Rising from the Old City walls crowned with battlements is the Temple Mount, which Arabs call Haram esh-Sharif and Jews call Har Habayit. The mosque’s golden dome shone in the morning sun, above the rock upon which Abraham had nearly sacrificed his son. From here, tradition had it, the prophet Mohammed had ascended to heaven on his horse, accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel. After Mecca and Medina, it was the most important site of Islam, built by the Muslims right where the Temple of the Jews had once stood. When Roman legionnaires destroyed the Temple two thousand years before, they’d left
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