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The Dome of the Rock, the first Muslim masterpiece, was built in 687 A.D. by Caliph Abd al-Malik, half a century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (s). The rock marks the site from where Prophet Muhammad (s) made his Miraaj or Night Journey into the heavens and back to Makkah (Qur'an 17:1)
The Prophet Muhammad (s) never claimed to be creating a new religion, but rather to be recalling all men to the priniordial religion, contemporary with the awakening of the first man, the religion of which Abraham's sacrifice in responding unconditionally to God's call offered the finest model and example. Therefore it is not by an accident of history or through the whims of a despot that the starting point of Islamic art coincides with the starting point of the spiritual life of the Abrahamic tradition, including the lives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, namely, Jerusalem. This is the place of the life and ascension of Jesus (pbuh), and, according to the Qur'an [Surah 17, Ayah 1, `The Children of Israel'], of the rock from which the Prophet (s) rose from Earth to Heaven to contemplate the Ordinance of God six centuries before Dante's Divine Comedy.
Here it was that Solomon(pbuh) built the Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the temple that Herod built and that the Romam razed to the ground. When he entered Jerusalem in 637 A.C., Caliph `Umar Ibn al-Khattab ordered the erection of an austere wooden mosque on a deserted platform strewn with debris. The Umayyed, Abd-al-Malik, had the Dome built on this site, close to the dome of the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre and resembling it in many ways. The Dome of the Rock was thus the symbol of the oneness and continuity of the Abrahamic, i.e. Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith.
The external appearance of the monument expresses the essential message of this faith. The transition from the double square that forms the basic octagon to the spherical cupola symbolizes the transition from Earth to Heaven as it does in the most ancient cosmogonies of the Middle East and, in particular, of Mesopotamia.
