It is well known that many ancient legends connected with the temple of Solomon have been adapted in later times to serve Christian notions. I mention, for instance, the legend of Golgotha and the head of Adam, the legend of the beam in the temple which became afterwards the cross, that of the queen of Sheba, and the Sybilla, and so very many other legends and apocryphal tales, some of which are also to be found in the Grand St. Graal, nay, form the greater part of its contents.
Now there was current at the time a peculiar legend connected with a certain stone that is still in existence; it is that stone which stands under a baldachin in the Haram, more precisely, in the Kubbet-es-Sachra, the Temple of the Rock. It is that famous building erected by sultan El-Melik towards the end of the seventh century, which so deeply impressed the Crusaders and the Templars, that they thought it was the real temple of Solomon. In order to watch this temple and keep it against the infidels, the knighthood of the Templars arose at the beginning of the eleventh century. They took the image of that dome as a crest. Many a church in Europe was built after this model; if I am not mistaken, the Temple Church in London, where the quarters of the Knights Templar were, as well as similar buildings in Laon, Metz, etc.
The centre of that building is the rock, famous alike in Jewish, Mohamedan, and Christian legends; it is surrounded by a trellis of iron, with four lattice doors wrought by French artizans of the twelfth century, and is covered with red samite and gold fringes.
It would be almost impossible to give here all the legends that are told of this rock. I select only a few bearing on our subject. I begin with the oldest, that taken from the Jewish literature.
The first impulse to legendary development is the passage of the Bible: (Isaiah, xxviii, 16) "Therefore, thus sdith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a founda-
