The Dome of the Rock: A Response to AJ Deus - 2 - Depictions of the Dome
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2022
- In this video, we will go over A.J. Deus' argument regarding the shape of the Dome of the Rock's drum. He claims that medieval depictions prove that the Dome of the Rock used to have an octagonal shape.
However, when going through the evidence, it becomes clear that there is no reason to doubt that the Dome of the Rock was always round like it is today.
#islam #domeoftherock #jerusalem #al-malik #al-mamun #dome #rock #safa #ajdeus #fraud #christianity #judaism #arab
Music by Darren Curtis.
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Here you can find A.J. Deus' paper:
www.academia.edu/69970087/THE...
Thank you very much! This was excellent, as are all of your videos. You demonstrate how important the careful scrutiny of the evidence is to sound scholarship.
Once again Thomas, amazing research and I rather think that puts to bed AJ Deus's conclusions. The amount of time you must have spent research for this is admirable, and thank you for passing on your knowledge.
Thank you very much. Though so far, I've only been looking at the smaller points. The third video (tomorrow) will be the big one where I'll address AJ Deus' core arguments. After that, I'd be surprised if anyone still adheres to AJ's conjectures.
@@TAlexander
That’s going to an interesting video, I’m already highly dubious of AJ Deus’s work from what you’ve done already 👍
Hi Thomas,
When can we expect more? I think your contributions are the most convincing on line in this field.
Thanks, Thomas for the exceptional video lesson - so nice to hear some German - May the Lord richly bless you and yours.
Anybody else wants those books? They are amazing. A piece of history.
U have done a good job. It's plain Art work not architecture. Art work is more from imagination.
Since filming the video, I have made one more crucial find which I think puts the final nail in the coffin regarding an octagonal drum. I did find the original source for the supposedly scaffolded Dome of the Rock in Sebastian Münster's book. And lo and behold, not only is the drum round, the Dome also looks pretty much as it is today. More info here:
czcams.com/users/postUgkxw3lHetj5TUDIfEiEl_AgBX6SpxQAhrdi
Update 1
Also one correction: In the video, I claimed that Bernhard von Breydenbach's book about his pilgrimage to the Holy Land was printed in Nuremberg. That is not correct. It was first printed in Mainz. It was however widely available throughout Germany and indeed throughout Europe as it was printed in various languages. Not too long after the first edition, copies were also printed elsewhere. But either way, the claim in the video was wrong.
Update 2
I have since also looked more into the van Eyck painting. Turns out that I was a bit too dismissive of the evidence in the video. For one, it has sometimes indeed been attributed to Hubert van Eyck, sometimes to Jan van Eyck, sometimes it has been postulated to be a collaboration between the two. I still think it's most likely a work of Jan van Eyck and indeed that seems to be the modern day consensus, but it's certainly not clear cut. Also, I now think there's a higher likelihood that Jan van Eyck actually was an eye witness of the Dome of the Rock. The "special mission" he was sent on by Phillip the Good was indeed a pilgrimage. While we don't know to where, Jerusalem was one of the big three pilgrimage destinations of the time (the others being Rome and Santiago de Compostela) and Philip did play around with the idea of another crusade, being the most powerful regent within Europe at the time. It is conjectured that he sent Jan van Eyck to provide sketches which could help plan the crusade (though of course there never was a crusade). The main reason for this conjecture being some of the details in the picture which indicate that we are dealing with an eye witness, particularly the relation between the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
That makes Hubert the less likely artist though. Jan's pilgrimage took place in 1426, the year Hubert died. Afterwards, Jan spent the next few years in Lille, in modern day France, at the court of Philip the Good. Indeed the painting is likely a later product. It is believed that it was done on commission for the Adornes family, a rich family of Genoese origin who lived in Bruges for more than a century at the time. Jan van Eyck settled in Bruges at some point during the early 1430s, after the death of Philip the Good. And indeed, now comes the kicker: The Adornes family built their own private chapel in Bruges. In 1427, they ask the Pope for permission to do so. The chapel is dedicated to the city of Jerusalem. It is believed that the painting was made for said chapel - and indeed we have an itinerary which speaks of two unnamed van Eyck paintings. As it happens, the tower of the chapel looks almost exactly like the Dome of the Rock in van Eyck's painting. It's octagonal with an onion shaped cupola and even has some of the same details.
Fascinating stuff. I might do a separate video on the topic.
Do we have clinching historical evidence that the inscriptions on the dome of the rock were from Abd Al-Malik period?
@@roshlew6994 Well, we have the inscription itself which is very strong evidence, even more so with the changes by al-Ma'mun.
