Image Details

ON THE COVER: In this remarkable fish-eye photograph inside the Golden Dome of the Rock, we see both the beautifully decorated interior of the dome and the exposed foundation stone beneath the floor.

The foundation stone is believed by most Jews to be the site of Solomon’s Temple and by Jews and Moslems to be the location of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac. Around this rock, which is the natural exposed bedrock of traditional Mt. Moriah, the magnificent Dome of the Rock was built by Caliph Abd el-Melik in 691 A.D. In a cave beneath this stone, Captain Montague Parker and his men were discovered digging on the night of April 17, 1911. They barely escaped Palestine with their lives, and in their wake rioting disrupted Jerusalem for days afterwards. (See “In Search of Solomon’s Lost Treasures.”)