Editing Nazareth (section)

===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>