At the end of the seventh century A.D., the Muslims rebuilt the former Temple Mount and created one of the most potent religious sites in the world. The articles in these volumes look at the different aspects of the architecture and the intentions of the builders in establishing this complex.

At the end of the seventh century A.D., the Muslims rebuilt the former Temple Mount and created one of the most potent religious sites in the world. The articles in these volumes look at the different aspects of the architecture and the intentions of the builders in establishing this complex.

Contains 13 essays which encompass just over four-and-a-half centuries of the thousands of years of Jerusalem's past--from the Muslim conquest in 638 until the eve of the Crusader onslaught in 1099. Topics include the physical infrastructure, the authorities and the local population, art and architecture in the early Islamic period, the temple and the city in liturgical Hebrew, Christian attitudes towards Jerusalem in the early middle ages, the Muslim view of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva of Eretz Israel. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Muqarnas is sponsored by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Muqarnas articles are being published on all aspects of Islamic visual culture, historical and contemporary, as well as articles dealing with unpublished textual primary sources.

Through its material remains, Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem analyzes several overlooked aspects of the earliest decades of Islamic presence in Jerusalem, during the seventh century CE. Focusing on the Haram al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, Lawrence Nees provides the first sustained study of the Dome of the Chain, a remarkable eleven-sided building standing beside the slightly later Dome of the Rock, and the first study of the meaning of the columns and column capitals with figures of eagles in the Dome of the Rock. He also provides a new interpretation of the earliest mosque in Jerusalem, the Haram as a whole, with the sacred Rock at its center.

This book sheds new light on Jerusalem's status in early Islam. The sanctity of the city is already discerned in the Qurʾān. The vision of redemption that the Qurʾān displays coincides with the messianic expectations that have swept throughout the entire region, especially among the Jews, due to the attempted renewal of Jewish liturgy in Jerusalem following the Persian victory over Byzantium in 614. On the other hand, the Qurʾān also portrays the holiness of Mecca and the Kaʿba. This book shows how it promotes their pre-Islamic holiness around the image of Abraham and Ishmael. The changing balance between the sanctity of Jerusalem and the sanctity of Mecca, in favor of the latter, is noticeable in the Qurʾān as one proceeds from the Meccan sūras to the Medinan ones. The change occurs against the background of the twist in relations between Muḥammad and the Jews. This book also points out the correlation between Muḥammad's situation in Medina and events in Palestine involving the victory of the Byzantines over the Persians in 628, as alluded to in the opening passage of Sūrat al-Rūm (30). Thie work illuminates the growing sanctity of Jerusalem following the arrival of the first Muslims to Palestine. As in the Qurʾān, Mecca continued to struggle to preserve its status as a holy city vis-à-vis that of Jerusalem. Key aspects of this struggle are reflected in traditions in which patterns of sanctity move from Jerusalem to Mecca, and which this book also scrutinizes.

"Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship" provides fascinating new information about the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, rituals and pilgrimage to these places during the early Muslim period. It is based primarily on early primary Arabic sources, many of which have not yet been published.