The Dome of the Rock bears the earliest datable set of texts from the Qur’an, including the famous rebuke to those who worship the Trinity, and it exhibits the earliest datable use of the word ‘Muslim’. Even though it reversed Christian mistreatment of the Temple, it was probably built by Christian craftsmen, and its architectural forms are derived from those of Byzantium.12 Really this was logical. What the Dome of the Rock proclaimed was the arrival of a new empire which would replace the surviving Christian empire of the Byzantines; the city of Constantinople was now the goal of what seemed
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