ABSTRACT
As soon as the invading Muslims captured Jerusalem in 638 CE, they laid
claim to its religious heritage. Their veneration of the city led many Mus-
lims to make pilgrimages to visit its holy sites and to create literature in
praise of them. Judging from a variety of later Muslim testimonies, the
rituals that were performed on the Temple Mount area ranged from wuquf
rituals (the customary prayer-while-standing that is part of the pilgrimage
ceremony in Mecca) to prayers and liturgical readings associated with spe-
cific sites (Elad 1995; Hasson 1996). This veneration may be first displayed in the partly-legendary story of caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khattab’s trip from
Medina to negotiate the terms of the surrender of Jerusalem. ‘Umar, escor-
ted by Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, toured the many holy sites in
the city, and made a point of going up to the Temple Mount area and
leading his followers in cleansing it from the manure and dirt that was
thrown there, as the story goes, by Christians in order to desecrate it.1 A
few decades later, the fifth caliph, Mu‘awiya, who was also the founder of
the Umayyad dynasty (r. 661-680 CE) that ruled the Muslim world between 661 and 750 CE, chose to be crowned in Jerusalem (al-Tabari 1987, 6), even
though he belonged to one of the most prestigious and powerful families of
Mecca. His successors spent lavishly to adorn the horizon of Jerusalem, in
particular the Temple Mount area, with distinctively Islamic structures, and
they regarded that achievement as the height of their mission to spread the
message of Islam.2
