El Muḳaddasi, in describing the Dome of the Rock three centuries later, says that he had “never heard tell of anything built in the times of ignorance that could rival the grace of this dome,” and it remains one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. The original chapel consisted of a great drum with a gilded dome supported on pillars and piers, with round arches above them. Round this circle, which covered the Ṣakhrah, is the octagonal arcade with similar round arches on similar pillars and piers. These arches are covered with glass mosaics, and the Ḳufic texts run above them, with gold letters on a blue ground, belonging to the original building. The mosaics of the drum, with their rich arabesque designs, are probably later, and the enamelled tiles of the interior bear the date answering to 1027 A. D. The dome itself fell down in 1016 A. D., and a fine text in the Ḳarmathian characters of this age records its restoration in 1022 A. D.[461] Another text in more modern Arabic mentions “renewal of the gilding” by Ṣalâḥ-ed-Dîn Yûsef (Saladin) in 1190 A. D.[462] The building thus bears witness to its own history, by dated inscriptions in various characters belonging to various ages; for the Ḳufic (used in the seventh century A. D.) is an older script than the Ḳarmathian, and this again is older than the Neskhi Arabic of Saladin’s time. According to tradition, the small Dome of the Chain, immediately east of the Dome of the Rock, was the model first erected by ’Abd el Melek for the larger building.[463] This statement is, however, very late. The Dome of the Chain is in the proportion of 2 to 5 as compared with the Dome of the Rock in its original state, before the outer octagonal wall was built in 831 A. D.; but it is a decagon and not an octagon, and no great importance is to be ascribed to the tradition, though there is a considerable resemblance in general style between the two buildings. The pillars of the Dome of the Rock[464] are none of them _in situ_, but have all been taken from some former building. I made careful drawings of them in 1872, and found that of the twelve under the drum no two had similar capitals. The capitals do not belong, in some cases, to the shafts, nor do the bases, which are also of different forms, and their height made up by thick layers of lead. These pillars, moreover, once belonged to a Christian building, and the cross is still visible on one of the capitals. The columns were taken either from the ruined basilica of Constantine in the city, or more probably from the cloisters with which Justinian adorned the vicinity of his Church of the Virgin, according to Procopius; for the style is much that of the pillars in the part of the Aḳṣa which appears to have been originally Justinian’s basilica.