This robbery of a Christian building has given a somewhat Byzantine character to the Dome of the Rock, and the extensive use of glass mosaic work also recalls Byzantine art. The mosaics of the Dome of the Rock differ, however, in this respect, that they are entirely confined to arabesques, and never represent human (or animal) figures, such as appear in the Greek mosaics at Bethlehem and elsewhere: this shows that they were intended for a Moslem, and not for a Christian building. The Arabs had no native style of architecture. Muḥammad and Omar built rude wooden structures, and it is recorded of El Welîd--son of ’Abd el Melek--that he employed skilled workmen from Persia and Byzantium to build his great mosque at Damascus. Thus arose the Saracenic style, created by Greek and Persian architects, and using round arches even as late as the ninth century A. D., instead of those horseshoes which became distinctive later of Moslem art. The models for the Dome of the Rock are to be found in the Sassanian architecture of Persia, in the round churches built by Justinian and Modestus at Jerusalem, or the octagonal church of Zeno on Gerizim, and in the Byzantine decoration of St. Sophia at Constantinople; but the heavy wooden beams which tie together the pillars of the arcade, above the capitals, are not a Byzantine feature, but are found in early mosques at Cairo and in Spain. They are survivals of the wooden architecture of Omar’s age, and they are never found in Roman or Greek buildings. [Sidenote: THE AḲṢA MOSQUE] There is no early statement to the effect that ’Abd el Melek did any building in the mosque proper, or “covered part” (_mughaṭṭah_), of the Aḳṣa. An Arabic history of the fourteenth century gives what purports to be the report sent to ’Abd el Melek, at Damascus, as to the work done at Jerusalem: “God has vouchsafed completion to what the emîr of the faithful commanded, concerning the building of the Dome over the Ṣakhrah of the Holy City, and the Aḳṣa Mosque also, and not a word can be said to suggest improvement thereto”[465]; but the term _masjid_, or “mosque,” may refer--as elsewhere--to the Ḥaram enclosure generally, and the only definite statement (by the same authority), that “in the days of ’Abd el Melek all the gates of the mosque were covered with plates of gold and silver,” may (if true) have the same extended meaning. It seems probable that until the accession of the ’Abbas family, as khalifs at Baghdâd, the mosque proper at Jerusalem continued to be the ancient Church of the Virgin where Omar had prayed.