Outside of that there is indeed very little. But then why would there be anything? We have very few inscriptions that have contemporary attestation outside the inscription itself.
The building fits the 7th century perfectly as does the inscription, both in content as well as in its Kufic style.
You may not see it as "clinching" but it’s as good as it typically gets for these kinds of things.
@@TAlexander thomas i want to subtitle your video to my language
@@TAlexander There must be contemporary or early historical literature that must make reference to the inscriptions. At least, there must be something from the crusaders, who controlled Jerusalem for 2 centuries, 5 centuries after the building was allegedly built...
@@roshlew6994 Why must there be? I'm not aware of any contemporary literature referencing any other inscription.
As for the crusaders, the vast majority wouldn't be able to recognise Kufic script let alone read it. The surviving texts which we do have give us no indication that any of the writers knew Arabic.
I did however find a depiction within a psalter from Jerusalem which seems to point to there being an inscription:
czcams.com/users/postUgkx67GKvs9B7qoIjT5xMTLSW3F7dWEN3hMu
Thanks for the presentations and the finds ... as we try to uncover the erased and long buried truth of the origins of the Dome of the Rock instead of the legends and myths of the SIN.
Truth reveals ... but lies obscures.
Didn't expect to spend my evening squinting and looking for "angels of death", but I couldn't see them either 😂
Thanks!
I haven't been following the whole discussion in it's entirety regarding the dome of the rock, but since it's artwork and not an architectural blueprint drawings I would have never jumped to the conclusions of AJ Deus. About all I'd say we can get from the artwork is an octagonal base with some dome on the top... whether a true dome or an "onion" shape, I think a lot was left to the artists imagination...the point is that it was supposed to be ornate and look "islamic" and different from the surrounding buildings of Jerusalem, not about exactly how many windows or columns were on each face.
I've watched the first 30 minutes thus far and will see the rest of part 2 tomorrow. I took some notes. Some points are correct where Deus overstepped his speculation. I expected a much more convincing case from you but I saw a lot of tendentious reasoning as I also saw in video 1. I don't think you are aware of it, as it is not intentional, but I think you want Deus to be wrong too badly and that's where that temptation creeps in. (I went into Deus' paper not expecting to be persuaded by his line of argument but was, so I expected a similar level of persuasion that changed my mind but nothing thus far was compelling.) I will try and fit in a video response on parts 1 and 2 some time this week but I don't have a lot of spare time. Can you clarify if the German you translated specified the drum or the dome as round: you actually said either, but I expect it was one or the other.
As I said, Part 3 is the big one. Part 2 is mostly about showing that AJ's conclusions are not warranted.
I would suggest that maybe you want AJ to be correct? Because the way I see it, he always jumps to unwarranted conclusions. I can't disprove him here with the content of part 2 (though I can with part 3), but I try to show that he's jumping the gun. That may sound tendentious, but that's because I'm reacting to tendentious reasoning (AJ is phrasing his arguments way more self-assured than I do, despite the flimsy basis on which it is built). I then have to show that the interpretation is speculative. But it will get better, towards the end of Part 2 I'm showing that the octagonal drums are mostly derivative from one another and typically not produced by eye witnesses and I'll show depictions of round drums made by eye witnesses.
Part 3 is then where I'll look at the textual evidence and that's where it all falls apart. So I suggest that you first watch all three parts before responding.
As for your question regarding the translation, the word used in the text is "werck", in modern German it would be "Werk". Leaving out modern meanings (like factory, plant, mill, etc.), there are typically two ways of translating it: with either something along the lines of "works" or "creation". In this case, we're clearly talking about the latter meaning. The specific usage is very old fashioned, but it still makes sense. It does not refer to the whole thing, It is specifically used to differentiate between the structure as a whole and the substructure, the "werck".
Breydenbach writes:
"...da man ußen Salomons tempel sehet mitt rondem werck..."
Translation:
"...from where one sees the outside of Solomon's Temple with a round 'werck'..."
so a reasonable translation of "werck" would be "erection" or "rigging" or "substructure". But it can't refer to the whole thing as "werck" is a noun. The "werck" is round and you can see it as part of the Temple.
