Legends of the
Dome of the Rock:
7 / THE
FOUNDATION STONE HOVERS
During the Middle Ages the legend was widespread among
Jews and Arabs that the Foundation Stone hovers in the air and instills fear
and astonishment into the hearts of all who see it.
The Moslem judge Mujir ed-Din, an inhabitant of
Jerusalem, bore witness about 1496 that a certain Arab who lived at the end of
the eleventh century saw the Foundation Stone hovering in the air.
A Karaite voyager, Samuel son of David, who visited
Jerusalem in 1641, tells of the hovering Foundation Stone in the Dome of the
Rock: "And it is said that there is within it a big stone, known as the
Foundation Stone, which hovers between heaven and earth. In recent times walls
were built surrounding the Foundation Stone, but not touching it. And the
reason for building these walls, it is said, was that pregnant women, upon
perceiving the hovering stone, would miscarry. And therefore the walls were
raised."
Rabbi Moses Hagiz, a Jerusalemite of the seventeenth
century, describes the Dome of the Rock thus: "Within it a stone hovers in
the air, known by us as the Foundation Stone. Hence, greater sanctity is
observed in that chamber and one is forbidden to enter it, if only for the
purpose of lighting the oil candles which burn there day and night."*
Sources: Mujir ed-Din, Kitab a-Uns ej-Jalil be-Taarikh a-Kuds wal-Khalil, 1866; Eisenstein (ed) Otzar Massaoth, 1926, p. 195; M. Hagiz, Parashat Eleh Massai, 1733; T. Tobler, Topographie von Jrusalem, I, 1853, p. 531; Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1925, p. 51.
* The
Samaritan legend tells of Ahidan, the grandson of Tubal-Cain, who is mentioned
in the Torah. Ahidan, they say, built Zion: "And he placed there a stone
suspended [in the air] for worship." Maimonides tells of a temple in the
land of Babylon in which was a golden image in the form of the sun. "This
image was suspended between earth and heaven." A similar legend exists
among the Arabs concerning the grave of Muhammad, in the city of Medina, in
Arabia. The grave reputedly hovers in the air, between heaven and earth.
Culled
from: Zev Vilnay: Legends of Jerusalem, Jewish Publication Society,
1973.
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