History of Jerusalem during the Early Muslim period
The history of Jerusalem during the Early Muslim period covers the period between the capture of the city from the Byzantines by the Arab Muslim armies of the nascent Caliphate in 637–638 CE, and its conquest by the European Catholic armies of the First Crusade in 1099. Throughout this period, Jerusalem remained a largely Christian city with smaller Muslim and Jewish communities. It was successively part of several Muslim states, beginning with the Rashidun caliphs of Medina, the Umayyads of Syria, the Abbasids of Baghdad and their nominal Turkish vassals in Egypt, and the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo, who struggled over it with the Turkic Seljuks and different other regional powers, only to finally lose it to the Crusaders.
The second caliph, Umar, secured Muslim control of the city from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. During his rule Muslim prayer was likely established on the Temple Mount and limited numbers of Jews were allowed to reside in the city after a five centuries-long ban by the Romans/Byzantines. Beginning with Caliph Mu'awiya I, the early Umayyad caliphs devoted special attention to the city as a result of its sanctity and several obtained their oaths of allegiance there. The Umayyads Abd al-Malik and al-Walid I invested considerably in constructing Muslim edifices on the Temple Mount, namely the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, as well other religious and administrative structures, gates, and roadworks. Their successor Sulayman likely resided in Jerusalem at the beginning of his reign, but his founding of the nearby city of Ramla came at the political and economic expense of Jerusalem in the long term.
Overview
Throughout the Early Muslim and Crusader periods, up until Saladin's conquest of 1187, Jerusalem retained a sizable Christian majority, which only ceased to exist once Saladin removed the Frankish population in 1187.During the early centuries of Muslim rule, especially under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, the city prospered; the 10th-century geographers Ibn Hawqal and al-Istakhri describe it as "the most fertile province of Palestine", while its native son, geographer al-Muqaddasi devoted many pages to its praises in his most famous work, The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Climes. Jerusalem under Muslim rule, however, did not achieve the political or cultural status enjoyed by the capitals Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo etc.
With the decline of the Carolingian Empire, which split up in 888, a period of anti-Christian persecution by the Muslims began. However, the recovered Byzantines filled this void and as the Empire expanded under the Byzantine Crusades, Christians were again allowed to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
Rashidun period (630s–661)
Domination of the countryside
Southern Palestine was conquered by the Muslims under the commander Amr ibn al-As following their decisive victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Ajnadayn, likely fought at a site about south-southwest of Jerusalem, in 634. Although Jerusalem remained unoccupied, the 634 Christmas sermon of Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem indicated that the Muslim Arabs were in control of the city's environs by then, as the Patriarch was unable to travel to nearby Bethlehem for the ritual Feast of the Nativity due to the presence of Arab raiders. According to one reconstruction of the Islamic tradition, a Muslim advance force was sent against Jerusalem by Amr ibn al-As on his way to Ajnadayn. By 635 southern Syria was in Muslim hands, except for Jerusalem and the Byzantines' capital of Palestine, Caesarea. In his homily of the Theophany,, Sophronius lamented the killings, raids, and destruction of churches by the Arabs.Siege and capitulation
It is unclear when Jerusalem was precisely captured, but most modern sources place it in the spring of 637. In that year the troops of Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, head commander of the Muslim forces in Syria, besieged the city. History records Caliph Umar , who was headquartered in Medina, made one or several visits to Jabiya, the Muslims' principal camp in Syria, in 637–638. The modern historians Fred Donner and Hugh N. Kennedy assess that he came to address multiple administrative matters in the newly conquered province. While in Jabiya, Umar negotiated Jerusalem's surrender with a delegation from the city, as the Patriarch insisted on surrendering to the Caliph directly rather than his commanders.The earliest known Muslim tradition of Jerusalem's capture was cited in the history of al-Baladhuri and credits the Arab commander Khalid ibn Thabit al-Fahmi for arranging the city's capitulation with terms guaranteeing Muslim domination of the countryside and safeguarding the city's inhabitants in return for tributary payment. Khalid ibn Thabit had been dispatched by Umar from Jabiya. The historian Shelomo Dov Goitein considered this tradition to be the most reliable narrative of Jerusalem's capture. Another account, that contained in the histories of al-Ya'qubi and Eutychius of Alexandria, holds that a treaty was agreed between the Muslims and Jerusalem's inhabitants, though the terms were largely the same as those cited by al-Baladhuri. The 10th-century history of al-Tabari, citing the 8th-century historian Sayf ibn Umar, reproduces the capitulation agreement in detail, though parts of it may have been altered from the time it was made. Although Goitein considered Sayf's account "worthless" on account of Sayf's general unreliability, the historians Moshe Gil and Milka Levy-Rubin have argued that the tradition was largely authentic. The agreement for Jerusalem was generally favorable for the city's Christian inhabitants, guaranteeing the safety of their persons, their property, and churches, and allowing them the freedom of worship in return for payment of the jizya. Byzantine troops and other residents seeking to evacuate the city were given security assurances from the time they left Jerusalem until they reached their point of departure from Palestine. Gil assessed that Umar adopted a lenient approach so that the inhabitants could continue their way of life and work and thus be able to subsidize the Arab tribesmen garrisoned in Palestine.
