When did Islam come to Palestine?

Arabs began a series of conquests in the 7th century AD under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad during the rise of Islam. Muhammad was born in Makkah (Mecca) in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, a city on the trade routes connecting Yemen to the south, the Mediterranean to the north, the Persian Gulf to the east, and Africa through the Red Sea port of Jeddah to the west. Muhammad delivered a spiritual and social message based on the unity and oneness of God, derived from Jewish and Christian concepts already well established in Arabia. In 622, Muhammad founded the first Muslim community in Medina. His immensely popular message confronted the weakness of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires and led to the success of a series of dramatic conquests. Within 20 years of Muhammad’s death in 632, Muslim Arabs ruled a territory extending from Egypt deep into Iran.

Palestine was invaded by Muslim Arab armies during this period, capped by the capture of Jerusalem in 638 AD. The invasion was bloody for the long-established Christian and Jewish inhabitants and the countryside was devastated. This was the start of 1300 years of Muslim presence in what the Arabs called Filastin, an Arabic rendition of the name Palaestina assigned by the Romans. Mohammed originally designated that his followers must face Jerusalem when praying, a gesture designed to win support from Arabian Jews. Later, Muslims switched to praying toward Mecca, and the Koran does not mention Jerusalem. In 715 AD, the site from which the prophet was believed to have ascended to Heaven on a night journey was arbitrarily associated with Jerusalem where the Dome of the Rock had been built in 687 AD by Caliph Abd al-Malik. Based on this association, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built at the same site and the city became, after Makkah and Medina, the third holiest city of Islam. See the topic on Jerusalem for more information.

The Muslim Arabs ruled Palestine under the system of dhimmitude, the rules that apply to non-Muslim populations conquered by jihad. There is a myth that the time of Islamic rule was a “golden age” for Jews and that they were better treated by the Muslims than by the Christians. This myth has been shattered by scholarship that shows continuous persecution of Jews and Christians under Islamic rule.