How the Medicinal Herbs Grew in the Temple of Solomon — the Farther Mosque which Solomon visited daily for devotion and to guide the devotees
During his prophecy, David received a Divine order which ordained that his son, Solomon should build a temple. Set out to fulfill this order, Solomon began constructing the temple which would be renowned as the Temple of Solomon. Also later known as the Farther Mosque, it would preserve its unprecedented standing in history.
Rumi recounts the blissful story of Solomon’s Temple in his Mathnawi, and says that plentiful stones needed in the construction were fetched from the mountain nearby. He enunciates that each stone spoke up “Take me along!” pleading to be collected and used in the construction of ther Temple :
Those doors and walls had become alive and vibrant. Like the door and the wall of the body, it is endowed with intelligence and it is alive for it belongs to the King of kings. This edifice resembles its foundation – which is knowledge and action. The excellence of that Temple which the prophets build is not from earth and stone, but because there is no greed or enmity in its builder. (IV, 470-480, 1138)
After its completion, Solomon visited the Temple to show the believers the right way, sometimes by eloquent speech, psalms and harmonious melodies, sometimes by an act of bowing or prayer in humility. “It is the act which draws people together more powerfully, for it reaches the soul of every one, he who has hearing and he who is deaf,” says Rumi.
And he continues:
Every morning when Solomon came for supplication
in the Farther Mosque,
He saw that a new plant had grown there; then he would say,
“Tell me thy name and use.
What medicine are you? What are you? What is your name?
To whom are you hurtful and for whom is your use?”
Then every plant would tell his name and effect, saying,
“I am life to that one and death to this one.
I am poison to this one, and honey to that one: this is my name
inscribed on the Tablet by the pen of the Divine Essence.”
Hearing from Solomon about the uses of plants, physicians
were learned and so became wise authorities on medicine.
It is how they started to compile medical books and learned ways
of relieving and appeasing the body from pain and affliction .
The profound knowledge of astronomy and medicine is bestowed
by divine inspiration and revealed to the prophets :
Where one is to search the way for intellect and senses,
how to advance without space or direction?
The particular (individual) intellect is not the capable one
of producing remedies, it is only the receiver of science, in need of education.
True, the intellect is capable of being taught and apprehending, but only the one
enraptured by Divine inspiration can give the teaching that is required.
If knowledge of a trade could be derived from a particular intellect,
any trade would be acquired without a master.
(Volume: IV, 480-485, 1290-1300)
The Mathnawi of Jalâlud’dîn Rumi translated by Reynold A. Nicholson, Sange Meel Publications, 2nd Ed. 2007.
