The Mosque of Omar was supposed by the Crusaders to be Solomon’s Temple. This is not so, of course, as the original building was destroyed long before their time. It is now believed to have been built by a Moslem governor in the seventh century. But before that, and soon after Jerusalem was destroyed in the first century after Christ, the Roman Emperor Hadrian is known to have built on this site a temple to Jupiter. It is believed that some of the pillars in the present mosque came from a church erected on Mount Zion by the Christian Emperor Justinian. The mosque is one of the finest specimens of Byzantine architecture. Imagine a mighty dome of greenish copper on the top of which is a golden crescent. Let this be as large as or larger than that of the Capitol at Washington, and let it rest upon a vast octagonal temple walled with tiles so fine that any one of them would be prized as a piece of rare china. Let there be a dado of marble below the tiles and a wide frieze above them inlaid with texts from the Koran in Arabic characters, and let the whole be entered by mighty doors over which are beautifully carved arches, and you have a faint idea of the Dome of the Rock, another name by which this mosque is known. Here may be seen striking evidences of the belief of the Mohammedans as to Christ and the prophets. They believe in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and class Jesus as one of the prophets, although not so high as Mohammed. Among the verses of the Koran on the front of the mosque is one reading: The Messiah, Jesus, is only the son of Mary, the Ambassador of God, and His word which He deposited in Mary. Believe, then, in God and His Ambassador, and do not maintain that in one there are three. Another reads: Blessings be on me in the day of my birth and my death. He is Jesus, the Son of Mary, the word of truth, concerning whom some are in doubt. There are other passages of the Koran which tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Mohammedans reverence this spot in connection with them. Let us take off our shoes and go in. The floor of the mosque is holy ground, so none is permitted to enter except in his stockings or bare feet. The inside is even more beautiful than the outside. The walls and roofs are a mass of carvings and mosaics. The mosaic is made up of bits of gold and glass, the latter of many colours, all so delicately put together that they form beautiful pictures. Each bit is only as big as the head of a nail, or smaller, and thousands of them are required to make a single picture. The columns upholding the roof are of marble, and the floor is of marble carpeted with old rugs from Turkey and Persia.