Great Cities of Islam Through History 3: Jerusalem — A City That Weeps for a Glory That Will Never Die

If Makkah is the cradle of revelation and the direction toward which Muslims pray, then Madinah is the place where the Islamic mission took shape as a state, a society, and a civilization. It was here that Islam moved from a period of persecution and vulnerability to the building of an Ummah. Here, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ spent the final years of his life; from here, armies, envoys, letters, and messages were dispatched; here, the Companions gathered around the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; and from here emerged a state that would soon expand beyond the Hijaz and reach far into the wider world.

Islamic civilization was never the story of a single state, a single capital, or a single age. It was a long journey through cities and great urban centers stretching from Makkah and Madinah to Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Kairouan, and Córdoba, and onward to Bukhara,