Such is a plain statement of the gradual growth of the building. The dates of the various inscriptions on the walls fully agree with the circumstantial accounts of the Arab writers who describe the Dome of the Rock. The materials employed were all apparently designed for their present uses and positions, with exception of the columns supporting the dome and the outer arcade. These have a Byzantine character, and they appear to have been torn from some other building or buildings, probably from Christian churches, just as in the case of the Mosque of ’Amrû at Cairo, or like the pillars which Jezzar Pacha at Acre collected for his mosque. Of every capital in the place I made a careful sketch; of those under the dome, as shown in the illustration, only three are alike. The cross is said to occur on one boss, as at Bethlehem. I have searched for this in vain, though I have a sketch of every boss, but there would be no impossibility in its presence if the pillar came from a church. The bases differ as much as the capitals, as we saw when the marble slabs were removed in 1875. The shafts are also of various heights and diameters, and one at least is upside down, with the capital of another pillar placed on its base end. Leaving this beautiful and interesting building we crossed the platform southward, having on our right the old sun-dial, which the Crusaders held to mark the site of the Temple altar; and passing the beautiful summer pulpit we descended to the southern court. The most picturesque view is from this point. The Dome of the Rock is seen behind the venerable cypresses of the lower court--a great cupola on which sit innumerable doves, while, beneath it, the walls are resplendent with the harmonious colouring of the tiles--white, blue, green, black, and yellow, in elegant tracery which cannot now be imitated. In front are the flat steps leading up to the pillars and arches called “balances” by the Moslems, and below them are the little chambers of the Sheikhs who live in the enclosure. The black fanatics who guard the holy place lounged among the trees, and a funeral procession was slowly marching, with subdued murmurs, round the Chapel of the Rock, while, by a curious coincidence, a gorgeous wedding-party in bright-coloured silks, was also approaching the same place. The great enclosure outside the platform is not paved; it is covered with grass and planted with olives and cypresses. Only the platform is fairly level, and its flagging in parts is covered with Crusading masons’-marks. There is, as above noticed, only one mosque in the enclosure--the great building on the south wall. The whole area is called Haram esh Sherîf, “High Sanctuary,” and Masjid el Haram, “Praying-place of Sanctuary;” also sometimes Masjid el Aksa, “the far-off praying-place,” in allusion to its distance from Mecca and to the Prophet’s long night journey. The mosque itself is called Jami’a el Aksa, or the “far-off meeting-house.” To it we next repaired.