time which Mr Fergusson has unhappily fixed on for the transference of the site1: and it has been already stated that the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection was witnessed and reported in Europe by a French Bishop.

Fifty years after the completion of the New Church the first Crusade put the Christians in possession of the city; and Mr Fergusson amuses himself with the thought of "the puzzlingly ludicrous position of the Church of Jerusalem, when they found that they were in possession of two Holy Sepulchres." They might have returned to the old one; but they were pledged to the cheat, and "found themselves under the necessity of adhering to the worst, and what they must then have known to be the false one?." It were superfluous to remark that the dilemma is purely imaginary; and that there is not the remotest hint of such a difficulty in any writer of any Creed.

But Mr Fergusson "has hitherto stated the argument only in the strongest possible manner against his own views, as if no pilgrim or writer of the middle ages suspected the real truth of the matter, that the Dome of the Rock was originally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So far however is this from being the case, that the converse is much nearer the truth." I confess that of all the startling assertions in the volume, not one occasioned me so much amazement and, I will add, concern as this. It seems scarcely possible to believe that the writer is in earnest. For on what is this assertion grounded? "It is true, indeed, that no writer states broadly the fact of there being two Sepulchres in

See Vol. 1. p. 353, n. 7.

Essay, p. 174.

Jerusalem, but almost all of them were aware that this building (the Dome of the Rock) was a Christian building;" and again, "the Mahometans do not lay claim to the building of it, so far as I can trace, till long afterwards, and then seem merely to have found it convenient to forget that the Christians had built it; whereas the Christians are quite positive in their traditions, as we shall presently see."

To dispose first of the Mohammedans. Can Mr Fergusson produce one historical notice, or a single tradition from among them, in confirmation of his theory? We happen to possess no work on the subject composed previous to the Crusades; but the histories of Jalal-addín (c. A.D. 1475) and of Mejr-ed-Dín (c. a.d. 1495) abound "in all manner of traditions and assertions from earlier authorities," extending nearly as far back as the era of the Hegira. Among all these various testimonies not the slightest intimation can be found that the Dome of the Rock was originally a Christian building. Its erection by the Khalif Abd-el-Melik Ibn-Merwan is attested with a consistency of agreement, perfectly marvellous amid the discrepancies of other conflicting traditions.

To pass then to the Christians, whose traditions are so positively appealed to by Mr Fergusson. Let it be premised, that from the time of the first Crusade, the Dome of the Rock came to be known among the Franks as the Temple of the Lord, the neighbouring Mosk El-Aksa as the Temple of Solomon,-a distinction of name, without a difference, which I shall attempt to explain in discoursing of the Temple Area.

The first witness adduced by Mr Fergusson in proof that the Christians of the 11th century were aware that this Saracenic Mosk was a Christian building, (which

he assumes could only be the Church of the Sepulchre,) is Sawulf, who describes it as the Temple of the Lord, erected over the Holy of Holies where the ark was placed, two engine-shots distant eastward from the Sepulchre of the Lord'. This needs no comment. Albert of Aix is scarcely a more hopeful ally to Mr Fergusson; for he holds with Sawulf, that the building in question occupied the site of the Holy of Holies, and adds the attestation of many, that this Temple was afterwards rebuilt by modern Christians, on the exact site of Solomon's temple. This writer and James de Vitry alone of all the historians, mention the tradition that the Christians had ought to do with its construction : the one point in which they all agree is this—that whoever rebuilt it, it certainly occupied the site of Solomon's Temple. Let that suffice for their testimony.

The best informed and most able historian of the Crusades is, without controversy, William of Tyre, a native and inhabitant of Jerusalem during its occupation by the Franks in the 12th century. To a scrupulous man his

1 Sæwulf in Recueil de Voyages, Tome iv. p. 840. Essay, p. 180. Mr Fergusson, with consistent laxity, translates " quantum arcus balista bis jactare potest,' """two bow-shots." (p.180.) He had misrepresented Sawulf before, in p. 103, where he says that this writer claimed the erection of the Temple of the Lord for Justinian. This is so far from true, that he expressly denies it: "Quidam autem dicunt civitatem fuisse a Justiniano imperatore restauratum, et templum Domini similiter sicut est adhuc: sed illud dicunt secundum opinionem, et non secundum veritatem:" here he repairs that error to commit a

greater injustice, as though Sawulf knew Constantine to be the builder, but did not say so, because "he had said just before, that he and his mother had built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre." p. 181.

