Umar's covenant
After Yarmouk, Muslim armies besieged Jerusalem. Patriarch Sophronius agreed to surrender only to the caliph, so Umar travelled from Madinah. He guaranteed the safety of the city's Christians, their churches and their property, and declined to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre so that it would never be claimed as a mosque. He had the Haram al-Sharif cleared and a simple mosque built there.
The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa
The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock over the rock linked to the Prophet's Night Journey, completed around 691 or 692. Al-Aqsa Mosque rose at the southern end of the compound under Abd al-Malik and al-Walid, and has been rebuilt several times after earthquakes.
Crusaders and Salahuddin
The First Crusade stormed the city on 15 July 1099 and killed much of its population. The crusaders made the Dome of the Rock a church and Al-Aqsa a royal palace, later the headquarters of the Templars.
Salahuddin retook the city on 2 October 1187 and let its Christians ransom themselves or leave. He placed in Al-Aqsa the carved minbar that Nur al-Din had ordered years earlier for the day the city would be freed.
Treaties, Mamluks and Ottomans
Sultan al-Kamil handed the city to Emperor Frederick II by treaty in 1229, keeping the Haram in Muslim hands. Khwarazmian troops took it in 1244, and from 1260 the Mamluks ruled it and endowed schools and hostels around the Haram. The Ottomans arrived in 1516, and Suleiman built the city walls that still stand (1537 to 1541).
The modern century
British forces entered in December 1917 and ruled under a League of Nations mandate. The 1948 war divided the city, with the Old City under Jordan, and Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. In 1969 an arsonist set fire to Al-Aqsa and destroyed Salahuddin's minbar, which led to the founding of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The Islamic Waqf, under Jordanian custodianship, still administers the compound.
The pattern
Whoever held Syria, Egypt or Anatolia usually ended up holding Jerusalem. That is why the city changed hands with the empires around it, and why its future is still tied to the politics of the whole Middle East.
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