The Dome of the Rock
Click here for another photo (very nice!) of the Dome of the Rock

"The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, completed in 692, is the first major monument of Islamic history. Built by the caliph Abd al-Malik, it stands on the site of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and thus amounts to a proclamation that Judaism was now superseded by Islam. It is also polemical against Christianity, with which it takes issue in its inscriptions. It consists of two octagonal ambulatories around a rock (seen here), which is classically identified as the spot from which Muhammad ascended to heaven on his nightly journey, but which was probably associated with Abraham in Abd al-Malik's time. Some sources claim that Abd al-Malik intended the Dome of the Rock to replace the Kaaba as the central shrine to which all Muslims should go on pilgrimage, but most modern scholars find this hard to believe."

Photos and captions are from The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World, edited by Francis Robinson (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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