Al-Aqsa
Al-Aqsa or al-Masjid al-Aqṣā is the compound of Islamic religious buildings that sit atop the Temple Mount, also known as the Haram al-Sharif, in the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Dome of the Rock, many mosques and prayer halls, madrasas, zawiyas, khalwas and other domes and religious structures, as well as the four encircling minarets. It is considered the third holiest site in Islam. The compound's main congregational mosque or prayer hall is variously known as Al-Aqsa Mosque, Qibli Mosque or al-Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā, while in some sources it is also known as al-Masjid al-Aqṣā; the wider compound is sometimes known as Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in order to avoid confusion.
During the rule of the Rashidun caliph Umar or the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I, a small prayer house on the compound was erected near the mosque's site. The present-day mosque, located on the south wall of the compound, was originally built by the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik or his successor al-Walid I as a congregational mosque on the same axis as the Dome of the Rock, a commemorative Islamic monument. After being destroyed in an earthquake in 746, the mosque was rebuilt in 758 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. It was further expanded upon in 780 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi, after which it consisted of fifteen aisles and a central dome. However, it was again destroyed during the 1033 Jordan Rift Valley earthquake. The mosque was rebuilt by the Fatimid caliph al-Zahir, who reduced it to seven aisles but adorned its interior with an elaborate central archway covered in vegetal mosaics; the current structure preserves the 11th-century outline.
During the periodic renovations undertaken, the ruling Islamic dynasties constructed additions to the mosque and its precincts, such as its dome, façade, minarets, and minbar and interior structure. Upon its capture by the Crusaders in 1099, the mosque was used as a palace; it was also the headquarters of the religious order of the Knights Templar. After the area was conquered by Saladin in 1187, the structure's function as a mosque was restored. More renovations, repairs, and expansion projects were undertaken in later centuries by the Ayyubids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Supreme Muslim Council of British Palestine, and during the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank. Since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the mosque has remained under the independent administration of the Jerusalem Waqf.
Al-Aqsa holds high geopolitical significance due to its location atop the Temple Mount, once home to two Israelite and Jewish Temples, and sits amid major historical and holy sites in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As such it has been a primary flashpoint in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Definition
The English term "Al-Aqsa Mosque" is the translation of both al-Masjid al-Aqṣā and Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā, which have distinct Islamic meanings in Arabic. The former refers to the Quran's Surah 17 – "the farthest mosque" – traditionally refers to the entirety of the Temple Mount compound, while the latter name is used specifically for the silver-domed congregational mosque building. Arabic and Persian writers such as 10th-century geographer al-Muqaddasi, 11th-century scholar Nasir Khusraw, 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi and 15th-century Islamic scholar Mujir al-Din, as well as 19th-century American and British Orientalists Edward Robinson, Guy Le Strange and Edward Henry Palmer explained that the term Masjid al-Aqsa refers to the entire esplanade plaza also known as the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif – i.e. the entire area including the Dome of the Rock, the fountains, the gates, and the four minarets – because none of these buildings existed at the time the Quran was written. Al-Muqaddasi referred to the southern building as Al Mughattâ and Nasir Khusraw referred to it with the Persian word Pushish or the Maqsurah.In early Islam, the Temple Mount area was known as Bayt al-Maqdis, corresponding to the Hebrew Beit ha-Miqdash, and the term later came to refer to Jerusalem as a whole. During the period of Mamluk and Ottoman rule, the wider compound began to also be popularly known as the Haram al-Sharif, or al-Ḥaram ash-Sharīf, which translates as the "Noble Sanctuary". It mirrors the terminology of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca; This term elevated the compound to the status of Haram, which had previously only been reserved for the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. Other Islamic figures disputed the haram status of the site. Usage of the name Haram al-Sharif by local Palestinians has waned in recent decades, in favor of the traditional name of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
History
Umayyad period
In 637, the Rashidun Caliphate under Umar, the father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, besieged and captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. There are no contemporary records, but many traditions, about the origin of the main Islamic buildings on the Temple Mount. A popular account from later centuries is that Umar was led to the place reluctantly by the Christian patriarch Sophronius. He found it covered with rubbish, but the sacred Rock was found with the help of a converted Jew, Ka'b al-Ahbar. Al-Ahbar advised Umar to build a mosque to the north of the rock, so that worshippers would face both the rock and Mecca, but instead Umar chose to build it to the south of the rock. It became known as al-Aqsa Mosque. According to Muslim sources, Jews participated in the construction of the haram, laying the groundwork for both al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock mosques. The first known eyewitness testimony is that of the pilgrim Arculf who visited about 670. According to Arculf's account as recorded by Adomnán, he saw a rectangular wooden house of prayer built over some ruins, large enough to hold 3,000 people.In 691, an octagonal Islamic building topped by a dome was built by the Caliph Abd al-Malik around the Foundation Stone, for a myriad of political, dynastic and religious reasons, built on local and Quranic traditions articulating the site's holiness, a process in which textual and architectural narratives reinforced one another. The shrine became known as the Dome of the Rock. In 715 the Umayyads, led by the Caliph al-Walid I, built al-Aqsa Mosque, corresponding to the Islamic belief of Muhammad's miraculous nocturnal journey as recounted in the Quran and hadith. The term "Noble Sanctuary" or "Haram al-Sharif", as it was called later by the Mamluks and Ottomans, refers to the whole area that surrounds that Rock.
