Nazareth

===Early Muslim period===
The [[Muslim conquest of the Levant|Arab Muslim invasion of AD 638]] had no immediate impact on the Christians of Nazareth and their churches, since Bishop [[Arculf]] remembered seeing there around 670 two churches, one at the house of Joseph where Jesus had lived as a child, and one at the house of Mary where she received the Annunciation - but no synagogue, which had possibly been transformed into a mosque.<ref name="Emmett 1995, p. 18"/> The 721 [[Yazid II#Iconoclastic edict|iconoclastic edict]] of [[Caliph]] [[Yazid II]] apparently led to the destruction of the former church, so that Willibald found during his pilgrimage in 724-26 only one church there, the one dedicated to St. Mary, which Christians had to save through repeated payments from destruction by the "pagan Saracens" (Muslim Arabs).<ref>Emmett 1995, pp. 18-19.</ref> The ruins of St. Joseph's remained untouched for a very long time, while the Church St. Mary is repeatedly mentioned throughout the following centuries, including by an [[Al-Masudi|Arab geographer]] in 943.<ref>Emmett 1995, p. 19.</ref>