Early medieval pilgrims could walk through Muslim Jerusalem unseeing
Evidence
Bishop Arculf went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem around the year 700. Since he was possessed by the desire to walk and worship in the place where Christ had once walked, the Muslims (who had been in occupation of Jerusalem since 637) were all but invisible to him. He merely noted that in the Temple area, ‘the Saracens have now erected a square house of prayer, in a rough manner, by raising planks and beams upon some remains of old ruins, and it is said that it will hold about three thousand men’, before he went on to write about the Christian holy places. Similarly, the Venerable Bede in his History mentioned the attacks of Saracen pirates on the British Isles, without troubling to enquire as to their religion. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 51
Categorization
- CANDY: The image of a pilgrim indifferent to the Dome of the Rock being built is a striking, low-context fact.
- XREF: connects to: A medieval pilgrim fabricated or garbled a description of the Muslim call to prayer