"The Knights Templar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Sean)

The Temple and the Mosque

With its administration creaking, the Roman Empire divided into two in the fourth century – the western half would still be ruled by Rome, while the eastern half had Byzantium as its capital. When Rome was overrun by the Visigoths in 410, Jerusalem became one of many jewels in the Byzantine crown. The Temple Mount became a rubbish tip.

In 638, Jerusalem surrendered to the Caliph Omar, and the city fell into Muslim hands. Since its founding by the Prophet Muhammad with the hijrah of 622, when the Prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina and thus the Muslim calendar began, Islam had spread rapidly throughout the Middle East. The Byzantines seemed powerless to stop its progress, and retreated north. Jerusalem was sacred to Muslims, in particular the Temple Mount area, as it was the site of the Prophet’s ascension to heaven. Upon his entry into Jerusalem, Omar had gone there to pray, and resolved to build the al-Aqsa mosque on the site. Towards the end of the seventh century, a second, even more impressive, mosque was built on the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem was further than ever from Christian hands.