Before them, at no great distance, rose a flight of wide steps leading up on to a terraced plateau, and at a point farther off up sprang a sister flight exactly similar. On the top of either stairway, in the gate of the Haràm, stood three slender columns, light and graceful as flower stems, supporting arches. At one end of the plateau, seen through cypress trees, crouched a mosque of many aisles; and numberless small, domed buildings—shrines and cells and pulpits—capped the terrace walls. But what drew and absorbed their gaze to the forgetting of all else, the sun and center of all, was a mighty dome, in form and color somewhat resembling a ripe fig, springing from the roof of an octagon of two kinds of marble, wrought together into cunning patterns. Not a foot of the great building but had been treated minutely, curiously, by the hands of forgotten craftsmen. In the full light of morning, there in that sand-hued place, it bloomed a wondrous iris of the hills, a thing to wring a shout from the dying. Even Shibli forgot his dudgeon, and joined reverently with Zeyd ebn Abbâs in reciting the prayer of first approach, after Shems-ud-dìn. Then, having gazed all about them, they crossed the waste ground and mounted the steps. Discarding slippers, they passed along a time-worn pavement to the place of washing. With the exception of two middle-aged men in dark robes and white turbans, who sat disputing gravely beneath a tree and gave but one look to the pilgrims, they seemed alone in the vast inclosure. When, having purified their bodies, they ventured to approach the Noble Sanctuary, Shems-ud-dìn thought well to remind them of its claims to reverence. “Within, beneath this admirable dome,” he said, “we shall behold the rock whereon Neby Ibrahìm, the Friend of God, prepared to sacrifice his beloved son Ismaìl, at the bidding of the Most High. Hither also, in an after age, was our lord Muhammed, the Apostle of God, borne by night on the celestial beast, Burac; and from that same rock was he transported to the seventh heaven, being yet mortal. Surely there is no stone in all the world, save only that of Mekka, more worthy of our reverence than this rock, which God has hallowed from of old. And the Khalif, Omar El Khattab (peace to him), did well to raise this splendid dome above it.” Zeyd ebn Abbâs devoured those high words greedily. Shibli heard them with respect. At the entrance to the Dome of the Rock, Shems-ud-dìn ceased speaking, and they passed into the tinted gloom of the sanctuary. While Shibli and Zeyd ebn Abbâs paced the ring of pavement, studying the texts worked in mosaic upon the walls and above the arches, looking on the natural rock so gloriously enshrined, Shems-ud-dìn knelt and made prostration, praying: