What Is The Dome Of The Rock?

It is a deceptively simple building located on a high platform that was erected at some indeterminate time on the large esplanade in the southeastern corner of the city. Its wooden gilt dome is slightly over twenty meters in diameter and rises like a tall cylinder to a height of some thirty meters over the surrounding stone-paved platform. It is supported by a circular arcade of four piers and twelve columns. An octagon of two ambulatories on eight piers and sixteen columns holds the cylinder tightly, as in a ring. The ambulatory is fourteen meters deep, thus giving to the whole building a diameter of forty-eight meters; it rises to only eleven meters inside and thirteen outside, thus strengthening the impact of the cupola, especially from afar. There are four doors, one at each of the cardinal points corresponding only approximately to the …show more content…
An extensive decoration of mosaics, painted wood, marble, multi-colored tiles, carpets, and carved stone covers most of the building, inside and outside. This decoration comes from many different periods and has often been repaired with varying success, as the ravages of time and changes in taste affected the maintenance of the building.

The Dome of the Rock will here be shown to belong to a general architectural type that includes a number of mythologized pre-Dome structures located not only on the Temple Mount but also in South Arabia. The early sources frequently refer to these structures as "mihrabs." These mihrabs must be integrated into the pre-history of the Dome of the Rock; they and their surrounding events are as important to understanding