Why was the Dome of the Rock built on the Temple Mount?

Women on Temple Mount for Prayers (Credit: Muammar Awad)

Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul (Credit: AFP)

Why was the Dome of the Rock built?  Until recently there were two proposals.  First the structure was built by Abd al-Malik from the Umayyad caliphate as a rival to the caliphate in Mecca headed by Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr.  The second suggests the dome was built as a competitor to the nearby Christian Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  A more recent proposal from Milka Levy-Rubin argues that the Dome of the Rock was built to restore Jerusalem’s significance among the holy sites.  The dome was not a rival to Mecca, rather to Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire, and Hagia Sophia.  The Dome of the Rock was a Muslim version of the Temple of Solomon.  Levy-Rubin does not deny the importance of the two above proposals, but provides the political and ideological rivalry with Constantinople as a third incentive for building the Dome of the Rock.    
      

See M. Levy-Rubin, "Why was the Dome of the Rock built? A new perspective on a long-discussed question", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS), 80.3 (2017), pp. 441-464.