The Islamization of Jerusalem began in the first year A.H. (620 CE), when Islam instructed Muslims to face the city while performing their daily prostrations and, according to Muslim religious tradition, Muhammad's night journey and ascension to heaven took place. After 16 months, the direction of prayer was changed to Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.[1]
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In 638 the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem.[2] With the Arab conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city.[3]
The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Monophysite Christian Patriarch Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule.[4] When led to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest site for Christians, the caliph Umar refused to pray in the church so that Muslims would not request converting the church to a mosque. He prayed outside the church, where the Mosque of Umar (Omar) stands to this day, opposite the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679 to 688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodate 3,000 worshipers.[5]
When the Muslims went to Bayt Al-Maqdes for the first time, They searched for the site of the "Far Away Holy Mosque" (Al-Masjed Al-Aqsa) that was mentioned in Quran and Hadith according to Islamic beliefs. According to Islamic legend, they found the site full of rubbish, they cleaned it and started using it for prayers thereafter.
The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century.[6] The 10th century historian al-Muqaddasi writes that Abd al-Malik built the shrine in order to "compete in grandeur" with Jerusalem's monumental churches.[5] Over the next four hundred years Jerusalem's prominence diminished as Arab powers in the region jockeyed for control.[7]
In 1099, The Fatimid ruler expelled the native Christian population before Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, who massacred most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants when they took the solidly defended city by assault, after a period of siege; later the Crusaders created the Kingdom of Jerusalem. By early June 1099 Jerusalem’s population had declined from 70,000 to less than 30,000.[8]
In 1187, the city was wrested from the Crusaders by Saladin who permitted Jews and Muslims to return and settle in the city.[9] Under the Ayyubid dynasty of Saladin, a period of huge investment began in the construction of houses, markets, public baths, and pilgrim hostels as well as the establishment of religious endowments. However, for most of the 13th century, Jerusalem declined to the status of a village due to city's fall of strategic value and Ayyubid internecine struggles.[10]
In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarezmian Tartars, who decimated the city's Christian population and drove out the Jews.[11] The Khwarezmian Tartars were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247. From 1250 to 1517, Jerusalem was ruled by the Mamluks. During this period of time many clashes occurred between the Mamluks on one side and the crusaders and the Mongols on the other side. The area also suffered from many earthquakes and black plague.
In 1517, Jerusalem and environs fell to the Ottoman Turks, who generally remained in control until 1917.[9] Jerusalem enjoyed a prosperous period of renewal and peace under Suleiman the Magnificent – including the rebuilding of magnificent walls around the Old City.
Throughout much of Ottoman rule, Jerusalem remained a provincial, if religiously important center, and did not straddle the main trade route between Damascus and Cairo.[12] The English reference book Modern history or the present state of all nations written in 1744 stated that "Jerusalem is still reckoned the capital city of Palestine".[13]
Jordan, although mandated by the UN to let Israeli Jews visit their holy sites, refused access to them. They also led a systematic destruction of the Jewish Quarter including many ancient synagogues.[14] Under Jordanian rule of East Jerusalem, all Israelis (irrespective of their religion) were forbidden from entering the Old City and other holy sites.[15] The Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives was desecrated, with gravestones used to build latrines for Jordanian army barracks,[16][17] and almost every synagogue was demolished in the period from 1948 to 1967.
Muslim authorities have sought to appropriate and Islamicize the Temple Mount for exclusive Muslim use.[18] Originally an Israelite and subsequently Jewish holy site, as the location of the First and Second Temples, the site was subsequently the location of a Byzantine church and later of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
At the time of the Muslim conquest, the Temple Mount is understood to have been the site of an elaborate Byzantine church with an elaborate mosaic floor, some of the remains of which have been discovered by the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation.[19] In 682 CE, 50 years after Muhammad’s death, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Caliph of Damascus, conquered Mecca and stopped pilgrims from coming south to the Hajj in Mecca.[20] ‘Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, responded by creating a new holy site.[20] He chose sura 17, verse 1, “Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”[20] And designated the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as the "Farthest Mosque" mentioned in that verse.[20]
The Islamization of the Temple Mount climaxed at the end of the seventh century, with the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the early 690s when Abd al-Malik was developing his program of Islamization. It was built over the Foundation Stone, the site of the historic Jewish Temple.[21] The al-Aqsa mosque was built at the southern end of the mount in the 8th-century.
Throughout the entire period of the Muslim conquest until the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, various structures were built on the mount including memorial sites and gates.[22]
From the 13th-century onwards, after the Muslims had regained control of the city, building projects in Jerusalem and around the Temple Mount sought to further establish the city’s Islamic character.[23]
After the conquest of the city by Saladin, the Jews were not permitted to rebuild the synagogue and neither Jews nor Christians were permitted to set foot on the Temple Mount.[24]
It is unknown exactly when the al-Aqsa Mosque was first constructed and who ordered its construction, but it is certain that it was built in the early Ummayad period of rule in Palestine. Architectural historian K. A. C. Creswell, referring to a testimony by Arculf, a Gallic monk, during his pilgrimage to Palestine in 679–82, notes the possibility that the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, Umar ibn al-Khattab, erected a primitive quadrangular building for a capacity of 3,000 worshipers somewhere on the Haram ash-Sharif. However, Arculf visited Palestine during the reign of Mu'awiyah I, and it is possible that Mu'awiyah ordered the construction, not Umar. This latter claim is explicitly supported by the early Muslim scholar al-Muthahhar bin Tahir.[25]
According to several Muslim scholars, including Mujir ad-Din, al-Suyuti, and al-Muqaddasi, the mosque was reconstructed and expanded by the caliph Abd al-Malik in 690 along with the Dome of the Rock.[25][26] Guy le Strange claims that Abd al-Malik used materials from the destroyed Church of Our Lady to build the mosque and points to possible evidence that substructures on the southeast corners of the mosque are remains of the church.[26] In planning his magnificent project on the Temple Mount, which in effect would turn the entire complex into the Haram al-Sharif ("the Noble Sanctuary"), Abd al-Malik wanted to replace the slipshod structure described by Arculf with a more sheltered structure enclosing the qibla, a necessary element in his grand scheme. However, the entire Haram al-Sharif was meant to represent a mosque.