The Dome was built in AD691 quite deliberately on the Temple Mount as a specific copy of the martyrium of the Byzantine Church of the Holy Sepulchre housing Christ's Tomb, and the Dome was made by Christian artisans. Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan was worried that without it, Constantine's Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre would surely draw people from Islam.
"O my little son, thou has no understanding. Verily he was right, and he was prompted to a worthy work. For he beheld Syria to be a country that had long been occupied by the Christians, and he noted there are beautiful churches still belonging to them, so enchantingly fair, and so renowned for their splendour, as are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the churches of Lydda and Edessa. So he sought to build for the Muslims a mosque that should be unique and a wonder to the world. And in like manner is it not evident that Caliph Abd al-Malik, seeing the greatness of the martyrium of the Holy Sepulchre and its magnificence was moved lest it should dazzle the minds of Muslims and hence erected above the Rock the dome which is now seen there."
[Shams al-Din al-Maqdisi, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Mar'rifat al-Aqalim, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1967) pp. 159-171.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Malik_ibn_Marwan
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