Omar therefore entered the Ḥaram, and--according to tradition--entered by the “Prophet’s Gate” towards the south part of the west wall. He prayed in Justinian’s basilica of the Virgin, and the place now shown as his “station” (_Maḳâm ’Amr_) did not then exist, being the vestry of the later Templar Church adorned with twisted Gothic pillars.[452] He is said to have visited the Ṣakhrah, which he purified. Eutychius says that in Constantine’s time “the Rock and the parts adjacent thereto were ruinous, and were thus left alone. They cast dirt on the stone, so that a great dunghill was piled upon it, wherefore the Romans (or Byzantines) neglected it, and did not pay it the honour which the Israelites were wont to do, neither did they build a church over it, for that our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel, ‘Behold your House shall be left unto you desolate.’” Omar caused it to be purified, and “then some one said, ‘Let us build a temple with the stone for Ḳiblah’ (or direction for ‘fronting’ in prayer); but Omar answered, ‘Not so, but let us build the shrine so as to place the stone behind it.’ So Omar built a shrine and set the stone in its back part.” With this account the later Moslem historians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries A. D. agree.[453] [Sidenote: OMAR’S MOSQUE] As regards this Mosque of Omar, which no longer exists, a very common error is due to the mistakes of later Christian historians,[454] and the Dome of the Rock--which did not exist till half a century after Omar’s entry--is called the “Mosque of Omar” in popular literature. Theophanes says that “Omar began to restore the Temple at Jerusalem, for indeed the building no longer then stood firmly founded, but had fallen into ruin.” William of Tyre, in the twelfth century, thought that the old Ḳufic texts in the Dome of the Rock attributed the building to Omar. The Franks could not read them, or they would have found out their mistake. This great historian of their victories speaks of “mosaic work with most ancient monuments in letters of the Arabic idiom, which are believed to be of his [Omar’s] time.” But the first khalifs were warriors and not builders. Muḥammad’s mosque at Medînah was made of mud and palm-tree posts, and the real Mosque of Omar, which was still standing about 680 A. D., before it was replaced by the Dome of the Rock, was near the east wall of the Ḥaram. It is described by Arculphus in such a manner as to agree with the later statement of Eutychius, leaving no reasonable doubt on the question. As recorded by Adamnan, his guest (Arculphus) said: “Also in that famous place where, before, the temple had been magnificently built, the Saracens frequent a square house of prayer placed near the east wall, building it themselves--a poor work with upright beams and great planks--on certain remains of ruins; which house is said to hold as many as three thousand men together.”[455] This rude wooden mosque stood, therefore, east of