Legends of the
Dome of the Rock:
11 / THE
STONE OF EDEN
In the floor of the Dome of the Rock, at the side of
the Foundation Stone, a square green slab of jasper was inserted. The Arabs
call it the Stone of Eden, because it rests above one of the gates to the
Garden of Eden. The entrance to the mosque facing the stone is therefore called
the Gate of the Garden of Eden — in Arabic, Bab ej-Jinah.
There are nineteen holes in the stone, which
apparently once served as a place to nail a plaque to. The nails still
remain in several holes. The stone possibly dates back to the Crusades in the
twelfth century and held a plaque sanctified in Christian tradition.
When Muhammad appeared in Jerusalem and entered the
Temple, he put nineteen gold nails into the Stone of Eden as a memorial of his
visit and set the angel Gabriel to guard them, saying to him: "Remember
that should all these nails be removed, the world would return to nothingness.
Guard them well!"
But the accursed Satan, desiring the destruction of
the world, would steal in from time to time and remove a nail. At length he
succeeded, by his cunning, in removing many of them. But when he came to remove
the sixteenth nail, the angel Gabriel felt his presence, attacked him, and
drove him away. In his bewilderment and haste, Satan withdrew only half a nail
— and three and a half nails remained in the stone.
Others say that Satan withdrew the nails while
attempting to raise the stone in order to enter the Garden of Eden.
The Arab judge Mujir ed-Din, who lived in Jerusalem at
the end of the fifteenth century, gives the Stone of Eden the Arabic name Balattat
es-Saudah — the Black Slab. He says that the grave of Solomon
lies beneath this slab.
A Moslem pilgrim who visited Jerusalem in the
seventeenth century, Abd al-Ghani al-Nablusi, tells us: "And we stood upon
the black slab and saw silver nails fixed in it. People believe that one nail
disappears yearly, and that when all of them shall have disappeared, the
eternal resurrection shall have come. It is also called the Stone of the Garden
of Eden."
During World War I, in 1916, Jamal
Pasha, Turkish high commissioner and commander of Turkish forces in Palestine,
removed the Stone of Eden from the Dome of the Rock. Its whereabouts are
now unknown.
Sources: Voyages d‘Ali Bey el-Abassi, III, 1814, p. 143; Abd al-Rabbih, Al-Ikd al-Farid, 1876, p. 164; Mujir ed-Din, Kitab a-Uns ej-Jalil be-Taarikh a-Kuds wal-Khalil, 1866, p. 200; Al-Hadra al-Unsia fi Rihlah al-Kudsia, ed. Cairo, p. 28; Schick, beit el Makdas, p. 15; T. Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestibe, 1927. p. 28.
Culled
from: Zev Vilnay: Legends of Jerusalem, Jewish Publication Society,
1973.
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