Muslim history in the region of Palestine, which began in the 630s during the great Muslim conquests, the region of Palestine was conquered by the Muslim armies of the Caliphate (Islamic Empire) under Caliph Umar. Muslim presence in the region has since continued to develop to the present time for nearly 1400 years. Throughout the majority of the aforementioned era a Muslim rule existed in the region of Palestine, except for the Crusader rule in the region (1099–1291) and except for the period of the modern State of Israel (1948 onwards), in which, following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, led to the creation of the State of Israel and Israeli sovereignty over majority of the territories of the historic region Palestine.
The region of Palestine has a special significance for Muslims throughout the world, as it contains the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem which is the third holiest site in Sunni Islam . According to the Islamic tradition the Al-Aqsa Mosque (also known as the "Haram Ash-Sharif") is the site from which the Islamic prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to Heaven.
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According to the Muslim tradition, during a single night around the year 621, the Islamic prophet Muhammad was carried by his mythological steed "al-Burāq" from Mecca to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. According to the tradition, from there he ascended to heaven where he spoke to Allah (God in Islam).
Islam first came to the region of Palestine in the 630s during the great Muslim conquests in which the Caliphate (Islamic Empire) conquered vast areas of Asia and Africa, including the region of Palestine. The Caliphate armies under the leadership of ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb defeated the armies of Persia and the armies of the Byzantine Empire and conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, the region of Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. Although the Koran does not clarify from where exactly Mohammad ascended to Heaven, following the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century this site became recognized and identified by all Muslim believers as the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Muslim conquests of the 7th century began a long and gradual process of Islamization of many nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa regions. This gradual process, which began immediately as a result of the formation of the Muslim empire, lasted several hundred years. In addition, in the Middle East region and the region of Palestine in particular, began a gradual process, which lasted several centuries, in which the indigenous peoples in various regions whom until then spoke mostly Greek, Aramaic-Syriac, Coptic and Berber, began adopting the Arabic language and the culture associated with it. As a result, through time many of the indigenous people merged with the Arab tribes, and as a result a vast region, which included the historic region of Palestine, became dominated by the Arabic language and the Arab culture.
Following the Muslim conquest of the region of Palestine, the Caliphate decided to construct a grand mosque at the holy site of the Jewish temple ruins in the old city of Jerusalem. As a result, the Caliphate constructed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In addition, during that time various other Muslim structures were constructed throughout the region of Palestine. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is considered nowadays as the world's oldest Islamic building still in use.
Rival dynasties and various revolutions that took place later on eventually led to a split within the Muslim world. Eventually, during the 9th century, the region of Palestine was conquered by the Fatimid dynasty. During that time the region of Palestine again became the center of various violent conflicts as various enemies of the Fatimid dynasty attempted to conquer the region. At that time, the Byzantine Empire continued attempting to recapture the territories they previously lost, including Jerusalem. At that time, the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem whom expressed their support in the Byzantine Empire were executed for treason by the Muslim authorities.
Following the growing importance of Jerusalem in the Muslim world, the tolerance towards the other faiths began to fade. The Christian population in the region of Palestine become a persecuted minority and various Churches were destroyed. This trend peaked in 1009 AD when Caliph al Hakim of the Fatimid dynasty, destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This provocation ignited rage amongst the Christian population world wide which led to the first Crusades.
In 1099 the Christian Crusaders, under the support of the Roman Catholic Church, launched the First Crusade campaign with the aim of regaining control of Jerusalem from the Islamic Empire and helping the Byzantine Empire fight the Seljuk Turks. During the campaign the Crusader launched an assault on the city of Jerusalem, captured it in July 1099, massacring many of the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, and established the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusaders transformed the Dome of the Rock to a "Shrine of the Lord" (Templum Domini) and the Al-Aqsa mosque to the "Hall of Solomon" (Templum Solomonis).
In 1187 the Muslim army forces of the Ayyubid dynasty under the leadership of Saladin captured or killed the vast majority of the Crusader forces at the Battle of Hattin, removing their capability to wage war.[1] As a direct result of the battle, Islamic forces once again became the eminent military power in the region, re-conquering Jerusalem and several other Crusader-held cities.[1]
The Christan defeats led to a Third Crusade which was aimed to regain the control over the territories the Crusaders previously lost. Richard I of England (Richard the Lionheart) led the siege of Acre, conquered the city and executed 3,000 Muslim prisoners. After another crusader victory in the Battle of Arsuf the Crusaders arrived at Jerusalem, but withdrew without attempting to conquer the city. After another military conflict in Jaffa which wasn't won by either side, Saladin and Richard the Lionheart signed the Treaty of Ramla in June 1192. Under the terms of the agreement, Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control but the city would be open to Christian pilgrimages. The treaty reduced the Latin Kingdom to a strip along the coast from Tyre to Jaffa.
In 1250, the Ayyubid Egyptian dynasty was overthrown by slave regiments, and a dynasty — the Mamluks — was born.
