Damage and destruction

This building was damaged by fire in May of 614 when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II,
invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross which was restored in 630 by the Emperor
Heraclius when he recaptured and rebuilt the church. After Jerusalem was captured by the Arabs,
it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites.
A story reports that the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the
balcony; but at the time of prayer, he turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared
that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church
into a mosque. Eutychius added that Umar wrote a decree prohibiting Muslims from praying at
this location. The building suffered severe damage due to an earthquake in 746.
Early in the ninth century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. Damage was
restored in 810 by Patriarch Thomas. In the year 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the
Orthodox Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent the Church. In
938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the roundabout. In 966, due
to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out and was followed by
reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and the Patriarch John
VII was murdered.
On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of
the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine
and Egypt.[12] The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining.[13]
Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews (for example, Cluniac monk
Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews, with the result that Jews were expelled from Limoges and
other French towns[citation needed]) and an impetus to later Crusades.[14]