding, and the construction of meaning.