The Arabs conquered Jerusalem around 638 C.E. The city retained its Roman name, Aelia, until the tenth century, when it was changed to the Arabic al-Quds (the Holy). At the time of its capture, Jerusalem was a sacred city for all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). When the Arab armies took Jerusalem in 638, they occupied a center whose shrines had made it a major pilgrimage site in Christendom. The empire of the Umayyads, stretched over vast areas from the borders of France to the borders of India. However, after the Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasids, the steady decline of Jerusalem began. Damascus was the Umayyad Empire�s capital until the Abbasids moved the capital to Baghdad. The proximity of the capital to Jerusalem was one of the reasons that Damascus caliphs paid special attention to the city. However, the move to Baghdad distanced the concerns of the Abbasid caliphs.(1)
In the first part of the Arab Period, the majority of the population was Christian. The construction of the Dome of the Rock in 691 - the first Muslim shrine and the first major Islamic public building - was meant to counterbalance the Church of the Holy Sepulcre. Both the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcre have concentric plans, and their diameters are identical, but the Dome of the Rock is decorated with antitinitarian Quranic quotations. Initially, Muslims like Jews of Arabia, faced Jerusalem to pray. However, when the Jews who lived in Medina at the time resisted both religious and political cooperation with the Muslims and did not accept Muhammad�s prophetic claims, a new revelation from Allah directed Muhammad to shift the center of prayer to Mecca.(2)
The Dome of the Rock was built near the area formerly occupied by Herod�s Temple and close by the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of Solomon�s temple. The Dome of the Rock was constructed over the outcropping of limestone rock which Jewish tradition held to be the place of Abraham�s intended sacrifice of Isaac. Islamic tradition points to the sacred rock as the place from which Muhammad began his Ascent to Heaven to receive Allah�s (God in Arabic) final revelation. In building the Dome of the Rock, the earliest Arab rulers of Palestine expressed their reverence for Jerusalem, city of the prophets from Abraham and Moses to Jesus, culminating with Muhammad, �the seal of the prophets.� The Dome of the Rock is the oldest existing Islamic monument in the world and for most still the greatest. The building of the Dome was a symbol of Islamic inheritance from the triumph over the religions of Jews and Christians, and equally an expression of the insecurity of Muslims in a city dominated by Christians from the initial Arab conquest in 638 until Salah al-Din drove out the Crusaders in 1187. In making the Dome a taller, more imposing copy of the Holy Sepulcre, the architects were making visible to all Jerusalem�s Christians the power and permanence of Islam in the Holy City.(3)
In 638, when Jerusalem was surrendered to the Muslims, Umar (the first caliph), requested to be led to the Temple Mount, an acknowledgment of Islam�s acceptance of the Hebraic prophetic tradition. After reaching the Temple Mount, the caliph found himself disgusted on seeing that Christians had heaped garbage in the sacred enclosure to express their contempt for the Judaic faith. Umar, out of respect for the Jews, ordered the area to be cleansed, an act which also prepared the sacred Jewish site for Muslim worship. Umar fulfilled the hopes of Jews by refusing the church�s request to continue the ban against Jewish residence and inviting them back into the city. In the seventh century, as Jerusalem came into Muslim hands, the ban on Jewish residence was lifted. After approximately 500 years of being Judenrein, Jerusalem again included a Jewish community. Jews long banned from living in Jerusalem by Christian rulers, were permitted to return, live, and worship in the city of Solomon and David.(4)
