The Maharam Chagiz (Rabbi Moshe Chagiz, 1671-1750) in his work Eileh Masei, page 18, tells a story that he heard from the “experts on Ottoman history.” In the year 637 CE, when Caliph Omar Al-Khitab[1] conquered Jerusalem, he built his palace there. He noticed that a large heap of rubbish lay near his palace. Every day, Romans (i.e. Byzantine Christians, from whom he had conquered the city) would come and add to the heap. He questioned them, and they said that the Jewish Temple had once stood in this spot and since the Romans had not been able to destroy it totally, they decreed that garbage be thrown there in order to obliterate all memory of the Temple.
The Caliph brought in ten thousand workers to clear away the garbage, and as an incentive, he scattered money on the dump every day. After thirty days of work, they uncovered the Western Wall and the foundations that are visible today.
The Caliph then called to the Jews and said, “Behold, G-d has brought about the restoration of your Temple. Its foundations are visible – go and build it, and I will pay all your expenses.” The Jews were brokenhearted and they all began to cry. The Caliph asked, “Why are you crying? You should be happy, for G-d has sent me to rebuild your Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans. And if you are worried about the cost, I have already said that I will pay all your expenses.”
One old Jew answered as he cried, “Long live the Caliph! We, your servants, must bless G-d Who has given you counsel, and we must thank you for your kindheartedness in offering to pay for the restoration of our Temple. But according to our faith, we are not permitted to build the Temple; we believe that the future Temple will be built by G-d in Heaven, when He so desires.”
The Caliph responded, “If that is the case, let me build it myself, since King Solomon prayed that even a non-Jew’s prayers should be answered here.” He asked the Jews for some details about the measurements of the Temple, and on the site of the Kodesh Hakodoshim he built a dome,[2] in which people say there is a rock hanging in the air, which is what we call the Foundation Stone.
The source for the idea that the Third Beis Hamikdash will come down from heaven is the Gemara, Bava Kama 60b: “He that lighted the fire shall surely pay. Said the Holy One, blessed is He: I burned a fire in Zion and I will build it in fire, as it says (Zechariah 2:9), ‘And I will be for it a wall of fire all around, and for honor I will be within it.” A similar statement appears in the prayer “Nachem”, recited on Tisha B’av afternoon: “For You, Hashem, lit it on fire, and You will one day build it in fire.” Similarly, Rashi and Tosafos on Succah 41a quote a Midrash saying that the future Beis Hamikdash is already built in Heaven.
However, the Rambam in Hilchos Melachim 11:1 writes that moshiach will build it: “The king moshiach will arise and restore the dynasty of David to its former state, build the Beis Hamikdash and gather in the exiles of Israel.” If Chazal – in the Gemara and the Siddur – say that G-d Himself will build the future Beis Hamikdash, how then can the Rambam say that moshiach will build it?
The Aruch Laner (Succah 41a) poses this contradiction differently: according to the Midrash quoted by Rashi and Tosafos, the Beis Hamikdash is already built, but the prayer “may the Beis Hamikdash be built,” first found at the end of Tractate Tamid, implies that it is not yet built. His solution is that first the Beis Hamikdash will be built by moshiach, and afterwards a Heavenly Beis Hamikdash will descend into the humanly built shell, just as a spiritual soul enters a physical body. In a similar way, we find that in the Mishkan and the First Beis Hamikdash a fire came down from Heaven and joined the fire lit on the mizbeyach by the kohanim. This solution could be used to explain the contradiction between the Rambam and the Gemara in Bava Kama as well.
It’s also possible that the Rambam’s opinion is based on a different source in Chazal, Vayikra Rabbah 9:6, which disagrees with the Gemara in Bava Kama and holds that moshiach will build the Beis Hamikdash.
There is a third source in Chazal (Talmud Yerushalmi Maaser Sheini 5:2) that says, “This means that the Beis Hamikdash will be rebuilt before the kingship of the house of David.”
This may mean that it will come down from heaven, in line with Bava Kama 60b. But even if it means the Jews may build the Temple themselves, the Satmar Rebbe argues (Vayoel Moshe Siman 60) that this Yerushalmi, as well as the story of the Beis Hamikdash almost being built in Rabbi Yehoshua’s time (Bereishis Rabbah 64:10), were only meant to apply during the early Talmudic times, when a tradition still existed as to how to build the Third Temple based on the description given by Yechezkel. Later, that tradition was lost, and that is why the Rambam writes (Beis Habechirah 1:4) that the description in Yechezkel is not clear. Similarly, the Tosafos Yom Tov himself writes in the fifth chapter of Yuma that Chazal do not explain Yechezkel’s Temple, and we cannot resolve all the doubts about how to build the Beis Hamikdash until moshiach comes with Eliyahu Hanavi. This is why the Rambam in Melachim 11:1 writes unequivocally that building the Beis Hamikdash is one of moshiach’s jobs.
And that explains why the Jews in the time of Caliph Omar turned down the opportunity to build the Temple.
[1] The Maharam Chagiz actually identifies the ruler in this story as Selim, the Ottoman sultan who conquered most of the Middle East and reigned from 1512-1520. But from the rest of this story, it is clear that this ruler cannot have been Selim, since in his time the Dome of the Rock had already existed for over 800 years. Rather, the description better fits Caliph Omar. Those who told the tale to the Maharam Chagiz in the late 1600s evidently confused him with Selim because Selim was the first Ottoman ruler to conquer Jerusalem.
[2] Although the Dome was not actually built by the Caliph Omar, it was he who first conquered the city for Islam, and the Dome is often called by his name. The Dome was built fifty years later by Abd al-Malik. Older histories do indeed relate that it was Omar who cleared the rock and the rest of the Temple Mount area from the rubble left from the Roman idolatrous temple that had stood there.
I Will Await Him 
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