Holy Sepulchre rebuilt
foundation · 1048 · Jerusalem
By 1048 Constantine IX Monomachos had completed what his predecessors negotiated: the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre that al-Hakim had razed in 1009. Yahya of Antioch's generation saw the rotunda rise again over the tomb — the church the pilgrims of the eleventh century, and the crusaders after them, would know.
The church over the empty tomb restored — the building the crusading age would find.
Glosses
- Thirty thousand is memory Yahya of Antioch, writing a generation after, gives the churches destroyed under al-Hakim as thirty thousand. The figure is not arithmetic and was never meant as arithmetic; it is the scale of the thing rendered in the…