My theme for my visual essay is the Dome of the Rock and the controversy surrounding it. The images in my visual essay are arranged in the order in which I plan to write my final research paper. The Dome of the Rock is a 7th century building located in Jerusalem at the visual center of a platform known as the Temple Mount (shown in the first image). The name of the building's original sponsor was the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik in 691 CE (Grabar, The Dome of the Rock 62). The second image is intended to help visualize the Dome of the Rock, not as a mosque, but rather as an Islamic shrine built on a sacred site. However, exactly which sacred site this is is still a matter of debate. Three different religious traditions have significance associated with this site. I am curious to examine how the importance of the Dome of the Rock to each religious tradition affects the way it is depicted in religious art. For Jews, this is the supposed Jewish site of Isaac's near-sacrifice, which the third image helps visualize. . The Akedah, or "Binding of Isaac", is the account in the book of Genesis (22:1-19) of Abraham, at God's command, taking his son, Isaac, to offer him as a gift. sacrifice in the land of Moriah. Abraham binds his son (hence "the binding of Isaac") to the altar and is ready to perform the terrible deed when an angel appears to tell him to hold back his hand and promise him that his posterity will increase. This history is why Mount Moriah, or the location of the Dome of the Rock, has retained its Jewish spiritual significance over the years. There are two reasons why Jews believe that the Dome of the Rock is the site of Isaac's sacrifice: a) The sacrifice of ...... middle of paper ...... it is a scene of 'an imagined future Jerusalem where Islam's Dome of the Rock stands next to a reconstructed Jewish temple and worshipers of different faiths mingle in the courtyard. Is this scene too good to be true? Does every religious claim to the Dome of the Rock, reinforced by visual culture, make such an event unlikely to occur? It's ideas like these that I hope to examine in more detail in my article. My research thus far has significantly influenced the way I have selected and organized my images. I plan to look for more examples of religious artwork that represents each religious perspective on the Dome of the Rock. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were more of these types of images than I expected. Because it appears that my use of images will be a main part of my research, I will most likely include some sort of image reference section in my final article..