Islamization of Jerusalem

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The Islamization of Jerusalem refers to the process through which Jerusalem and its Old City acquired an Islamic character and, eventually, a significant Muslim presence. The foundation for Jerusalem's Islamization was laid by the Muslim conquest of the Levant, and began shortly after the city was besieged and captured in 638 CE by the Rashidun Caliphate under Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Rashidun caliph. The second wave of Islamization occurred after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Christian state that was established after the First Crusade, at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. The eventual fall of the Crusader states by 1291 led to a period of almost-uninterrupted Muslim rule that lasted for seven centuries, and a dominant Islamic culture was consolidated in the region during the Ayyubid, Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Beginning in the late Ottoman era, Jerusalem’s demographics turned increasingly multicultural, and regained a Jewish-majority character during the late-19th and early-20th centuries that had not been seen since the Roman period, which largely ended the Jewish presence in the region.^[1]

The remodulation was grounded on a foundational narrative in early Islamic texts, themselves drawing on Persian, Jewish and Christian traditions^[2] that emphasized the city's cosmological significance within God's creation.^[3] At the time of the Muslim conquest of the city, the victors encountered many traditions concerning the Temple Mount: Muslim beliefs regarding David (the miḥrāb Dāwūd in the Quran 38:20–21) and Solomon;^[4] shared beliefs that from there, on Mount Moriah (the “mountain” that the Temple Mount sits upon), Adam had been born and died;^[5] shared beliefs that Mount Moriah was also where Abraham almost sacrificed one of his sons; and they absorbed the Christian belief that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist (in the Quran: 'prophet of the Jewish scholars'), raised on the site a mihrab to Mary, the mother of Jesus.^[6] These and other such traditions affected the outlay of Islamic buildings. It has also been argued that the central role that Jerusalem assumed in Islamic belief began with Muhammad's instruction to his followers to observe the qibla by facing the direction of Jerusalem during their daily prostrations in prayer.^[7] After 13 years (or 16 months,^[8] depending on the source),^[9] due to both divine guidance^[10] and practical matters (souring of relationship with the Jews^[7] and/or Muhammad’s frustration with the city and its people^[11]) the direction of prayer was changed to Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.^[12] The Umayyad construction of the Dome of the Rock was interpreted by later hostile Abbasid historians as an attempt to redirect the Hajj from Mecca to Jerusalem.^[13]