2 Ap. Bongar, p. 281. Essay, p. 181. It must be mentioned, that the quotations from the Gesta Dei are grievously mistranslated in the text, and garbled in the notes of Mr Fergusson's book.

3 See e. g. Fulcherius Carnot. p. 397. Gesta Francorum, p. 573. Jacobus de Vitriaco, p. 1080. Phocas ap. Leo. Allat. p. 23.

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testimony would be rather troublesome; but Mr Fergusson disposes of him with as much ease as he had of earlier writers. Being better acquainted with Saracenic history1 than the other writers of his day, he was fully aware of the Saracenic origin of the Dome of the Rock. 'He asserts twice over that it was built by Omar Ibn-Khatab, and appeals to the inscription on the walls in testimony of this." These inscriptions-for there were many— represented in mosaic work within and without the Mosk, were supposed to be as old as the building, and descended to minute particulars, the author and the expense of the undertaking, the time when it was commenced and finished, being therein recorded. An awkward fact, one would think, for Mr Fergusson's theory, the force of which he evades by a new expedient. Though the worthy Archbishop, in the two passages in which he records the fact, is as grave and sedate as usual, Mr Fergusson discovers in his statements "an earnestness that looks very suspicious; and I cannot help thinking (he adds) that as Archbishop of Tyre, he was in the secret, and consequently anxious to conceal it; and this appeal to inscriptions, which Christians had not access to in his day, and could not read if they had,

He had composed a Saracenic history from the time of Mohammed, which he refers to in his extant work, Lab. 1. capp. i. and iii. It is now unhappily lost. It was entitled "Gesta Orientalium principum."

So Mr Fergusson, p. 182; but he does not cite the particulars of these inscriptions, (not "the inscription," as he writes). "Extant porro in eodem templi ædificio, intus et extra, ex opere musaico, Arabici idiomatis literarum VOL. II.

vetustissima monumenta, quæ illius temporis esse creduntur; quibus et auctor et impensarum quantitas, et quo tempore opus inceptum, quoque consummatum fuerit, evidenter declamatur." Will. Tyr. Lib. 1. cap. ii. p. 630. Compare Lib. VIII. cap. ii. p. 748.

6 This is another inexplicable mistake of Mr Fergusson. William of Tyre was actually born at Jerusalem, and lived there many years during its occu

8

appears to me about as clumsy an argument as could well be used to prove a bad case."

I think I may stop here. The intelligent reader would perhaps have been abundantly satisfied, had I done so long ago. Most persons who are open to reason would imagine that the bare fact, that Constantine built no Church over the Holy Sepulchre, was pretty conclusive against a Church of his standing over it at this day, whatever may be the force of the architectural argument. The very first step of Mr Fergusson's proposition is inadmissible. He assumes, without any warrant, "that Constantine did erect two separate churches, one a basilica, the other a round church, and that this last did contain the rock in which was the Sepulchre1." This cannot be granted: it is directly contrary to historical fact: to admit it, is to run counter to the express testimony of Eusebius, who was an eyewitness of what he describes, an active agent in the works which he has immortalized.

Again, the fact that the Propylæum of Constantine's Basilica opened upon the market-place, in the midst of the city, while the Golden Gate crowns the brow of the deep valley of Jehoshaphat, would prove to most men that Constantine's buildings, whatever they were, did not occupy the place assigned them by Mr Fergusson. This would have sufficed for his argument; and one or two instances, of the many which I have adduced, of

pation by the Franks. He was successively Archdeacon of Tyre (A.D. 1167), Chancellor of the Kingdom, (Lib. XXI. cap. v.) and consecrated Archbishop of Tyre in A. D. 1174. (ibid. cap. ix.) He commenced his history in A. D. 1182, (Lib. I. cap. iii.) and brought it down

to the end of A. D. 1183. He was poisoned at Rome, at the instance of the Patriarch Almaric, probably in the following year, 1184, three years before the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. Le Quien, O. C. Tom. 111. col. 1314, &c. 1 Essay, p. 103. See above, p. 96.