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It all began with a rock atop a modest hill, not even the most impressive by far in a city where every hill and promontory tends to beregarded with weighty  significance. It was not the hill where the Canaanite tribes that ruled ancient Jerusalem built their strongholds (that was nearby, in the City of David). It was not the olive-studded hill whose peak gazed out over the desert and the Dead Sea, where the Israelites buried their dead and would later invest their hopes of Messianic redemption (the Mount of Olives). It was not the mountain that offered commanding views of the entire Holy City and environs (Mount Scopus). It was the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, a modest hill in the center of all things.

Jewish tradition holds that dust from which God made Adam was scooped up from Moriah, and that Abraham chose the same spot to bind his son Isaac. When David's armies conquered Jebusite Jerusalem, Moriah was being used as a threshing floor, and the Bible carefully records the terms of David's purchase of the area from its Jebusite owner. David's son Solomon built the First Temple, which housed the Ark of the Covenant (and thus, in Jewish eyes, the very Divine Presence), and served as the center for ritual sacrifice and pilgrimage in ancient Israel.

The First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by the conquering Babylonians, who carted a significant portion of Jerusalem's Jewish elite back with them to Babylon. Several decades later, coaxed by the benevolent Persian emperor Cyrus who had captured Babylon, an element of these exiles returned to Judah and began work on a Second Temple, an effort led by Biblical prophets Ezra and Nehemiah. The Second Temple was dramatically expanded by Herod the Great around the turn of the millennium, and it was in this iteration of the Temple that Jesus and his disciples famously wreaked havoc.

Jewish rebellions against Roman authority in the first century CE sealed the fate of the Temple: it was burned to the ground by Roman troops in 70 CE. Sixty years later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a new temple to Jupiter atop the ruins of the Jewish Temple; the presence of graven images and pagan gods atop the Mount was so offensive to the Jews that it sparked another rebellion, the Bar Kochba Revolt.

For the next 500 years, the history of the Mount becomes murkier. Helena, the mother of Constantine and builder of many of the Christian churches that currently grace holy sites around Jerusalem, most likely had the Temple of Jupiter destroyed and a church built in its place. Evidence indicates that other, larger churches were built during the Byzantine period. But by the time of the Islamic conquest, Mount Moriah had been reduced to a city garbage dump.

The Muslims restored the Temple Mount as a place of religious worship, though its meaning was redefined according to Islam. The Mount and Jerusalem itself became associated with Muhammad's Night Journey to "the furthest mosque," from which he ascended to heaven for a discourse with God. Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock atop the foundation stone in the center of the mount in 691; Al-Aqsa ("the furthest") Mosque followed in 715. These two buildings are the center of worship on the Mount to this day.

After 1400 years in Muslim hands, control of the Mount passed back to the Jews after the victories of the Israeli military in 1967. However, wanting to avoid sparking a conflagration in the Muslim world, Israeli authorities left the day-to-day management of the Mount in the hands of the local waqf, an Islamic religious trust, and forbade non-Muslim prayer on the Mount to avoid rustling any feathers. Today the Mount is the center of Muslim religious life in Jerusalem and the region, drawing crowds of worshipers for Islam's five daily prayers. Some Jewish groups visit the Mount (whether Jews are allowed on the Mount for fear of treading on holy ground is matter of some contention among contemporary Orthodox believers), although they are barred from holding services. And thousands of tourists visit every month, glorying in the beautiful architecture and the air of holiness which after 3000 years has remained undimmed.

Photos in the video slideshow courtesy of ChrisYunker, Photos8.com, mitopencourseware, goldberg, delayed gratification, mockstar, and betta design from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.