Aditi Bhaduri 

The Middle East has a knack for always being in the news. However, it is almost always for the wrong things. Yet, from that place have come some of the most inspiring and enriching stories and legends.

I came to hear of an uplifting and humbling message while walking through the old narrow lanes of the old city of Jerusalem, a city full of history and conflict and prayers and worship. Indeed, there is something in her stone walls and cobbled paths that would make one fall in love with the city immediately. It is holy to three different faiths, and its name is derived from the word "peace" (Salem). 

On my numerous visits to the city, not a single guidebook or person told me to visit the Mosque of Omar. It remained for me just a name on a board with the arrow pointing to its direction at a major gateway. In fact, I had never even noticed its entrance, though I would later find out I had passed it numerous times.

Omar's mosque didn't really seem to matter. The city seemed to be first and foremost about churches, enmeshed as it was with the life of Jesus. It is also the holiest site in Judaism because it was where the first Jewish Temple was built. All that remained of the Temple was the Western Wall, where Jews now go to pray. 

In Arabic, the Jewish Temple is no less revered, known as the "Bayt al Maqdis". In fact, Jerusalem's centrality to Judaism and Christianity rendered it holy in Islam too. The Al Aqsa Mosque, which was built there later, remains the third holiest site for Muslims worldwide.

Understanding Jerusalem's elevated position in Islam is key to understanding why Muslims later conquered it.

On one of my visits, a dear friend, the Late Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, then Spokesperson of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, decided to give me a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is possibly Christendom's holiest site. Built over Golgotha, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified and then buried. The Sepulchre is the focal point of the church. 

The tour lasted nearly two hours! There was just so much history. Finally, we walked out of the dark, dimly lit church into the courtyard, full of welcome sunlight. As we sat on the rugged steps, an Arab caretaker brought us sweet Arabic coffee laced with cardamom. As we sat sipping it, my gaze fell on the wall across from us and a smallish edifice that rose behind it.

The Archbishop, following my gaze, asked me if I had visited it. 

No, I replied. "It's the Mosque of Omar," he replied. It really meant nothing to me. In Jerusalem, the mosque truly worth visiting was the Al Aqsa, which I could not because I was not Muslim. 

"Do you know who Omar was?" The Archbishop persisted. "He was the second Caliph. He conquered Jerusalem."

Aha! Now I was piqued. "And he built that mosque". The Archbishop nodded, his eyes twinkling. "Do you know why he built it?" 

And so, sitting on the steps of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with the sun softly setting behind us, Archbishop Aris Shirvanian narrated to me the history of the Mosque of Omar:

It was the year 637 or 638. Jerusalem was Christian and Sophronius was the Patriarch. The Muslim Army of Omar ibn Al Khattab, the second Caliph in Islam, had attacked the Holy Land and then laid siege to Jerusalem. The commander of the army wanted to negotiate the terms with Sophronius. But he refused to negotiate with the general, insisting that he would negotiate with the Caliph.

Finally, Omar agreed to the demand and entered Jerusalem to meet the Patriarch.

After reviewing Omar, the Patriarch invited him to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray as Omar's prayer time had drawn near. To his amazement, Omar refused. Instead, he went outside the Church and prayed on the land beside it. After his prayers were over, he explained his action to the bewildered Sophronius. 

Had he prayed inside the Church, Omar explained, his followers would have turned the church into a mosque. Omar wanted to avoid that; he wanted the Church to remain a church, choosing instead to pray on vacant land.

This was wisdom and religious pluralism at its finest! The great conqueror refused to pray in a church, even when offered to him by the Patriarch, for fear it would then be turned into a mosque. A simple seventh-century message that remains relevant, perhaps more than ever in the 21st century!

This land where Omar prayed some 13 centuries ago is where the Mosque of Omar stands today, right beside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the only mosque in Jerusalem's Christian Quarters, and one of the earliest mosques in Islam. The current building was built later in the 11th century.

The very next day I visited the mosque. The entrance was unguarded, just behind rows of Arab vendors selling their wares. 

Stepping inside, I found the mosque open. Climbing the few steps to it, I entered it without any encumbrance. It was between prayer times, and the only person I saw was an African woman climbing down the stairs of the mosque. It was an arched hall, simple and tranquil, thickly carpeted with red carpets. The walls were stucco and bare; no sunlight filtered in, and the room was bathed in the soft glow of a few simple chandeliers. There were no ornate minbars or mehrab.

It was a place of worship and only a place of worship. There were no messages of conquest and victory that the mosque was made to convey. No triumphalism, no showpiece for conveying earthly splendour. It was a simple, dignified home built for the believer to pray to his or her God in peace and tranquillity. 

I savoured the deep peace that the place seemed to be imbued with, shut out from the cacophony just outside its gates.  I wandered inside, taking pictures. The archbishop also told me that Omar had drawn up a charter where residents of Jerusalem were promised that there would be no interference in their religious life and worship and their religious rights would be protected. It was, he said, hung inside, but I could not find any such document. But I visited only the mosque, not the rooms beyond it.

Later I was amazed to see that the mosque is off-bounds to tourists. What Providence then, what divine force had guided me in there, allowing me to visit it with as much time as I wanted, to soak in its peace and timelessness, remember its history, and even take pictures?

But why am I writing about it now? Because just some days ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with fanfare, celebrated the sixth anniversary of the conversion of the Church of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque. That too had happened under his watch.  The wise Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of Turkey, had decreed that the mosque should become a museum when old mosaics discovered had revealed that it had been a church earlier, before it was turned into a mosque. 

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I immediately remembered the Mosque of Omar, located not too far from the Hagia Sophia, and Omar's message, which reverberates in my mind still. Omar was a Rashidun - one of the rightly guided four Caliphs of Islam. And that is the only difference between him and modern-day self-appointed Caliphs!