A mostly wooden, rectangular prayer hall on the Temple Mount site with a capacity for 3,000 worshippers is attested by the Gallic monk Arculf during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in. Its precise location is not known. The art historian Oleg Grabar deems it likely that it was close to the present prayer hall, while the historian Yildirim Yavuz asserts it stood at the present site of the Dome of Rock. The architectural historian K. A. C. Creswell notes that Arculf's attestation lends credibility to claims by some Islamic traditions and medieval Christian chronicles, which he otherwise deems legendary or unreliable, that the second Rashidun caliph, Umar, ordered the construction of a primitive mosque on the Temple Mount. However, Arculf visited Palestine during the reign of Caliph Mu'awiya I, founder of the Syria-based Umayyad Caliphate. Mu'awiya had been governor of Syria, including Palestine, for about twenty years before becoming caliph and his accession ceremony was held in Jerusalem. The 10th-century Jerusalemite scholar al-Mutahhar ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi claims Mu'awiya built a mosque on the Haram.
There is disagreement as to whether the present prayer hall was originally built by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik or his successor, his son al-Walid I. Several architectural historians hold that Abd al-Malik commissioned the project and that al-Walid finished or expanded it. Abd al-Malik inaugurated great architectural works on the Temple Mount, including construction of the Dome of the Rock in. A common Islamic tradition holds that Abd al-Malik simultaneously commissioned the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. As both were intentionally built on the same axis, Grabar comments that the two structures form "part of an architecturally thought-out ensemble comprising a congregational and a commemorative building", the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, respectively. Guy le Strange claims that Abd al-Malik used materials from the destroyed Church of Our Lady to build the mosque and points to possible evidence that substructures on the southeast corners of the mosque are remains of the church.
The earliest source indicating al-Walid's work on the mosque is the Aphrodito Papryi. These contain the letters between al-Walid's governor of Egypt in December 708–June 711 and a government official in Upper Egypt which discuss the dispatch of Egyptian laborers and craftsmen to help build the al-Aqsa Mosque, referred to as the "Mosque of Jerusalem". The referenced workers spent between six months and a year on the construction. Several 10th and 13th-century historians credit al-Walid for founding the mosque, though the historian Amikam Elad doubts their reliability on the matter. In 713–714, a series of earthquakes ravaged Jerusalem, destroying the eastern section of the mosque, which was subsequently rebuilt by al-Walid's order. He had gold from the Dome of the Rock melted to use as money to finance the repairs and renovations. He is credited by the early 15th-century historian al-Qalqashandi for covering the mosque's walls with mosaics. Grabar notes that the Umayyad-era mosque was adorned with mosaics, marble, and "remarkable crafted and painted woodwork". The latter are preserved partly in the Palestine Archaeological Museum and partly in the Islamic Museum.
Estimates of the size of the Umayyad-built mosque by architectural historians range from to. The building was rectangular. In the assessment of Grabar, the layout was a modified version of the traditional hypostyle mosque of the period. Its "unusual" characteristic was that its aisles laid perpendicular to the qibla wall. The number of aisles is not definitively known, though fifteen is cited by a number of historians. The central aisle, double the width of the others, was probably topped by a dome.
The last years of Umayyad rule were turbulent for Jerusalem. The last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, punished Jerusalem's inhabitants for supporting a rebellion against him by rival princes, and tore down the city's walls. In 746, the al-Aqsa Mosque was ruined in an earthquake. Four years later, the Umayyads were toppled and replaced by the Iraq-based Abbasid Caliphate.