The word "drum" is of course a very modern word. People back then wouldn't have used it. It's a very precise word unlike "werck" which is more generic. But in this case the substructure can only refer to what we would call the drum (plus the cupola). That's why I corrected myself. I may have stumbled a couple of times. Because what some pilgrims did was to use the word "dome" to refer to the drum plus the cupola. Some of them say something along the lines of "The Dome rises above an octagonal building" (I don't have the exact quote handy, but it was very similar). Not every pilgrim is that explicit, but after reading many of their records, I got the impression that they typically use the term "dome" to refer to the central (round) part of the "Temple of Solomon" only, not the whole thing. But I can't prove that this is the case outside the ones who made it explicit, which is why I didn't try to argue that point. However, that's why I may have slipped a couple of times and said "dome" when I was referring to "drum + cupola".
Actually, I probably shouldn't say that I can "disprove" AJ. I can't disprove his claim. What I can prove is that his core evidence is bogus, so that his argument crumbles. He could still be right, but he can't get there the way he tried in his paper. In Part 2 I'm showing that some of his conclusions are unwarranted, in Part 3 I show that most of his core premises are simply wrong.
@@TAlexander OK, I look forward to getting to that but I hope you shift to a more objective methodology in part 3, as the lack of it in what I've seen thus far does not fill me with confidence. Fingers crossed.
@@IslamicOrigins I feel like my methodology is rather objective. Though in Part 3 it is so clear cut that methodology doesn't even play into it. Maybe you're referring to me being a bit snarky in those videos. That's certainly true. If that's the problem, then I'm afraid it won't get any better. I guess I should have done some breathing exercises beforehand or something. But I'm only human and I was really angry at that point. I felt like A.J. was trying to dupe me. He is writing with so much bravado, like one sentence which got stuck in my mind: "this comes only as a surprise to those who didn't pay attention." and many more like it when it's painfully obvious that he either doesn't know what he's talking about or he's deliberately lying. So I reacted with some snark, which may have been a bit too much. I guess I took his bravado a bit personal which I shouldn't have.
@@TAlexander Yes, don't take his jibes personally. I have had a lot of emails back and forth with him. He is very eccentric in his way and typically opinionated, which goes with it. He could easily be taken as offensive with some of his views but I try to leave that aside and see if there is something in there. I think he is being sincere though, even though he often paints a picture of what he really thinks is going on, beyond the evidence, that's the point where I throw out his points. It is a sifting operation. There is no doubt he wants to be a provateur. I have asked him if I can share some of what he has written to me as it reveals a lot of his thinking. He has agreed and I will do so once I check what is ok for me to share.
After watching this. I'm still convincing, the inscription and design of the Dome of the Rock are recent.
This was only about the drum, in the next video, I’ll be taking apart AJ’s textual evidence…I think the technical term is “nuking it from orbit”…
Most of these drawing sdepict a hexagonal base - another oddity that supports your theory of artistic license. I'm also starting to look at the architecture of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It too has Corinthian capitals which are very much "Western" (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, etc...). I wouldn't be surprised if the Al Aqsa Mosque was originally an Arab Christian church and later used for Islamic worship.
Is that hexagonal or octagonal? Hard to tell.
The Dome of the Rock is octagonal and was built presumably by Byzantine architects, as the octagon was the favored shape for churches (one can make a Greek Cross in their midst). An example from this time is the Cathedral of Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne, built at the end of the 8th Century. The use of such a Christian architectural form in itself is an intriguing aspect of the Dome of the Rock.
But I agree that many of the depictions of the Dome of the Rock showed by Thomas seem hexagonal. This just underscores that the drawings and paintings are not especially precise or trustworthy representations of the building and AJ is wrong to draw any strong conclusions from them.
AJ Deus getting Jan Van Eyck wrong makes me suspect he lacks diligence, Jan Van Eyck is the Flemish painter most people have actually heard of, the Arnolfini marriage etc.
Yes, Diligence is the key word here IMHO. This is such a grandiose claim on AJ’s part that more diligence would be the least one could have expected. Then he wouldn’t have made the countless mistakes and probably would never have published the paper in the first place.
Maybe so
Does that 1350 relief have a window in the dome? Looked similar to one if the previous with a windiw there
At the end of the day, we have to interpret these images as the original artists are all long dead. But it certainly looks like there was an access hatch there in the cupola itself.
If the Temple was influenced by earlier pagan shrines, there's a section in the Esoteric Tarot by Roland Decker, p53 that might be relevant. 'Harran reputedly possessed temples not only for the moon god but for all planetary spirits worshiped by the ancients. Each temple had its peculiar floor plan for a chamber with a specific colour and with a metal statue elevated on a dais having a specific number of steps.
Planet. Floor Plan. Interior Colour Metal Sculpture. Steps.