The treaty cited in al-Tabari, and later Christian sources, contained a stipulation barring Jewish residency alongside the city's Christians, a continuation of a ban started in the days of Emperor Hadrian and renewed in the days of Emperor Constantine. Among them was the history of Michael the Syrian, who wrote that Sophronius negotiated the ban on Jews residing in Jerusalem. .
Several later Muslim and Christians accounts, as well as an 11th-century Jewish chronicle, mention a visit to Jerusalem by Umar. One set of accounts held that Umar was guided by Jews who showed him the Temple Mount. In the Muslim and Jewish accounts, a prominent Jewish convert to Islam, Ka'b al-Ahbar, recommended that Umar pray behind the Holy Rock so that both qiblas lay behind him. Umar rejected the suggestion, insisting that the Ka'aba in Mecca was the sole qibla; Jerusalem had been the original qibla of the early Muslims until Muhammad changed it to the Ka'aba. The Muslim and Jewish sources reported that the Temple Mount was cleaned by the Muslims of the city and its district and a group of Jews. The Jewish account further noted that Umar oversaw the process and consulted with Jewish elders; Gil suggests the Jewish elders may be a reference to Ka'b al-Ahbar. The Christian accounts mentioned that Umar visited Jerusalem's churches, but refused to pray in them to avoid setting a precedent for future Muslims. This tradition may have been originated by later Christian writers to promote efforts against Muslim encroachments on their holy places.
Post-conquest administration and settlement
Jerusalem is presumed by Goitein and the historian Amikam Elad to have been the Muslims' main political and religious center in Jund Filastin from the conquest until the foundation of Ramla at the beginning of the 8th century. It may have been preceded by the Muslims' principal military camp at Emmaus Nicopolis before this was abandoned due to the Plague of Amwas in 639. The historian Nimrod Luz, on the other hand, holds that the early Muslim tradition indicates Palestine from the time of Umar had dual capitals at Jerusalem and Lydda, each city having its own governor and garrison. An auxiliary force of tribesmen from Yemen was posted in the city during this period. Amr ibn al-As launched the conquest of Egypt from Jerusalem in, and his son Abd Allah transmitted hadiths about the city.Christian leadership in Jerusalem entered a state of disorganization following the death of Sophronius, with no new patriarch appointed until 702. Nonetheless, Jerusalem remained largely Christian in character throughout the early Islamic period. Not long after the conquest, possibly in 641, Umar allowed a limited number of Jews to reside in Jerusalem after negotiations with the Christian leadership of the city. An 11th-century Jewish chronicle fragment from the Cairo Geniza indicated that the Jews requested the settlement of two hundred families, the Christians would only accept fifty, and that Umar ultimately decided on the settlement of seventy families from Tiberias. Gil attributed the Caliph's move to his recognition of the Jews' local importance, by dint of their considerable presence and economic strength in Palestine, as well as a desire to weaken Christian dominance of Jerusalem.
At the time of the conquest, the Temple Mount had been in a state of ruin, the Byzantine Christians having left it largely unused for scriptural reasons. The Muslims appropriated the site for administrative and religious purposes. This was likely due to a range of factors. Among them was that the Temple Mount was a large, unoccupied space in Jerusalem, where the Muslims were restricted by the capitulation terms from confiscating Christian-owned property in the city. Jewish converts to Islam may have also influenced the early Muslims regarding the site's holiness, and the early Muslims may have wanted to demonstrate their opposition to the Christian belief that the Temple Mount should remain empty. Moreover, the early Muslims may have had a spiritual attachment to the site before the conquest. Their utilization of the Temple Mount provided a vast space for the Muslims overlooking the whole city. The Temple Mount was likely used for Muslim prayer from the beginning of Muslim rule, due to the capitulation agreement's prohibitions on Muslims using Christian edifices. Such usage of the Temple Mount may have been authorized by Umar. The traditions cited by the 11th-century Jerusalemites al-Wasiti and Ibn al-Murajja note that Jews were employed as caretakers and cleaners of the Temple Mount and the ones employed were exempt from the jizya.
The earliest Muslim settlement activity took place south and southwest of the site, in thinly populated areas; much of the Christian settlement was concentrated in western Jerusalem around Golgotha and Mount Zion. The first Muslim settlers in Jerusalem hailed mainly from the Ansar, i.e. the people of Medina. They included Shaddad ibn Aws, nephew of the prominent companion of Muhammad and poet Hassan ibn Thabit. Shaddad died and was buried in Jerusalem between 662 and 679. His family remained prominent there, and his tomb later became a place of veneration. Another prominent companion, the Ansarite commander Ubada ibn al-Samit, also settled in Jerusalem where he became the city's first qadi. The father of Muhammad's Jewish concubine Rayhana and a Jewish convert from Medina, Sham'un, settled in Jerusalem and, according to Mujir al-Din, delivered Muslim sermons on the Temple Mount. Umm al-Darda, an Ansarite and the wife of the first qadi of Damascus, resided in Jerusalem for half of the year. Umar's successor Caliph Uthman was said by the 10th-century Jerusalemite geographer al-Muqaddasi to have earmarked the revenues of Silwan's bountiful vegetable gardens on the city's outskirts, which would have been Muslim property per the capitulation terms, to the city's poor.