AD 691

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock receives its AH 72 dedication inscription

A band of Arabic text roughly 240 metres long circles the shrine's interior arcades — and its date may record the start of the work rather than the finish.

AH 72, and what it counts

The shrine's monumental mosaic inscription carries the date 72 AH, which spans 691 and 692 CE and cannot be reduced securely to either year alone. The text proclaims Islamic beliefs through Qur'anic and other religious formulas that name Muhammad.

Most scholars have treated AH 72 as the completion date.

Marcus Milwright argues instead that the inscription more probably marks the building's foundation, and places completion in the mid-690s.

What Abd al-Malik built

The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned an octagonal shrine around the exposed rock on Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif, during the Second Fitna. Later Jerusalem traditions name Raja ibn Haywa and Yazid ibn Salam as officials who oversaw the project.

It is a shrine centred on the rock, not a congregational mosque laid out like later Friday mosques. Its form and mosaics adapt late-antique and Byzantine Christian artistic traditions into a distinctly Islamic monumental statement.

Later tradition reports a budget of Egypt's land revenue for seven years — a literary report, not a documented cost.

Motive, and later hands

No contemporary text states the patron's motive. Competition with Jerusalem's Christian monuments is well supported as context; the claim that Abd al-Malik meant to divert the pilgrimage away from Mecca is a disputed interpretation drawn from later sources.

The building did not stay as he left it. Its surviving exterior and dome incorporate substantial later restoration and decoration.

The Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun had his own name substituted for Abd al-Malik's in the dedication, while the AH 72 date was left intact.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0691.

What the sources leave uncertain

AH 72 overlaps 691 and 692 CE; it cannot be reduced securely to the single Gregorian year 691.
Most scholarship interprets the dated inscription as recording completion, while Marcus Milwright argues that it records foundation and that work ended in the mid-690s.
No contemporary text states the patron's exact motive. Interpretations involving Christian competition, Jerusalem's sanctification, the Second Fitna and rivalry with Ibn al-Zubayr should be labeled interpretations.
Later Abbasid work replaced Abd al-Malik's name with al-Ma'mun's, although the AH 72 date was left intact.