Saturn hexagon black. lead. nine
Jupiter. triangle. green. tin. eight
Mars. rectangle. red. iron. seven
Sun. square. gold. gold. six
Venus. isosceles triangle blue. copper. five
Mercury square in hexagon brown. mercury-filled. four
Moon. pentagon. white. silver. three'
Would this be of any help in understanding the shape and colour of the Dome on the Rock?
Thomas, what does the text written over the sloping roof in your enlarged image say? Around 14:28 it seems to be TEMPLV SALOMUIS but it's not clear enough to make out properly.
I did take a closer look here: czcams.com/users/postUgkxq8mYFtcqSv01CNI-sFI2v8HgrnI2M8k_
@@TAlexander OK, thanks.
The authorship and daiting of the painting depicting the three marys at the tomb is particulary difficult to establish. it is certainly not by Jan van Eyck. Its not in the catalogue raisonné of his work. It maybe indeed by the hands of his elder brother Hubert van Eyck. Or maybe as Panofsky suggests, still relevant when it comes to Early netherlandish Paintings , thinks its a teamwork by Jan and Hubert .comparing stylistically to the Ghent-Altarpiece. Its also possible that its a only a workshop painting around 1450, which is my opinion also and today the most accepted expertise by specalists
Re your question about the book, printing wasn't invented in the West until 1439 by Gutenberg. Prior to that, all books were hand made and had expensive leather covers.
Even after the printing press, books still had leather covers. More modern covers, like your example, didn't appear on the scene until much later.
Yeah, that was my thinking. I mean I know that marbled paper existed during the late middle ages, but I'm not aware of a single instance where it was used to wrap a book cover in. To me that looks distinctly like the late 19th or early 20th century.
@@TAlexander Yep.
@@TAlexander By a strange coincidence, YT decided today that it wanted to show me medieval bookmaking videos in the recommendation list. Why? Dunno, I didn't search on any.
Anyway, I decided to watch one. I stopped part way though but decided to check the channel and found this czcams.com/video/hznvLWIB5-c/video.html
I suspect that there maybe videos on marbled paper. I'll try and search and see if I can find any history on it and let you know.
@@TAlexander OK, the technique is a lot older than I thought it was. Goes back over a millennia to Asia. Details here -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_marbling
The Turks were doing it in the 16th century.
@@TAlexander Here's an example video of how Florentine marbled paper is made czcams.com/video/sVPd-cLc6lA/video.html
Nice work T.A, correct me if I'm wrong did they not use pictures to explain things many moons ago? If this was the case then we should be able to find evidence of Islam inscribed in rocks or on walls. Still believe Islam had nothing to do with the Dome until after the Templar's were driven off the site in the 13th century u can not have both on one site they be fighting each other all day and night. As for the crescent moon the new Templar's who survived and built a temple in Portugal had the crescent moon above the door way to the left and the cross to the right its still there to this day.
The Dome of the Rock contains many inscriptions and dedications from various periods of time, some visibly placed, some not visible to the general pilgrim on wooden beams, etc.
It's highly unlikely that all those various inscriptions are all forgeries. It is therefore almost a certainty that the Dome was indeed built during the final stages of the 7th century by the Arabs as their religion was starting to evolve away from Christianity and into Islam.
@@TAlexander , thanks, so the person who rebuilt the dome every-time it was destroyed put their twist on it until Islam took over and revolved it into what we know now as the SIN which revolved over 400 or more years, so wounder when the Islam true identity start.
I wouldn't call it "rebuilding" the Dome, rather "repairing" or "renovating". The Dome was never completely destroyed. But yes, we have various layers, starting with the Umayyads, then a little bit from the Abbasids, from the Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks and of course the Ottomans. Even some elements from the Crusaders have survived.
@RC AJ’s source for the claim of multiple destructions is bogus. He totally misread it (see next video, it’s embarrassing really). And yes, there was damage, but no full on destruction. If it were completely destroyed, we wouldn’t see the remnants of all those periods. I’ll go into why the Dome was more resilient to earthquakes than the al-Aqsa mosque in the next video as well. Simple statics.
The inscriptions of the various periods will be presented when I’m making my positive case. So that’ll be a bit longer as I’m still working that one out.
@RC Well, we literally have the inscriptions. They have been recorded and analysed. That's not speculation, that's fact. Some of them are dated, but all of them can be dated via their content and/or stylistic elements.
If you want to claim that they're all forgeries, then you have an uphill battle in front of you. Not only would it be an exceedingly unlikely conspiracy, there also is no motive. And of course it would be quite the undertaking to forge all of those different types of inscriptions, to replace part of some of them, etc. It just doesn't make sense.