I didn't reallize, until I started to read Jerusalem: The Biography that early Muslims built the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish temple, not as an act of hostility, but as an act of unity with the Jews, because they saw Islam as the true heir of Judaism.
When Caliph Omar, who wrested Jerusalem from the Christians in 636, visited the Temple Mount, he found what one observer called “a dung heap which the Christians had put there to offend the Jews,” Jonathan Rosen observes in his NYTimes review of the book. "Omar built his mosque there precisely because of its Jewish significance..."
Muslims agreed with Jews that Jesus was a prophet but not the Messiah, the Christ, the only son of God. The walls of the Temple Mount declared this to be so. Over the decades, as Jews failed to embrace Christianity or Islam, hostility towards Jews grew. "Omar II, around 720, banned Jewish worship on the Temple Mount — a ban that stood for the duration of Islamic rule...," Rosen points out. This ban on non-Islamic prayers at the Temple Mount sadly stands to this day.
And yet, for centuries, Jews and Muslims had a "mutually beneficial relationship that was at odds with the far more antagonistic Byzantine Christians. The fact that such a mutually productive relationship was sustainable for so many centuries seems to make the present situation all the more tragic."
Some other shocking revelations from reviews of the book:
"Violence among Christian denominations in the city is pettier and far more ancient than the relatively recent national conflict between Palestinians and Israelis," wrote one of The Guardian's reviewers. "When Pope Paul VI asked the Greek Orthodox for permission to pray at the chapel of Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the patriarch required him to make a written petition, then summarily refused it. The ceremony of the Holy Fire on Easter Saturday, when a tongue of flame "miraculously" descends and illuminates the church, has repeatedly deteriorated into brawling among monks who have little consideration for health and safety. As Tom Lehrer ought to have sung, the Armenians hate the Greeks, the Syriacs hate the Armenians, the Orthodox hate the Catholics, and everyone hates the Copts."
The Ottoman (Turkish) Muslims conquered the city in the 16th century and ruled it for 400 years in relative peace and religious tolerance.
