In 688, Caliph Abd al-Malik began building the Dome of the Rock, which still stands on that site today.

ECONOMIST: New fiction from the Middle East

The percentages fixed in Muhammad's time applied only to mining and agriculture (and, agonised one early caliph, were pomegranates exempt?).

ECONOMIST: A survey of Islam and the west

The Paris exhibition ends in 1957 with a fine drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright of a monument to the legendary caliph Haroun al-Rashid.

ECONOMIST: Babylon

They are less concerned to pay respects to their former rulers than to honour their status as Caliph, head of the Islamic faith.

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Shia revere Ali, the prophet Muhammad's son-in-law and Islam's fourth caliph.

WSJ: Sadanand Dhume: The Plight of Pakistan's Shia

AD, the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur consulted a Persian astrologer called Nawbakht to find a conjunction of the planets favourable to laying the foundation stone for a new capital.

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Made in 968 for the youngest son of the Caliph of Cordoba, it features men variously listening to music, plucking dates or nabbing eggs from a falcon's nest.

WSJ: Islam at the Louvre

In 656, Caliph Uthman, the third caliph to rule after the death of the Prophet, was assassinated at his home in Medina (now Saudi Arabia) by besieging Muslim rebels from Mesopotamia.

CNN: Wednesday,

These historic events form the background to this short, arresting historical novel, written almost as a prose poem, which recounts the Dome's construction from the viewpoint of one of the Caliph's advisers, who is of Jewish origin but has adopted the new Muslim creed.

ECONOMIST: New fiction from the Middle East