Eventually, in 1291 the army forces of the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt al-Ashraf Khalil held a long siege on the city of Acre which was the final Christian landholding remaining from the Crusades. The Mamluks captured Acre on May 18, 1291 and killed most of the Christian inhabitants of Acre, thus ending the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
On September 3, 1260, at the Battle of Ain Jalut held in the Jezreel Valley the Muslim Egyptian Mamluks defeated the Mongols and halted their advance. As a result established their rule in the region for the next 250 years.
On August 24, 1516, at the Battle of Marj Dabiq, the Ottoman Empire forces defeated the Mamluk sultanate forces and thus the Ottomans became the new rulers of Egypt, Syria and the region of Palestine. By December of that year the entire region of Palestine was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
As a result of the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1516[2] the Sunni Ottoman Turks occupied the historic region of Palestine. Their leadership reinforced and ensured the centrality and importance of Islam as the dominant religion in the region.
In 1834, a popular uprising erupted against the rule of Wāli Muhammad Ali. The main cause of the uprising was indignant at being drafted by the Egyptian army. At first the rebels managed to successfully take over many cities, including Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron. In response, Egyptian military leader Ibrahim Pasha commanded an army force of 40,000 people against the rebels and managed to put an end to the rebellion conquered Gaza, Ramleh, Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and Acre. Ibrahim Pasha's conquests had a significant demographic change as the region of Palestine had an influx of Muslim tribal immigrants.
In 1917, at the end of the First World War, the British Empire conquered the region of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine (today's Israel, West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan) by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. The British occupation of the region brought an end to hundreds of years of successive Muslim rule in the region of Palestine.
During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Following various severe manifestations of violence committed against the Jewish population in Europe, large waves of Jewish immigrants increase gradually in the region of Palestine during this period of time. The gradual strengthening of the Jewish community in the region of Palestine led to the development of a proto-Arab-Palestinian national movement, influenced and inspired by Muslim leader and Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini. Zionism, the ideology advocating the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, was increasingly identified as a threat by the Muslim-Arab population in the region of Palestine. This anti-Zionist trend became linked to anti-British resistance (such as in the 1936-39 Great Uprising), to form a nationalist movement quite particular and separate from the pan-Arab trend that was gaining strength in the Arab world.
The High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, issued an order in December 1921 establishing a Supreme Muslim Council with authority over all the Muslim waqfs and sharia courts in Palestine. In addition, in 1922 the British authorities appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini as the Mufti of Jerusalem. At the same time, monarchs like Feisal of Syria and Abdullah of Jordan tried to implement conflicting visions of pan-Arab monarchies in Palestine.[3] Until the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine took place the Council operated as the Governing body of the the Arab community in the British Mandate for Palestine and co-operated with the British government. All along its operation Council advocated active resistance against the Yishuv and supported the Arab underground resistance movements in the country.
In 1947, following the rise of violent manifestations in the British Mandate for Palestine, the British government decided to withdraw from the region. The UN Partition Plan of 1947 proposed to split the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine into two separate Jewish and Arabic states. Immediately after the Partition Plan was approved by the UN General Assembly, the Arab leadership rejected the plan and opened a guerrilla war against the Jewish community in Israel.
On May 14, 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by prime minister David Ben-Gurion, made a declaration of independence, and the state of Israel was established.
Hoping to annihilate the new Jewish state, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded the territory partitioned for the Arab state, thus starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from part of the occupied territories, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition.[4] By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Prior to and during this conflict, 711,000[5] Palestinians Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees, in part, due to a promise from Arab leaders that they'll be able to return when the war is won.
Most Israeli-Jews refer to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as the "War of Independence", while most of the Arab citizens of Israel refer to it as the Nakba (catastrophe), a reflection of differences in perception of the purpose and outcomes of the war.[6][7]
Because the Jordanian Legion captured the Temple Mount during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and as a result Jerusalem's division after the war, the Temple Mount as well as the rest of the Old City of Jerusalem were now under the control of the Kingdom of Jordan. In addition, following the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank during the war, King Abdullah I of Jordan removed Amin al-Husayni as Grand Mufti and appointed Sheikh Hussam ad-Din Jarallah as the new Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on 20 December 1948. The Supreme Muslim Council was eventually disbanded in 1951 by the Jordanian authorities.
On July 20, 1951 king Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated while visiting the Al Aqsa Mosque. The assassination was carried out by a Palestinian from the Husseini clan. The Palestinian gunman, motivated by fears that king Abdullah would make a separate peace with Israel, fired three fatal bullets into the King's head and chest.
In 1967, during the Six Day War, the IDF captured the Temple Mount. After the conquest of the site, the Chief Israeli Rabbinate announced that Jewish people are forbidden of entering the Temple Mount. The occupation of the Temple Mount caused an uproar in the Muslim world, which soon afterwards led the Israeli government to transfer the control of the site to the Muslim Waqf.
Today Islam is a prominent religion in both Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel's Muslim population accounts for 16.1% of the population in the country (as of 2005),[8] making them the second largest religious group in Israel after the Jewish population. Most of the population in Gaza and the West Bank are Muslims (75% in the West Bank and 99% in the Gaza Strip.)
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